Allied Encounters

Analyzes Anglo-American and Italian literary, cinematic and military representations of World War II Italy in order to trace, critique and move beyond the gendered paradigm of redemption that has conditioned understandings of the Allied-Italian encounter.

Challenges canonical interpretations of important texts and reads them against little-studied material, such as diaries, obscure novels, and guidebooks provided to occupying soldiers

Escolar Marisa :

Marisa Escolar is Assistant Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Marisa Escolar is Assistant Professor of Italian in the Department of Romance Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Flavia Brizio-Skov, University of Tennessee:
Italy-as-whore and Italian whores have populated much of the literature that examines what happened to the country and its inhabitants during the Allied occupation and after the liberation. Allied Encounters asks what the racialized, gendered, and sexualized figures of the novels and films in question communicate to us, beyond the interpretations of the traditional critics who favor the view of Italy as a country that compromised its integrity letting itself to be seduced meretriciously by the political interest of the moment. Distancing itself from the official canon, the author opens up to a discourse that allows a dialogue among the various works, vis-à-vis the literary tradition and the historical background they inhabit. The book is a welcome addition to the Italian scholarship, redressing and re-reading the encounter between the Allied and Italy according to other parameters and against the grain.