We are pleased to report on recent book publications by our faculty, which, as always, cover an eclectic and exciting array of topics. Upcoming from McFarland press is Professor Marco Arnaudo’s Storytelling in the Modern Board Game: Narrative Trends from the Late 1960s to Today. The work explores how board games evolved into vehicles for intricate storytelling where the players become co-authors and help determine their own narrative fate.
Associate Professor Hall Bjørnstad’s co-edited book Universal History and the Making of the Global (H. Bjørnstad, H. Jordheim, A. Régent-Susini, editors; Routledge: 2018) also comes out later this summer. This volume includes essays by Bjørnstad, Professor Guillaume Ansart, and other scholars that focus on various aspects of universal history, the effort from the late Middle Ages until the early 19th century to integrate time and space, “assemble the world and keep it together” (cover description). The publication is a culmination of research collaborations begun in 2013 with a workshop at IUB entitled “Assembling the Global” and continued with another symposium in Oslo (Norway) in June 2014. Ph.D. student Amanda Vredenburgh ably assisted with translation and proofreading.
Another book that started with research collaborations at IUB is Enlightenment Liberties / Libertés des Lumières, published in April and co-edited by Professor Ansart (G. Ansart, R. Ehrsam, C. Seth, and Y. Solomonescu, editors; Honoré Champion, 2018). The essays therein were developed during the International Society for 18th-Century Studies seminar for young scholars held at IUB in July 2012. The articles reflect on conceptions of liberty in the 18th century from the perspectives of history, literature, political science, philosophy, religious studies, and the history of art and theater.
In the second half of 2017, Professor Oana Panaïté had two very different works published. The first, The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary Fiction in French (Liverpool University Press) examines the lasting impact of colonialism on French-language literature both inside and outside of France. The second, Entre-Textes: Dialogues littéraires et culturels (O. Panaïté and V. Klekovkina, editors; Routledge) is an anthology of francophone literature for advanced students of French which pairs classical texts with more modern or contemporary texts to reveal how the approach to certain themes or issues, as well as literary styles, have changed or remained the same. Several FRIT alumni and faculty members contributed to the textbook, including Florin Beschea (PhD ’13), Olga Amarie (PhD ’11), Eric MacPhail, Eileen Julien, Hall Bjørnstad, Flavien Falantin (PhD’17), Audrey Dobrenn (PhD ’13), and Margaret Gray.
Professor Antonio Vitti also had a busy 2017 with several book publications. His monograph Avventuroso cammino nel cinema italiano (Metauro Editore) takes readers on a journey through 20th-century Italian cinema making connections between films, themes, directors, specific cinematographic sequences, and shooting techniques while extoling and exploring the impact of neorealism. In May 2017, Bordighera Press published a volume co-edited by Vitti and Anthony Tamburri entitled The Mediterranean Dreamed and Lived by Insiders and Outsiders, part of a series by the Mediterranean Centre for Intercultural Studies / Centro Studi Mediterranei. Vitti is organizing their annual conference in Erice (Italy) in May 2018. Earlier this year, Due esiliati: Giuseppe De Santis e Giose Rimanelli, another volume of essays edited by Vitti, was published by Metauro Editore. The essays in the tome discuss these two authors, one who worked in film (De Santis) and the other in literature (Rimanelli), with very different political perspectives but with the commonality that both chose to work abroad after their seminal works were released in Italy.
The College of Arts