Democracy and difference
Ufficio Convegni, image adapted from Elena Munerati's photos
Democracy and Difference: The US in Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives presents contributions stretching from the Humanities to the Social Sciences and examines the challenging conjugation of two keywords in contemporary societies—democracy and difference. The volume collects selected elaborations of papers presented at the 21st International Biennial AISNA Conference held in Trento from the 26 to the 29 of October 2011.
The overall project of this collection is to share knowledges and methodologies across disciplines, languages and national cultures, in order to investigate processes of homogenization and differentiation, and to embrace transnational, intercultural, and interdisciplinary perspectives. By exploring from various disciplines topics that are central to American Studies—including race/ethnicity, sex/gender, nationality, religion, language, landscape, migration, law, status, economy, dispossession, and expansion—and by engaging them in English and Spanish, the collection aims both to foster cultural dialogue in an interconnected world and to reflect the dynamism and instability of American Studies as a discipline that is constantly redrawn and redefined by a difficult yet fruitful interaction with diverse cultures, locations, and communities. This volume situates critique at the very heart of American Studies, not only to question and redraw the boundaries of this porous discipline, but also to point the way towards more hospitable configurations of the global world.
Published in I LABIRINTI series of the University of Trento Press, Democracy and Difference: The US in Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives is a peer-reviewed publication edited by Giovanna Covi and Lisa Marchi with the support of a distinguished international editorial board.
The volume captures the main aspects of the lively and fruitful exchanges among Italian, US, European, Arab, and Asian scholars, writers, and musicians, along with students and the larger public, that took place at the 21st AISNA Conference. To fully appreciate the context which fostered the collected essays, please navigate this website and explore, together with the Photogallery and the Conference Program, the Book of Abstracts including the descriptions of the keynote lectures given by David Leiwei Li (University of Oregon), Nouri Gana (University of California at Los Angeles), Alessandro Portelli (Università di Roma La Sapienza), Marina Camboni (Università di Macerata), Emilia Perassi (Università Statale di Milano), Leela Gandhi (University of Chicago), R. Radhakrishnan (University of California at Irvine), François Weil (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), Ugo Mattei (Università di Torino), Franco Stelzer (writer and teacher), Maurizio Dini Ciacci (Conservatorio di Venezia), Isabella Turso (pianist), Stefania Neonato (pianist), Kim Nalley (University of California at Berkeley and vocalist), Tammy Hall (pianist), Robert Reid-Pharr (City University of New York), Sergio Fabbrini (Libera Università degli Studi Sociali).