This article reconsiders the post-war reaction against Benedetto Croce, focusing on the critical reappraisal of Crocean historicism that followed the defeat of Italian Fascism. Motivated by a growing sense of historical uncertainty, Italians increasingly dissented from Croce, but they remained more wedded to Crocean thought – and in particular t…[Read more]

George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale (published 1595) was performed by the Queen’s Men in the 1580s. Initially, the play has been dismissed by several critics as a vulgar and cheap entertainment without much value. Yet, the metadramatic techniques employed in the play sheds light to how humour could be effectively triggered in the respective per…[Read more]

Would you like to get better at mindreading (i.e., at inferring people’s beliefs, desires, and intentions, based on their behavior)? As it turns out, all you would have to do is lower your relative social status. Studies have shown that people in weaker social positions engage in more active and perceptive mindreading than do people in stronger s…[Read more]

This essay examines the cultural practices and prejudices that shaped the Italian reception of German Neue Sachlichkeit in the 1920s and explores their role in the development of Italian Neorealism in the 1940s. I argue that, precisely because Italian critics approached the German critical category – and indeed all critical categorisation – wit…[Read more]

The search for a methodology for reading world literature largely entails the development of new critical paradigms, but it has also occasioned a re-examination and rehabilitation of world literature’s historical formulations. This essay reclaims a forgotten milestone, the 1946 essay “La ‘letteratura mondiale'” by the eminent Italian philologist…[Read more]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction
with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the
United States. Drawing on the work of many of the leading figures in postwar Italian culture,
including Italo Calvino, Giorgio Caproni, Cesare P…[Read more]

In this essay, I argue that the post-war critical re-interpretation of Boccaccio’s oeuvre was central to the theory and practice of Italian Neorealism. What is more, I maintain that Neorealism significantly influenced Boccaccio studies, shaping critical approaches to Boccaccio for decades after 1945. Reading scholarly and critical studies of…[Read more]

This essay will examine the multiple performance texts that exist in Ivo Van Hove’s transcultural and transmedial performance event, The Roman Tragedies (which toured worldwide from 2007 to 2013) to suggest that, in today’s “spreadable” culture (to borrow from Henry Jenkins), appropriative use becomes the bridge that can unify ‘work’ and ‘event.…[Read more]

Final progress report about the California Open Educational Resources Council’s work with 3 representatives from each of the California State University, University of California, and California Community Colleges, to investigate the efficacy of implementing adoption of OER textbooks and to create a repository of OER textbooks for use in all 3 systems.

Based on its survey responses, the California Open Educational Resources Council identified several impediments to adopting OER textbooks and concluded that rigorous peer review was ultimately the first step towards advocating for adoption of OER textbooks. The Council quickly identified 50 highly-enrolled courses with expensive textbooks across…[Read more]

This is a pedagogical edition of the medieval Castilian texts with modern Spanish introduction, notes, and bibliography by Ana Gómez Bravo, of a series of excerpts of late fifteenth-century texts related to the cultural practices (perceived and actual) of judeo-conversos, or Jews who have converted to Christianity. It includes an introduction…[Read more]

This is a pedagogical edition of the medieval Castilian texts with modern Spanish introduction, notes, and bibliography by Ana Gómez Bravo, of a series of excerpts of late fifteenth-century texts related to the cultural practices (perceived and actual) of judeo-conversos, or Jews who have converted to Christianity. It includes an introduction…[Read more]

This is a pedagogical edition of the medieval Castilian texts with English introduction, translation, notes, and bibliography by Ana Gómez Bravo, of a series of excerpts of late fifteenth-century texts related to the cultural practices (perceived and actual) of judeo-conversos, or Jews who have converted to Christianity. It includes an…[Read more]

This is a pedagogical edition of the medieval Castilian texts with English introduction, translation, notes, and bibliography by Ana Gómez Bravo, of a series of excerpts of late fifteenth-century texts related to the cultural practices (perceived and actual) of judeo-conversos, or Jews who have converted to Christianity. It includes an…[Read more]

This is a pedagogical edition of a selection of Las excelencias de los hebreos (Amsterdam 1679), in .doc format with Spanish introduction and notes, with the original text in Spanish. Las excelencias de los hebreos (Amsterdam 1679) is a treatise describing the positive characteristics (excelencias) of the Jewish people and a containing a…[Read more]

Abstract and Keywords
Part of this chapter deals with Zhu Xi’s critique of Buddhism and Daoism: his distinction of the neo-Confucian concept of pattern-principle and virtuous governance from seemingly similar Buddhist and Daoist ideas, his concern with what he saw as both schools’ lack of social and political engagement and their rejection of eth…[Read more]