On this page you find a list of all the book awardees of recent years.
2023 AAIS BOOK PRIZE
History, Society, and Politics
Literary and Cultural Studies
Visual, Film and Media
First Book
History, Society, and Politics
Massimo Mazzotti’s outstanding Reactionary Mathematics: A Genealogy of Purity advances a dynamic concept of mathematics as culture, elaborated through insightful analysis of its formative interactions with the social and political currents of life in Naples from the 1780s to the 1830s. With readings of a rich array of texts ranging from paintings and maps to political satires and textbooks, the author charts mathematics as a site of conflict between the European regime of modern concepts and practices and alternative Neapolitan ones designed for increased precision, which ultimately gives rise to an image of mathematical knowledge invested with purity and neutrality still underwriting technologies today. While mapping this genealogy, Mazzotti’s extraordinary study thus demonstrates the stakes and possibilities Italian Studies and the Humanities in general have in Science Studies.
Literary and Cultural Studies
In Ariosto in the Machine Age, Alessandro Giammei reconsiders the monumental presence of Ludovico Ariosto and Orlando Furioso in Italian culture over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. The poet’s statue in Piazza Ariostea in Ferrara--inspirational for Giorgio de Chirico and many others--cast a long shadow indeed over Futurism, Bontempelli’s Magical Realism, Fascism’s various strategies of cultural propaganda, and the evolving new art form of cinema. Pivotal moments in modern Italian culture produced an unexpected collection of responses to the myth of Ariosto that reveal a deep archive of canonical and ephemeral works, including unrealized projects by Visconti and Fellini, among others. Laviciously illustrated, this innovative exploration of reception and imitation proposes an ongoing dialogue between image and text destined to energize future readings of Ariosto’s poem.
Visual, Film and Media
Diana Bullen Presciutti’s Saints, Miracles, and Social Problems in Italian Renaissance Art draws compelling and revealing connections between Renaissance images of the miracles performed by mendicant saints and the ideological order that mediated social problems in Renaissance Italy. Shedding new light on the work of famous artists while removing from obscurity others largely forgotten, the monograph helps us to see the Renaissance world anew. The author adopts a rigorously interdisciplinary approach, embracing art history, social history, sociology, religious and gender studies to demonstrate how art functioned within shifting social and cultural systems both to buttress and to challenge the prevailing order. Careful visual analysis, supported by exacting textual interpretation, convincingly illustrates the material significance of miraculous imagery, uncovering a series of interrelations between the marvelous and the quotidian in the Renaissance context. For the breadth of its vision and the depth of its inquiry, this book merits a prize.
First Book
Cecilia Brioni’s impressive first book Fashioning Italian Youth: Young People’s Identity and Style in Italian Popular Culture, 1958-75, offers a unique and original perspective on representations of youth in Italian media between the 1950s and 1970s. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, Brioni embarks on a meticulous analysis resulting from thorough research on magazines, television programming, and cinema about (and aimed at) young audiences. The author explores representations of young Italians through style (hair and clothing), music and dance trends, issues of gender and identity, and transnationalism. At the center of Brioni’s analysis is a convincing distinction between a socially constructed idea of ‘i giovani’ and actual young Italians of the time. This study is a precious resource for understanding the cultural and social dynamics that characterized Italy during a period of significant social evolution.
Previous Book Prize Winners
2022:
Literary and Cultural Studies: Francesca Vella, Networking Operatic Italy. The University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Visual Studies, Film and Media: Elena Dellapiana, Il design e l’invenzione del Made in Italy. Turin: Einaudi, 2022.
History, Society, and Politics: Rocco Rubini, Posterity: Inventing Tradition from Petrarch to Gramsci. University of Chicago Press, 2022.
First Book
Winner: David Escudero, Neorealist Architecture. Aesthetics of dwelling in postwar Italy. Routledge, 2023.
Honorable Mention: James K. Coleman, A Sudden Frenzy: Improvisation, Orality, and the Power in Renaissance Italy. University of Toronto Press, 2022.
2021:
Literary Studies: Alessia Ricciardi. Finding Ferrante: Authorship and the Politics of World Literature. (Columbia University Press)
Visual Studies, Film and Media: Laura Watts. Italian Painting in the Age of the Unification. (Routledge)
History, Society, and Politics: Brian Brege. Tuscany in the Age of Empire. (Harvard University Press)
First Book: Erica Moretti. The Best Weapon for Peace: Maria Montessori, Education and Children's Rights. (University of Wisconsin Press)
2020:
Literary Studies: Saskia Elizabeth Ziolkowski, Kafka's Italian Progeny (University of Toronto Press).
Visual Studies, Film and Media: Charles Leavitt, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press).
History, Society, and Politics: Pamela Ballinger, The World Refugees Made: Decolonization of Postwar Italy (Cornell University Press).
First Book: Ramsey McGlazer, Old Schools: Modernism, Education, and the Critique of Progress (University of California Press).
2019:
Medieval: G. Geltner, Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy (University of Pennsylvania Press).
Renaissance, 18th, and 19th Centuries: Paola Cori, Forms of Thinking in Leopardi’s Zibaldone: Religion, Science and Everyday Life in an Age of Disenchantment (Legenda).
20th and 21st Centuries: Stephanie Malia Hom, Empire’s Mobius Strip: Historical Echoes in Italy’s Crisis of Migration and Detention (Cornell University Press).
*Honorable Mention: Marisa Escolar, Allied Encounters: The Gendered Redemption of World War II Italy (Fordham University Press).
Film and other Media Studies: Giorgio Bertellini, The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America (University of California Press).
2018:
Medieval: William Caferro, Petrarch's War: Florence and the Black Death in Context (Cambridge University Press).
Renaissance, 18th, and 19th Centuries: Cristina Mazzoni, Golden Fruit: A Cultural History of Oranges in Italy (University of Toronto Press).
20th and 21st Centuries: Luca Cottini, The Art of Objects: The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture, 1878-1928 (University of Toronto Press).
2017:
Renaissance, 18th, and 19th Centuries: Barbara Spackman, Accidental Orientalists: Modern Italian Travelers in Ottoman Lands (Liverpool University Press).
20th and 21st Centuries: Teresa Fiore, Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy's Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham University Press).
Film and other Media Studies: Timothy C. Campbell, The Techne of Giving: Cinema and the Generous Form of Life (Fordham University Press).
2016:
Medieval: Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Reading as the Angels Read: Speculation and Politics in Dante’s Banquet (University of Toronto Press).
Renaissance, 18th, and 19th Centuries: Giancara Periti, In the Courts of Religious Ladies: Art, Vision, and Pleasure in Italian Renaissance Convents (Yale University Press).
20th and 21st Centuries: Serenella Iovino, Ecocriticism and Italy: Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation (Bloomsbury).
Film and other Media Studies: Robert Rushing, Descended From Hercules: Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body On Screen (Indiana University Press).
2015:
Medieval: Dennis Romano, Markets and Marketplaces in Medieval Italy (Yale University Press).
Renaissance, 18th, and 19th Centuries: Adrian Randolph, Touching Objects. Intimate Experiences (Yale University Press).
20th and 21st Centuries: Giacomo Parinello, Fault Lines (Berghahn).
Film and other Media Studies: Jacqueline Reich, The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (Indiana University Press).
2014:
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque: Guido Ruggiero, The Renaissance in Italy (Cambridge University Press).
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: John Bessler, The Birth of American Law: An Italian Philosopher and the American Revolution (Carolina Academic Press).
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century: David Forgacs, Italy’s Margins: Social Exclusion and Nation Formation since 1861 (Cambridge University Press).
General: Rocco Rubini, The Other Renaissance: Italian Humanism between Hegel and Heidegger (The University of Chicago Press).
2013:
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque: Paolo Squatriti, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy and Culture (Cambridge University Press).
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: Steven Soper, Building a Civil Society (University of Toronto Press).
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century: Gaia Giuliani and Cristina Lombardi-Diop, Bianco e nero; Storia dell’identità razziale degli italiani (Le Monnier).
2012:
Pierpaolo Antonello, Contro il materialismo. Le “due culture” in Italia; bilancio di un secolo (Aragno).
Eleonora Stoppino, Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Dynastic Imagination in the Orlando furioso (Fordham University Press).
2011:
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque: Marcia B. Hall, The Sacred Image in the Age of Art (Yale University Press).
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: Paola Gambarota, Irresistible Signs: The Genius of Language and Italian National Identity (University of Toronto Press).
Twentieth Century: Philip Cooke, The Legacy of the Italian Resistance (Palgrave).
General: Dennis Looney, Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy (Notre Dame University Press).
2010:
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque: Heather Webb, The Medieval Heart (Yale University Press).
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century: Francesca Savoia, Fra letterati e galantuomini (Società Editrice Fiorentina).
Twentieth Century: Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (University of Toronto Press).
2009:
Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque: Meredith Ray, Writing Gender in Women’s Letter Collections of the Italian Renaissance (University of Toronto Press).
Twentieth Century: Lina Insana, Arduous Tasks: Primo Levi, Translation, and the Transmission of Holocaust Testimony (University of Toronto Press).
Film: Giorgio Bertellini, Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque (Indiana University Press).
General: Andrea Mirabile, Scrivere la pittura: La ‘funzione Longhi’ nella letteratura italiana (Longo).
2008:
Cinzia Blum, Rewriting the Journey in Contemporary Italian Literature: Figures of Subjectivity in Progress (University of Toronto Press).
2007:
Guido Bonsaver, Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy (University of Toronto Press).
2006:
Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal (University of Toronto Press).
2005:
Christian Moevs, The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy (Oxford University Press).
2004:
John Picchione, The New Avant-Garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices (University of Toronto Press).
2003:
Luca Somigli, Legitimizing the Artist: Manifesto Writing and European Modernism, 1885-1915 (University of Toronto Press).
2002:
Nicoletta Pireddu, Decadenza ed economia simbolica nell’Europa fin de siècle (Edizioni Fiorini).
2001:
Massimo Lollini, Il vuoto della forma. Scrittura, testimonianza e verità (Marietti).
2000:
Olivia Holmes, Assembling the Lyric Self: Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book (University of Minnesota Press).