Keynote Speaker: Roberto Dainotto

ROBERTO DAINOTTO

It is said in his legend that Professor Dainotto's PhD from New York University was in Comparative Literature, and only when he was struck by an illumination under the statue of Washington Duke, possessed by the spirit of JB our Founder, he started pronouncing burning words in Italian and was appointed Assistant Professor in that Field. The image of Garibaldi spake unto him and said: "Roberto, go and spread Italian words, that manyfold students can hear." And he went and taught, as thou can see, on Eighteenth- and Nineteent-Century Italian literature and culture, and fascism and Reconstruction, and Mediterranean Studies and European Unions; and he wrote in European History Quarterly, SubStance, Nepantla, Critical Inquiry, Segno, NAE, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Annali d'italianistica, Italian-Americana, and in collections in Italy and abroad. On a time, he wrote about excrements, which scholars naturally abhor, but it reminded him of sublime ecstasies, and anon he wrote that for Postmodern Culture; wherefore he went to publish Il racconto americano (Einaudi Scuola) and Place in Literature (Cornell UP, 2000), to which Europe (in Theory) did follow.
Let us devoutly pray this teacher, Professor Dainotto, to be our instructor and soccur and aid us in our adversities and curricula, and help, that we may after this short life at Duke come into everlasting life in the other world called real.

Education:

PhD New York University, 1995
MA New York University, 1990
Laurea, cum laude University of Catania, Italy, 1986

Research Interests:

Modern and contemporary Italian culture. His publications include Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities (Cornell UP, 2000), Europe (in Theory) (Duke UP, 2007), and the edited volume Racconti Americani del ‘900 (Einaudi, 1999). His research interests include the Italian historicist tradition (Vico, Cuoco, Manzoni, Labriola and Gramsci), the formation of national identity between regionalism (including the so-called “Southern Question” and “Jewish Question”) and European integration; Italian cinema.

Representative Publications

Europe (in Theory). Duke University Press, 2007.
"Asimmetrie mediterranee. Etica e mare nostrum." NAE 3 (2003): 3-18.
"The Gubbio Papers: Historic Centers in the Age of the 'Economic Miracle'." Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8:1 (2003): 67-83.
Place in Literature: Regions, Cultures, Communities. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000.
R. Dainotto. "Historical Materialism as New Humanism: Antonio Labriola’s ‘In Memoria del Manifesto dei Comunisti’ (1895)." Annali d'Italianistica 25 (2008): 265-282.
"The Canonization of Heinrich Heine and the Construction of Jewish-Italian Literature." The Most Ancient of Minorities: History and Culture of the Jews of Italy Ed. Stanislao Pugliese. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002, 131-138.
R. Dainotto. "Of the Arab Origin of Modern Europe: Giammaria Barbieri, Juan Andrés, and the Origin of Rhyme." Comparative Literature 58:4 (Fall, 2007): 271-292.
"The Importance of Being Sicilian: Italian Cultural Studies, sicilitudine and je ne sais quoi." Italian Cultural Studies (2001): 201-219.
"Goethe's Backpack." SubStance 105:33 (2005): 6-22. [html]
"Tramonto and Risorgimento: Gentile's Dialectics and the Prophecy of Nation." Making and Unmaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento Ed. Alberto Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg. Oxford: Berg., 2001, 241-256.
"La città e il represso. Moderno, postmoderno, e l' immaginario del(la) capitale." Golem. Il futuro che passa Ed. Fausto Carmelo Nigrelli. Roma: ManifestoLibri., 2001, 49-72.
"Die Rhetorik des Regionalismus. Architektonischer Ort und der Geist des Gemeinplatzes." Die Architektur, die Tradition und der Ort: Regionalismen in der europaäischen Stadt Ed. Vittorio Magnano Lampugnani. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2000, 15-30.
R. Dainotto. "The Discreet Charm of the Arabist Theory." European History Quarterly 36:1 (2006): 7-29.
"The `Other' Europe of Michele Amari: Orientalism from the South." Nineteent-Century Contexts 26:4 (2005): 18-27.
"Vico's Beginnings and Ends: Variations on the Theme of Origins of Language." Annali d'Italianistica 18 (2000): 13-28.

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