Equivocal subjects: The representation of mixed-race identity in Italian film |
Equivocal subjects: The representation of mixed-race identity in Italian film
University of California, Irvine
2007
226 pages
AAT 3296258
ISBN: 9780549410775
Shelleen Maisha Greene, Assistant Professor of Conceptual Studies
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
My dissertation seeks to establish a critical framework for the analysis of mixed-race subjects in Italian film. Within the Italian context, mixed-race subjects emerged out of the colonial conditions stemming from the nation’s occupation and settlement of its east African colonies beginning in the nineteenth century. However, racial mixture has also served as a metaphor for the internal division of Italy between North and South, a historical formation that arguably allows for the development of analytics, such as the “Southern Question,” by which to essentialize a racially heterogeneous population. Through an examination of four historically contextualized films, I examine the presentation of mixed-race subjects in Cabiria (1914), Sotto la croce del sud (1938), Il Mulatto (1949/1951), and Il fiore delle mille e una notte (1974). I argue that the mixed-race subject is a constitutive element of the Italian cinema, a figure that serves as a nodal point for the intersection of conceptions of race and the nation.
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Tags: Italy, Shelleen Greene, Shelleen M. Greene, Shelleen Maisha Greene, University of California