Urban Cultures of/in the United States: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

About the Author The Editor: Andrea Carosso teaches American Literature and Culture at the University of Torino, where he is also Director of the Master Program in American Studies and Director of the Centro di Studi Americani ed Euro-Americani «Piero Bairati». His recent publications include a book length study of Vladimir Nabokov (Invito alla lettura di Vladimir Nabokov, Milano, 1999) and the forthcoming Redeeming the Fifties: American Culture in the Age of the Cold War. He is the author of several journal articles on urban cultures in the U.S., and a forthcoming book-length study of urban cultures in the American South-West. He has co-edited Real Cities. Rappresentazioni della città negli Stati Uniti e in Canada (Torino, 2006). Product Description This book collects the efforts of a team of scholars working at the University of Torino under the auspices of the Project WWS (World-Wide Style). Focusing on diverse areas of inquiry into the transformations of the American city, the essays in this volume provide perspectives for understanding the complexity of urban cultures in the United States in the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries. Organized thematically, this book includes contributions in three main areas. The first area covers studies in U.S. history and history of ideas at the turn of the 20th century, in light of its migration/immigration processes as well as in its representations of national greatness and cultural hegemony as reflected in World’s Fairs. The second area covers analyses of American literature in the double perspective of the recent emergence of a new form of «global novel», as well as the developments of new subgenres of urban fiction. A third area on inquiry focuses on new practices of organized religion in North America arising from the regionalization of the American metropolis in recent decades.