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Information on several papers discussed at the 2010 American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) Conference held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on April 22-25, 2010 is presented. Topics include Italian cinema genre, Italian literature and the cinema discipline within the field of Italian studies. The conference featured several notable individuals including Anna Paparcone, Maria Teresa Maenza, and Elena Past.

Information about the American Association for Italian Studies (AAIS) Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from April 7-9, 2011 is presented. The article mentions that the event was attended by scholars from various countries to share and discuss views on Italian film, culture and literature research. It also featured speakers Marcia Landy of University of Pittsburgh as well as Andrea Bini and Christopher White of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

The article focuses on some basic questions related to the field of actors' training in Italy. In order to investigate the various trajectories followed by young actors in their professional apprenticeship, the paper briefly illustrates what is specific to the Italian landscape, which features both a strong tradition in enrolling non-professional actors and a fluid professional interchange between actors who have a stage-oriented training and actors trained in film acting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including Italian screen studies (ISS), the disciplinary boundaries and status of ISS, and concerns on the future of ISS and Italian cinema.

The article offers information on the workshop "Narration Migration" held at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy from September 17 to 18, 2010. It states that the aim of the program is to search on issues how migrants are represented in Italian medium, cinema and literature. It mentions that the highlight of the conference is the screening of the award winning documentary "Giallo a Milano" (2009) and question and answer session with director Sergio Basso and sociologists Daniele Cologna.

The article offers the author's insights regarding the Italian film industry in the 1960s. The author says the industry consists of two components such as the front door for art cinema, which covers films seen at festivals, and the back door for genre films. He mentions several film directors including Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Antonioni Michelangelo. Furthermore, the Italian films have achieved success from the 1960s to the early 1970s.

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An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the collaboration between the Italian and Anglophone academies in relation to Italian films, the importance of Italian films, and the account of film papers.

This essay evaluates how negative publicity, mixed reception, and censorship regulations impacted the re-editing of Stazione Termini (1953) and its re-release in the United States in April of 1954 as the newly titled, and much shorter, Indiscretion of an American Wife. The primary archival documents used include correspondences to and from producer David O. Selznick, surveys of negative audience reactions during test screenings in Berkeley and Palo Alto in late 1953, and mixed reviews of both versions from various press outlets. Particular attention is paid to the translations and reporting of the reception of Italian audiences, who did not seem to be able to reconcile the film's neorealist expressions with the melodramatic plot of the end of a love affair. Overall, this essay argues that Selznick's editing should be contextualized with the perceived mixed reception of Stazione Termini in Italy, the poor reception from test audiences, the foundational flaws in the story, the negative publicity surrounding the American release, and American censorship standards that conflicted with – though they did not completely curb – some of the sexual content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the authors discuss articles within the issue on topics including Italian film studies, neorealism in Italian screen studies, and queer theory brought by former University of Arizona visiting associate professor of Italian William Van Watson on Italian film.

Since Italy's transition to the Second Republic in the early 1990s, a period marked by attempts to come to terms with the traumatic experience of the violent 1970s, cinema and television have increasingly been (ab)used for the rewriting of national history, often within a revisionist framework, and for the promotion of new discourses of reconciliation. The miniseries Donne armate (Sergio Corbucci, 1991) is one such attempt to work through the trauma of political violence by rehumanizing - in the words of Giancarlo Lombardi (2009) - the demonized figure of the terrorist. Produced in the same period as Sergio Zavoli's television documentary La notte della repubblica, where former terrorists from both sides of the ideological spectrum are offered the chance to publicly express their personal reflections and regrets, Donne armate also promotes a discourse of reconciliation by bringing together two women belonging to different sides of the law: a terrorist and a policewoman. This reconciliation with Italy's violent past is reinforced by the casting of Lina Sastri in the role of the terrorist, calling back memories of Giuseppe Bertolucci's Segreti segreti (1984), where Sastri interpreted a ruthless terrorist killer who is eventually defeated by the law. Drawing, among other things, on theories of cultural memory and trauma, this article discusses - through an analysis of both Donne armate and a number of television programmes on terrorism broadcast in the early 1990s - the political potentialities and limits of television in processes of healing and national reconciliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relation Italian cinema to the history of the country. It relates the selling of the customers and jewelry based on the designs in the Indian epic romantic historical drama film "Jodhaa Akbar," in which it argues that to wear history is not valuable and admirable as to read history. It discusses the need for Italian cinema to study the ecology of cinema and history.

The article discusses the studies of Italian films and genre cinema. It states that although many of the Italian genre film scholarships are dedicated to the spaghetti western, some critics have considered the slasher and zombie films. Meanwhile, it mentions that much of the films making up the pastapocalypse genre have been totally rejected in the critical tradition of Italy.

Discusses Italian motion pictures of the 1970s which, in different ways, use representations of the city to indicate the nature of conspiracies against democracy. Examination of how conspiracy thrillers use the city as a source of historical figures which enable meanings to be suggested; Strategies which film makers make meaning about contemporary history and social anxieties.

The author reflects on the discipline of Italian film, television and media studies. He mentions its expansion as well as the need for its development of a sense of self-awareness and self-criticism. He also notes the views of senior editor Joseph Francese towards Italian cinema at the American Association of Italian Studies (AAIS) conference in 2009.