Congratulations to Professor Tehezeeb Moitra on the publication of "Naples and the Anglophone: Palimpsestic Webs and Archival Encounters," released by Palgrave Macmillan as part of the 'Italian and Italian American Studies' series.
In this groundbreaking study, Moitra examines how the city of Naples has been reimagined through anglophone encounters - ranging from Johnnie Shand Kydd’s photography to Elena Ferrante’s fiction and William Kentridge’s art installations. Moving between literature, visual culture, and archival research, she explores how Naples becomes a living palimpsest: layered, performative, and perpetually rewritten.
The book interrogates the power and limits of the anglophone gaze, proposing that translation, hybridity, and dissonance generate new ways of seeing rather than simply representing.
“Drawing upon first-hand experience and supported by an extensive bibliography and a wide-ranging critical reading of the arguments presented, this rich and innovative text proposes a literary and poetic perambulation through the sites and sights of the city. In these Neapolitan encounters, with their mishmash of dialects, accents, and language, the author carefully undoes the Anglophone claims on the world by registering performative practices that connect the unruly body of Naples through photography, literature, and the visual arts to critical evaluations sustained in planetary perspectives. The voyeurism of both the tourist and the social scientist is contested, and the desire for the claims of transparency as truth is radically stymied”
[Iain Chambers, Professor of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at Università degli Studi di Napoli, “L'Orientale,” Italy]
Reflecting AUR’s mission to foster globally engaged and interdisciplinary inquiry, Moitra’s research situates Naples within wider conversations about cultural exchange, postcoloniality, and the politics of the archive.
"Naples and the Anglophone: Palimpsestic Webs and Archival Encounters" is now available via Amazon and other outlets.
Professor Tehezeeb Moitra, PhD, is based in Naples, Italy. She works both at Universita' Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples and at The American University of Rome. Moitra holds a Ph.D. from L'Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale; Masters degrees in English Literature from Saint Louis University, Madrid Campus and Contemporary Art from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London; her Bachelor's degree was obtained from Oberlin College in Ohio.
Professor Moitra's research interests include Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies, Linguistics and Gender Studies on which she has several publications.