{"59132":{"#nid":"59132","#data":{"type":"news","title":"What Does it Mean to be Female in a Mechanistic World?","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAs scientific discoveries and technological advances radically modernized Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, artists of all types began questioning what it means to be human in an increasingly mechanistic world. Animated by a luminous goddess at its center, the \u0022diva\u0022  film provided a forum for denouncing social evils and exploring new models of behavior among the sexes. These melodramas of courtship, seduction, marriage, betrayal, abandonment, child custody, and public reputation, to mention only a few themes, offered women a vision of\u0022\u0022if not always a realistic hope for\u0022\u0022emancipation and self-discovery.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EDiva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema \u003C\/em\u003E(University of Texas Press in 2008) by School of Literature, Communication, and Culture associate professor, Angela Dalle Vacche, is the first authoritative study of this important \u0022film\u0022 genre of the cinema that preceded the Great War of 1914-1918.  Diva was recently honored by Choice Magazine, the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries in the United States, as the Outstanding Academic Book for 2009.  \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn \u003Cem\u003EDiva\u003C\/em\u003E, Dalle Vacche analyzes some seventy films, as well as the work of actresses such as Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli, to establish what the diva film contributed to the modernist development of the \u0022new woman.\u0022 Contrasting the Italian diva with the Hollywood vamp Theda Bara and the famous Danish star Asta Nielsen, Dalle Vacche shows how the diva oscillates between articulating Henri Bergson\u0027s vibrant life-force (lan vital) and representing the suffering figure of the Catholic mater dolorosa.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETaking readers on a fascinating tour that includes the Ballets Russes, orientalism, art nouveau, Futurism, fashion, prostitution, stunt women in the circus, aviation, anti-Semitism, colonialism, and censorship, \u003Cem\u003EDiva\u003C\/em\u003E sheds important new light on the eccentric implantation of modernity in Italy, as well as on how, before World War I, the filmic image was associated with the powers of the occult and not with the Freudian unconscious, as has been argued until now.\n\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Dalle Vacche\u0027s Film Study \u0022Diva\u0022 Honored"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"As scientific discoveries and technological advances radically modernized Europe around the turn of the twentieth century, artists of all types began questioning what it means to be human in an increasingly mechanistic world. Animated by a luminous goddess at its center, the \u0022diva\u0022  film provided a forum for denouncing social evils and exploring new models of behavior among the sexes. These melodramas of courtship, seduction, marriage, betrayal, abandonment, child custody, and public reputation, to mention only a few themes, offered women a vision of\u0022\u0022if not always a realistic hope for\u0022\u0022emancipation and self-discovery.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Dalle Vacche\u0027s \u0022Diva\u0022 Wins Choice Book Award"}],"uid":"27167","created_gmt":"2009-10-12 00:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:06:47","author":"Rebecca Keane","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2009-10-12T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.utexas.edu\/utpress\/books\/daldiv.html","title":"Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema"}],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"10053","name":"Choice award"},{"id":"10059","name":"Choice Magazine"},{"id":"10051","name":"Dalle Vacche"},{"id":"10050","name":"Diva"},{"id":"2402","name":"film"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003ERebecca Keane\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIvan Allen College of Liberal Arts\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.gatech.edu\/contact\/index.html?id=rkeane3\u0022\u003EContact Rebecca Keane\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-1720\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}