About Face: Depicting the Self in the Written and Visual Arts
Editor: Lindsay Eufusia, Elena Bellina and Paola Ugolini
Date Of Publication: Nov 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1374-7
Isbn: 1-4438-1374-5
How do we represent ouselves and the cultures we live in? Is it possible to trace any boundaries between reality and self-representation? Because the self represented is the product of a process of selection and choice, in many ways to represent the self is, often simultaneously, to create the self and negate the self. What, then, becomes of the self once it is represented?

Because the process of self-representation cumulates in a tangible result and given that any representation of the self is necessarily a construct which aims to render visible or knowable in concrete form the unseen and unknown, self-representation is vulnerable to assessments of its naturalness or artificiality, its honesty or deceit. Many issues affect the author or artist’s self-representation, both as process and form: the medium through which the self will be represented, the motivation for representing oneself, and the role of the audience, to name only a few relevant factors.

This book explores the multifaceted nature of self-representation in relation to culture from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance up to contemporary Italian, American and Australian culture with reference to concepts and questions connected to literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, history, ethnicity studies, gender studies, and visual arts.

PAOLA UGOLINI is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Italian Studies at New York University. She has published on Renaissance satires and novelle, and on Second Language Acquisition. She is working on a dissertation focusing on the anti-court tradition in Renaissance Italy.

ELENA BELLINA is completing her Ph.D. in Italian Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on twentieth century autobiographical writing and confinement. She is the author of articles on Italian and English literature and music.

LINDSAY EUFUSIA is a PhD student at New York University in the Department of Italian Studies. Her research interests are far-ranging and primarily involve modern Italian literature, film, and culture, issues of gender and identity, considerations of the nation, nationality, and the family, and performativity and performance theory.

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