The Department of French & Italian
presents a lecture by
Jacqueline Reich
Muscular Visions: Charles Atlas, Maciste, and National Identity in Interwar Media Culture
Monday, January
22, 2007
5:30
Walnut Room,
Indiana Memorial Union
Abstract: In this talk, I discuss how the visual representation of muscled male bodies in American bodybuilding iconography and Italian silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s participated in new formulations of national identity. The larger framework of this study is the rise of nationalism in Italy, the growth of nativism in the United States, and the ways in which racial discourses on both sides of the Atlantic affected the positioning of the Italian male body in popular periodicals, advertisements, and films. These forceful dynamics implied surprising reinscriptions. For instance, Classical ideals of masculine beauty, rather than a mere antique referencing, defined and sustained the symbolic equation of familiar muscular bodies with national renewal and modern physical health.
The Speaker: Jacqueline Reich is Associate Professor at Stony Brook University (State University of New York, Stony Brook). She is the author of Beyond the Latin Lover: Marcello Mastroianni, Masculinity and Italian Cinema (IU Press, 2004) and co-editor of Re-viewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922-1943 (IU Press, 2002). She has also published numerous articles on Italian cinema and culture.
If you have a disability and need assistance, special arrangements can be made to accommodate most needs. Contact Isabel Piedmont at 855-5458 or ipiedmon @indiana.edu.
