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In 1966, the most destructive flood in the history of Venice temporarily submerged the city and threatened its extraordinary art and architecture. Among the organizations that mobilized to protect this fragile heritage was Save Venice Inc. Founded in Boston and now headquartered in New York City, this nonprofit has become the largest and most active committee dedicated to preserving the artistic legacy of Venice.

Christopher Carlsmith tells the fascinating story of Save Venice Inc., from its origins to its fiftieth anniversary. It continues to provide an influential model for philanthropy in the cultural sector, raising substantial funds to conserve and restore paintings, sculptures, books, mosaics, and entire buildings at risk from human and environmental impacts. Employing extensive archival research, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts, Save Venice Inc. explores a range of topics, including leadership, conservation projects, fundraising, and educational outreach. Using a range of methodologies from cultural history and art history, Carlsmith traces the achievements and challenges faced by this and other historic preservation organizations and by this unique city on the sea.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, homosexual men in Italy began to express themselves authentically after years of silence under Fascist repression. In Scandalous Practices, Alessio Ponzio deftly recounts the socio-cultural shifts that occurred for queer Italians during this period.

In tabloids and other publications, journalists sensationalized same-sex male prostitution, dramatized scandalous homosexual murders, and portrayed homosexuality as devious, dangerous, and threatening to the “new” post-war masculinity. Homosexual Italians responded to this public shaming and these negative stereotypes through resistance. As part of an ongoing struggle for gender and sexual equality, they established networks and created public discussions that engendered pride, rights awareness, and a political commitment to emancipation.

Ponzio meticulously details how Italy as a nation and culture dealt with emerging representation of queer sexuality through a reinvention that fomented self-understanding and self-representations. Instead of marginalizing it, the popular media unintentionally made homosexuality understandable to many who did not know what it was or could not make sense of their own desires. Scandalous Practices illustrates how this new sexual knowledge spread publicly across social classes and fostered the development of positive queer identities and communities.

In the series Sexuality Studies

"Since when is Fran Drescher Jewish?" This was Chiara Francesca Ferrari's reaction when she learned that Drescher's character on the television sitcom The Nanny was meant to be a portrayal of a stereotypical Jewish-American princess. Ferrari had only seen the Italian version of the show, in which the protagonist was dubbed into an exotic, eccentric Italian-American nanny. Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? explores this "ventriloquism" as not only a textual and cultural transfer between languages but also as an industrial practice that helps the media industry foster identification among varying audiences around the globe.

At the heart of this study is an in-depth exploration of three shows that moved from global to local, mapping stereotypes from both sides of the Atlantic in the process. Presented in Italy, for example, Groundskeeper Willie from The Simpsons is no longer a belligerent, alcoholic Scotsman but instead easily becomes a primitive figure from Sardinia. Ironically, The Sopranos—a show built around Italian-Americans—was carefully re-positioned by Italian TV executives, who erased the word "mafia" and all regional references to Sicily. The result of Ferrari's three case studies is evidence that "otherness" transcends translation, as the stereotypes produced by the American entertainment industry are simply replaced by other stereotypes in foreign markets. As American television studios continue to attempt to increase earnings by licensing their shows abroad, Since When Is Fran Drescher Jewish? illuminates the significant issues of identity raised by this ever-growing marketplace, along with the intriguing messages that lie in the larger realm of audiovisual cultural exchange.

In 1695, workers in Pavia, Italy, chanced upon a collection of bones in the crypt of the Cathedral of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro. The workers later testified that they had seen the name of St. Augustine written in charcoal on the surface of the casket they had uncovered. Yet by the time of the official inquest, all traces of the writing had disappeared. 

Rich with new insights into urban literacy and conceptions of reading, this book explores the controversy that ensued over the alleged discovery of Augustine's bones. Manuscripts, broadsides, pamphlets—even whole books—were devoted to proving or disproving the authenticity of the remains. Although these works were addressed to members of the clergy, they were also intended for the general reading public in Pavia, Milan, and Venice. Their dissemination helped create a temporary public sphere in which the merits of the case were examined in a spirit of free debate. 

A reexamination of the dispute over St. Augustine's bones illuminates aspects of Catholic spirituality in Northern Italy during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It also reveals the different ways in which Catholic scholars, local religious leaders, and the papal administration sought to influence and direct local popular religious belief and practices. Although the controversy was officially resolved by the papacy in 1728, the debate over the relics of San Pietro continued into the twentieth century. 

By combining methods developed in the burgeoning field of the history of the book with the tools of cultural analysis, Harold Samuel Stone not only recovers the stories surrounding St. Augustine's bones, but also reconstructs the mental world of those who read or heard them.

In the past decades, scholarship on Islamic art has challenged the parameters of the discipline, but in the process, the Italian context has often been overlooked. Gathering the voices of prominent international specialists, the book fills an important gap by presenting new research on topics ranging from the medieval to modern periods. Contributors investigate how Islamic artifacts were collected, categorized, and studied; examine Orientalism(s) in Italy and beyond; reconstruct the genealogies of scholars who helped found and develop the academic discipline and museum practices; and offer new scholarship on ceramics, textiles, metalwork, rock crystals, numismatics, and archaeology. The volume reveals the interchange between romantic reveries and more “scientific” Islamic art studies. Following the model of counter-Orientalism proposed by Karla Mallette, it raises questions of identity, otherness, and self-representation within a cultural and geographical context where the Islamic “component” was—and is—perceived either as exotic or integral to Italian identity. 

With over 100 illustrations, Stories and Histories of Islamic Art in Italy explores how amateurs, artists, and intellectuals perceived of, depicted, and wrote about the Islamic world, offering new ways to examine Italy’s Islamic past.