Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda

This book aims to develop a political history of Italian ’good food’ on national television, and the central role of food in Italian culture. The focus is highly original and this is a unique interdisciplinary study at the intersection between food studies, media studies and politics.

The three protagonists of Pasta, Pizza and Propaganda are food, television and politics. These are the three main characters that interrelate, collaborate and fight behind the scenes, while in front of the camera the writers, intellectuals and celebrity chefs talk about, prepare or taste the best Italian dishes.

The book retraces the history of Italian food television from a political point of view: the early shows of the pioneers under strict Catholic control in the 1950s and 1960s, the left-wing political twist of the 1970s, the conservative riflusso or resurgence of the 1980s, the disputed Berlusconian era and the rise of the celebrity chefs, which, for better or for worse, makes Italy similar to the other western countries.

The history of Italy since the mid-1950s is retold through the lenses of food television. This lively book demonstrates that cooking spaghetti in a TV studio is a political act, and tries to uncover how it is possible that, while watching on TV how to make pizza, we become citizens.

The primary readership will be an academic audience, including those in the disciplines of food studies, media studies, politics and Italian studies, as well as potentially for those interested in Italian sociology and anthropology. There may be a potential wider readership because of the popularity of Italian food and food television.

Fransesco Buscemi is a food and media researcher working at IUAV, University of Venice and at the Catholic University of Milan. In the past, Buscemi taught at Bournemouth, La Sapienza Rome, IULM Milan and Stirling. He has been a journalist and TV writer for many years. His Ph.D., gained at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, is a comparison between Italian and British food culture and food TV. Another strand of research involves meat, cultured meat and their links to the living animal, death, religion, blood, gender and the relationships between nature and culture. In 2012, Buscemi was awarded the Santander Grant Fund for the research Edible Lies: How Nazi Propaganda Represented Meat to Demonise the Jews, and he has also investigated meat representations in the propaganda of the Italian regency of Fiume, Italian Fascism and East Germany regime.

Flavia Laviosa is senior lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in Italian women filmmakers. She is the founder and editor in-chief of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies and the book series Trajectories. She has authored chapters in the volumes He Was My Father (Peter Lang, 2018) (edited by S. Gastaldi and D. Ward), The Italian Cinema Book (BFI, 2014) (edited by P. Bondanella), A New Italian Political Cinema? Emerging Themes (Troubadour, 2013) (edited by W. Hope) and Popular Italian Cinema and Politics in a Postwar Society (Bloomsbury, 2011) (edited by F. Brizio-Skov), and written articles published in the Journal of Mediterranean Studies, Studies in European Cinema, JOMEC, Rivista di Studi Italiani, Italica and Incontri: Rivista Europea di Studi Italiani. She has also guest-edited the Special Issue of SEC, ‘Cinematic Journeys of Italian Women Directors’ (8:2, 2011) and edited the volume Visions of Struggle in Women’s Filmmaking in the Mediterranean (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Contact: Department of Italian Studies, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA.