CALIFORNIA ITALIAN STUDIES (CIS), whose inaugural volume was co-edited by Prof. Claudio Fogu, is now available on line.

CIS is is a peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal that publishes research articles and critical essays, as well as translations, work in progress and interviews, in English and Italian, on any topic and discipline pertaining to Italian studies. CIS is published exclusively on line by University of California’s e-Scholarship and the California Digital Library.

The 2009-2010 inaugural double-issue volume has been co-edited by Claudio Fogu (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Lucia Re (University of California, Los Angeles).

Issue 1 is devoted to "Italy in the Mediterranean." In the spirit of interdisciplinarity and comparativity that inspires our new journal, this thematic issue provides a new critical topography of the relationship between “Italy” and the Mediterranean across time (from the Middle Ages to today) and across disciplinary traditions. It contains fifty-two contributions by noted scholars of the Mediterranean, as well as younger Italianists who have been influenced by various forms of “Mediterranean thought” and by the recent surge in Mediterranean studies on a global scale. Our Mediterranean issue includes discussions of Italy’s multiple cultural interactions with Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Turkey and Croatia. Nine of the articles are on cinema (with several streaming video clips). A number of translations, a video interview with Franco Cassano and previews of work in progress are also included in this first issue.

Issue 2 contains critical essays on topics ranging from the Watts Towers in Los Angeles to Fortunato Depero’s years in New York City to domestic violence in early modern Italy, as well as the first English translation of Arrigo Boito's complete short stories, and some startling, previously unknown documents regarding Italo Calvino's father and the Italian police.

Please check out both issues at: http://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj