{"product_id":"italy-and-american-female-imagination-9780814216019","title":"Italy and American Female Imagination","description":"\u003ci\u003eItaly and American Female Imagination\u003c\/i\u003e is the first study to trace the significance of Italy-both the physical place and imagined idea-to the identities of middle-class US women from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Debra Bernardi takes a transnational and feminist approach to texts by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary McCarthy, Andrea Lee, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others, as well as to film, television, magazine articles, and interviews with expats, all to illuminate not only Italy's influence on American identity but also how gender, race, and class inflect that influence. Encounters with Italy, Bernardi shows, have profoundly shifted American women's ways of thinking about sex and romance, families and homes, and rules and regulations. While women of color do not experience Italy as an entirely liberatory space, and attitudes toward Italy have shifted over time, the women writers discussed here consistently find expanded possibilities for female selfhood on Italian soil. Bridging feminist literary studies, cultural studies, and history, \u003ci\u003eItaly and American Female Imagination\u003c\/i\u003e captures and complicates Italy's allure and casts new light on the process of transnational identity formation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Debra Bernardi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Ohio State University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 11\/17\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 222\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.11h x 6.31w x 0.81d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780814216019","brand":"Ohio State University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45265313431689,"sku":"9780814216019","price":89.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_cd561a5c-31ea-4f7c-8fab-ac62200dc0c1.jpg?v=1771311012","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/italy-and-american-female-imagination-9780814216019","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}