Thursday December 6, 6 pm, Hamilton 501. Columbia University - Department of Italian, 1130 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY, 10027. Emilio Cocco (Università degli studi di Teramo, Italy-American University of Rome). Respondent: Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Columbia University). Moderator: Konstantina Zanou (Columbia University). In this talk—based on my book “I confini nel mare" (2016), co-authored with Fabiana Dimpflmeier—I will discuss the national self-representations and the description of otherness as they appear in the logbooks and diaries written by Italian Navy officers on duty in ocean travels in the second part of the 19th century.

My aim is to understand how the relation with otherness, mediated by the liminal space of the ocean, contributed to ongoing definitions of national identity. I try both to shed light on the role played by the Italian Navy in the nation-building process and to assess the latter’s importance in affecting the relation between modern Italian society and the sea. I hope to provide an original seaborne reading of the "making of Italy", which challenges conventional representations of the country that see it as a naturally peninsular phenomenon and only accidentally as a global one.