Giorgio Bertellini, author of The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America, has been awarded 2019 American Association of Italian Studies Book Prize for Film & Other Media Studies. The AAIS prize recognizes the best books in Italian Studies. Bertellini’s previous book Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque and Italian Silent Cinema: A Reader won the prize in 2010. Bertellini is Professor of Film and Media History at the University of Michigan.
The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and Political Leadership in 1920s America draws on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy. Bertellini’s work shows how the popularity, both political and erotic, of Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
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