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"The notion that war plays a fundamental role in the United States' idea of itself obscures the rich--and by no means nai;ve--seam of anti-war thinking that winds through American culture. Non-violent resistance, far from being a philosophy of passive dreamers, instead embodies Ralph Waldo Emerson's belief that peace "can never be defended, never be executed, by cowards." Giorgio Mariani rigorously engages with the essential question of what makes a text explicitly anti-war. Ranging from Emerson and Joel Barlow to Maxine Hong Kingston and Tim O'Brien, Waging War on War explores why sustained attempts at identifying the anti-war text's formal and philosophical features seem to always end at an impasse. Mariani moves a step beyond to construct a theoretical model that invites new inquiries into America's nonviolent, nonconformist tradition even as it challenges the ways we study U.S. warmaking and the cultural reactions to it. In the process, he shows how the ideal of nonviolence and a dislike of war have been significant, if nonhegemonic, features of American culture since the nation's early days. Ambitious and nuanced, Waging War on War at last defines anti-war literature while exploring the genre's role in an assertive peacefighting project that offered--and still offers--alternatives to violence"--

After offering some preliminary remarks on the notion of what makes a "captive mind," the article shifts its attention to one of the most significant and yet relatively neglected early essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essay "War." This text, I argue, deserves not only to be considered the (largely forgotten) founding document of the American anti-war movement, but it remains important even today, as it sheds light on the inevitable contradictions and double-binds any serious movement against war and for social justice must face. It is a text, in other words, which helps us highlight some of the problems we run into—both conceptually and practically—when we try to free our minds from a given mindset, but we must still rely on a world that is pretty much the outcome of the ideologies, customs, and traditions we wish to transcend. To imagine a world free of violence and war is the age-old problem of how to change the world and make it "new" when the practical and intellectual instruments we have are all steeped in the old world we want to abolish. Emerson's thinking provides a basis to unpack the aporias of what, historically speaking, the antiwar movement has been, both inside and outside the US. The article concludes by examining some recent collections of US pacifist and anti-war writings, as providing useful examples of the challenges antiwar, and more generally protest movements, must face.

Brian Turner has quickly risen as the US poet of the Iraq War. Though many have praised his work on both aesthetic and political grounds, others have objected to his inability to move beyond an American soldier's perspective. My essay explores the terms of this controversy, suggesting that Turner does—at least at times—try to incorporate in his poetry the viewpoint of the enemy. My argument is that Turner's work could be described as "cosmopolitan," at least if by that term we mean, as Bruce Robbins has suggested, not an impossibly "neutral" perspective but, more realistically, "a striving to transcend partiality that is itself partial" (1992, 181).

Among the Italian responses to Hemingway's death, Alberto Moravia's stands out for his condemnation of the US writer's cult of his publica persona. Comparing Hemingway to D'Annunzio, Moravia comes very close to calling Hemingway himself if not a Fascist, certainly someone whose values were close to Fascist ones. Moravia's essay sparked a lively debate, with many Italian critics and writers coming out in defense of Hemingway, even when they may have been critical of specific aspects of his work. The essay sketches that debate, and then goes on to analyze what were, historically, Hemingway's own pronouncements on Fascism, Mussolini, and D'Annunzio. The historical record shows that the American writer was unambiguously hostile to Fascism, and as proven both by the banning of Farewell to Armsand by his exclusion from a literary jury that should have chosen the best American books for the Italian public, Hemingway was anathema to Mussolini and his associates. It is interesting and at the same time puzzling that, during the debate that followed Moravia's article, hardly anyone referred to the historical archive in any depth. While this debate may be typical of Cold War intellectual frays and by now dated, it is worth remembering that criticism of Hemingway has been often marked by political overtones both in the past and in the present. Moreover, the importance of Hemingway's work for Italian writers and the intensity of the debate surrounding the merits of his artistic accomplishments would suggest that he may well deserve to be included in the canon of twentieth-century Italian literature. ; Tra le reazioni italiane alla morte di Hemingway, quella di Alberto Moravia si segnala per la condanna del culto del personaggio pubblico creato dallo scrittore. Nel paragonare Hemingway a D'Annunzio, Moravia si avvicina a definire il primo, se non un fascista, certamente una figura i cui valori erano vicini a quelli del fascismo. Il saggio di Moravia provocò vivaci reazioni e molti studiosi e scrittori italiani, pur critici di alcuni aspetti del suo lavoro, presero le difese di Hemingway. Il saggio ripercorre la polemica e analizza poi quali furono le opinioni storicamente espresse da Hemingway sul fascismo, su Mussolini e su D'Annunzio. I dati dimostrano che lo scrittore americano fu senza ambiguità ostile al fascismo e come dimostrato dalla censura di Addio alle armie dalla sua esclusione da una giuria letteraria che avrebbe dovuto indicare i migliori libri americani per il pubblico italiano, Hemingway era inviso sia a Mussolini sia ai suoi accoliti. È interessante e al tempo stesso sconcertante che, durante il dibattito che seguì all'articolo di Moravia, nessuno, o quasi, fece riferimento ai dati storici oggettivi. Se per un verso questa polemica appare oggi come datata e tipica dell'epoca della Guerra fredda, vale la pena ricordare che la critica hemingwayana è stata spesso segnata da toni politici, ieri come oggi. Inoltre, l'importanza dell'opera di Hemingway per gli scrittori italiani e il calore del dibattito circa i suoi meriti artistici, portano a pensare che lo scrittore dovrebbe essere incluso nel canone della letteraturaitalianadel Novecento.

Among the Italian responses to Hemingway's death, Alberto Moravia's stands out for his condemnation of the US writer's cult of his publica persona. Comparing Hemingway to D'Annunzio, Moravia comes very close to calling Hemingway himself if not a Fascist, certainly someone whose values were close to Fascist ones. Moravia's essay sparked a lively debate, with many Italian critics and writers coming out in defense of Hemingway, even when they may have been critical of specific aspects of his work. The essay sketches that debate, and then goes on to analyze what were, historically, Hemingway's own pronouncements on Fascism, Mussolini, and D'Annunzio. The historical record shows that the American writer was unambiguously hostile to Fascism, and as proven both by the banning of Farewell to Arms and by his exclusion from a literary jury that should have chosen the best American books for the Italian public, Hemingway was anathema to Mussolini and his associates. It is interesting and at the same time puzzling that, during the debate that followed Moravia's article, hardly anyone referred to the historical archive in any depth. While this debate may be typical of Cold War intellectual frays and by now dated, it is worth remembering that criticism of Hemingway has been often marked by political overtones both in the past and in the present. Moreover, the importance of Hemingway's work for Italian writers and the intensity of the debate surrounding the merits of his artistic accomplishments would suggest that he may well deserve to be included in the canon of twentieth-century Italian literature.

In Italy, over the last decades, both the Left and the Right have repeatedly employed American Indians as political icons. The Left and the Right, that is, both adopted and adapted certain real or often outright invented features of American Indian culture and history to promote their own ideas, values, and political campaigns. The essay explores how well-established stereotypes such as those of the ecological Indian, the Indian as victim, and the Indian as fearless warrior, have often surfaced in Italian political discourse. The "Indiani Metropolitani" student movement resorted to "Indian" imagery and concepts to rejuvenate the languages of the old socialist and communist left, whereas the Right has for the most part preferred to brandish the Indian as an image of a bygone past, threatened by modernization and, especially, by immigration. Indians are thus compared to contemporary Europeans, struggling to resist being invaded by "foreign" peoples. While both the Left and the Right reinvent American Indians for their own purposes, and could be said to practice a form of cultural imperialism, the essay argues that the Leftist appropriations of the image of the Indian were always marked by irony. Moreover, while the Right's Indians can be seen as instances of what Walter Benjamin (1969) described as Fascism's aestheticization of politics, groups like the Indiani Metropolitani tried to politicize the aesthetics.

In Italy, over the last decades, both the Left and the Right have repeatedly employed American Indians as political icons. The Left and the Right, that is, both adopted and adapted certain real or often outright invented features of American Indian culture and history to promote their own ideas, values, and political campaigns. The essay explores how well-established stereotypes such as those of the ecological Indian, the Indian as victim, and the Indian as fearless warrior, have often surfaced in Italian political discourse. The "Indiani Metropolitani" student movement resorted to "Indian" imagery and concepts to rejuvenate the languages of the old socialist and communist left, whereas the Right has for the most part preferred to brandish the Indian as an image of a bygone past, threatened by modernization and, especially, by immigration. Indians are thus compared to contemporary Europeans, struggling to resist being invaded by "foreign" peoples. While both the Left and the Right reinvent American Indians for their own purposes, and could be said to practice a form of cultural imperialism, the essay argues that the Leftist appropriations of the image of the Indian were always marked by irony. Moreover, while the Right's Indians can be seen as instances of what Walter Benjamin (1969) described as Fascism's aestheticization of politics, groups like the Indiani Metropolitani tried to politicize the aesthetics.

When, during the latest US electoral campaign, Pope Francis criticized Trump's idea of building a wall between Mexico and the US, reiterat- ing his favorite point that "we do not need to build walls, but bridges," the Trump camp retorted that the Pope lives in a city state surrounded by walls, in a city itself surrounded by other walls dating back to ancient Roman times. Why wasn't he concerned with those walls? As one can see, even though Roman walls have completely lost their original func- tion and survive mainly as tourist sites, they also remain powerful political and cultural symbols. The scope of this essay is to offer, from the perspective of an Americanist who was born and raised in Rome, some comparative reflections on what we can learn today from the his- tory of Roman walls, as well as from their symbolic afterlives.

Italian interest in things American Indian is literally centuries-old. The incorporation of American Indian studies into Italian American Studies, however, is a much more recent phenomenon. It was only in the late 1960's and then during the 1970's that Italian scholars of American literature began to take a strong interest in American Indian topics and issues. The essay highlights, from an autobiographical perspective, the historical and institutional circumstances through which American Indian studies became first a legitimate and later an important part of the Italian tradition of American Studies. From his early fascination with the mythic Wild West to his involvement with the "Indiani Metropolitani" movement of the late 1970's, the author describes how a unique mix of personal, political, and historical factors turned him into a student of contemporary American Indian literature. Writing from an avowed self-reflective perspective, the essay traces the contours and achievements of American Indian studies—and especially American Indian literary studies—in Italy over the past few decades.