Domesticating foreign struggles : the Italian Risorgimento and antebellum American identity / Paola Gemme.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gemme, Paola, 1966-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Public opinion--United States--History--19th century.

Public opinion.

Italy--Foreign public opinion, American--History--19th century.

Italy.

Italy--History--1849-1870.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (217 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When antebellum Americans talked about the contemporary struggle for Italian unification (the Risorgimento), they were often saying more about themselves than about Italy. In Domesticating Foreign Struggles Paola Gemme unpacks the American cultural record on the Risorgimento not only to make sense of the U.S. engagement with the broader world but also to understand the nation's domestic preoccupations. Swayed by the myth of the United States as a catalyst of and model for global liberal movements, says Gemme, Americans saw parallels to their own history in the Risorgimento-and they said as much in newspapers, magazines, travel accounts, diplomatic dispatches, poems, maps, and paintings. And yet, in American eyes, Italians were too civically deficient to ever achieve republican goals. Such a view, says Gemme, reaffirmed cherished beliefs both in the United States as the center of world events and in the notion of American exceptionalism. Gemme argues that Americans also pondered the place of "subordinate" ethnic groups in domestic culture-especially Irish Catholic immigrants and enslaved African Americans-through the discourse on Risorgimento Italy. Thus, says Gemme, national identity rested not only on differentiation from outside groups but also on a desire for internal racial and cultural homogeneity. Writing in a tradition pioneered by Amy Kaplan, Richard Slotkin, and others, Gemme advances the movement to "internationalize" American studies by situating the United States in its global cultural context.

Contents:

Introduction : domesticating foreign struggles

Of American mentors and foreign pupils : the cultural work of republican pedagogy

Of revolutions and commerce : the imperial vistas of political philanthropy

An American Jeremiah in Rome : Margaret Fuller's Tribune dispatches

Republican debates I : the color of the Republic

Republican debates II : the religion of the Republic

Epilogue : revolution and immigration.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613625908

9781280596070

1280596074

9780820343990

0820343994

OCLC:

794449242