Italian literary and cinematic representations of China and the Chinese (1949-2011)

Italy and China have long shared a history of influential economic and cultural ties, and their communication is an important subject in intercultural studies. Although the association of Italians with China in ancient times has been sufficiently analyzed, the Italian textual and visual construction of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese remains a subject that is rarely touched by scholars. My research project provides some of the pieces that are now missing from the puzzle of Sino-Italian relations and cross-cultural studies.;The dissertation focuses on the portrayals of the PRC and its people in Italian travel notes, reportage, as well as fiction and documentary movies produced from 1949 to 2011. Through analysis of works of Italian authors and filmmakers, such as Franco Fortini, Curzio Malaparte, Goffredo Parise, Alberto Moravia, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Andrea Segre, the dissertation explores the romanticized manifestations of the Red Utopia in the 1950s, the critical reassessment of Maoist China in the 1960s and 1970s, and the stereotypical portrayals of China and the Chinese in recent Italian fiction movies.;By setting the changing representations in their historical context, the dissertation challenges come prevalent judgements and interpretations in the existing, limited scholarship on the theme, and reveals the influences of complex social, political, and cultural factors behind the transformation. The dissertation combines a variety of critical approaches drawn from post-colonialism, film studies, gender studies, social psychology, and political theory to study the changing representations, and reveals the influences of complex factors in the (re)construction of identity, with the aim of proposing alternative interpretations, and providing some of the pieces that are currently missing from the puzzle of cultural studies.