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Please join us for the upcoming Italian Lecture Series talk entitled "The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919" by Luca Cottini (Associate Professor of Italian, Villanova University), hosted by the Department of French and Italian. Co-sponsored by the .

Abstract
The late 19th and early 20th centuries marked a pivotal time for the United States, as the nation emerged as a political and industrial powerhouse and fashioned its new value system. Amid waves of emigration and evolving cultural exchanges, Italy’s relationship with America became a complex tapestry of admiration, critique, and adaptation. In this presentation, Dr. Luca Cottini (associate professor of Italian Studies at Villanova, and creator of the YouTube show Italian Innovators) investigates the evolution of Americanism from an internal debate into an ideology of soft expansion, offering an Italian perspective on American expansion and documenting the early impact of American travelers, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs on Italian society (decades before its full-fledged Americanization in the aftermath of WWII).

Bio
Luca Cottini is Associate Professor at Villanova University and host & creator of the YouTube show Italian Innovators. He holds a PhD from Harvard University, an MA from the University of Notre Dame, and a BA from the University of Milan. He was trained as a classical philologist in Italy, and a cultural historian in the U.S. His interests touch upon Italian literature, visual arts, and intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries, and on the birth Italian industrial culture, adverting, and design. His books include a monograph on Calvino (I passaggi obbligati di Italo Calvino, Longo 2017); a cultural history of the origins of Italian design (The Art of Objects. The Birth of Italian Industrial Culture, 1878-1928, University of Toronto Press 2018); a biography of chocolate entrepreneur Michele Ferrero (Il fabbricante di cioccolato, Piemme 2023); and the monograph The Rise of Americanism in Italy, 1888-1919 (University of Toronto Press, 2025). His YouTube work explores the Italian model of entrepreneurship and innovation through cultural profiles, interviews, and lessons across different disciplines (fashion, food, technology, sports, music, engineering).