REPRESENTING THE OUTSIDE: CINEMA, MASS CULTURE, HISTORY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE IN ITALY

The work places itself at the intersection of cultural criticism and social history, making a contribution to the critical analysis of national media. It investigates the relations between the processes of nationalization and popular and mass culture, film historiography in general and Italian film history in particular and the discursive constructions of cultural value through the investigation of the modes of production and exhibition of popular film genres in Italy between 1958-1978. Ultimately, the work is an attempt at offering an initial rethinking of the construction of cultural values within national contexts and at analyzing the dynamics that underlie the creation of cultural hierarchies and ideological discourses, the representation of national historical narratives and the formation of the public sphere.