This book tells the story of Naples as a city shaped by migration, creativity, and cultural resistance. It reframes Naples within global conversations about identity, mobility, and belonging, offering a South-centric perspective that challenges dominant narratives. Through personal reflections and a wide array of vivid examples from film, music, literature, and public art, Patrizia La Trecchia explores how Naples defies stereotypes and redefines Italian national identity. Each chapter highlights the city’s contrasts—beauty and decay, tradition and innovation—as reflections of broader experiences across the Global South. With a focus on resilience and transformation, Reframing Naples invites readers to see the city not as a forgotten corner of Europe, but as a vibrant crossroads of global culture. Blending scholarly insight with personal storytelling, and featuring original photographs and archival materials, this book is both a cultural study and a personal archive of resistance.
Part I: Introduction.
Chapter 1: Looking South: Fractal Perspectives Under the Volcano.- Part II. Culture and Society in Contemporary Naples.
Chapter 2: Contested Terrain: Reinterpreting Cultural and Social Perspectives in Naples.- Part III. The Neapolitan Urban Imaginary.
Chapter 3: Decolonizing the Gaze: Breaking Through the Stereotypes of the South.
Chapter 4: Sites of Glocal Representations and Social Responsibility: Artistic Resistance in Urban Culture and Neomelodic Pop.- Part IV. Neapolitan Sounds in the Age of Globalization.
Chapter 5: Youth Musical Subcultures in Naples.
Chapter 6: New Media (B)orders in Contemporary Neapolitan Music: Rethinking Aesthetic Experience in the Age of Digital Technology and Globalization. - Part V. A Decolonial Cosmopolitanism of the South: The Remaking of Urban Space in Naples.
Chapter 7: The Poetics and Politics of Public Space in Naples.- Chaptet 8: South-Centric Cosmopolitanism: Naples as a New Imaginative Platform for Italian Identity.
Patrizia La Trecchia is Associate Professor and Head of Italian Studies at the University of South Florida, USA. She founded the Environmental Humanities Initiative and researches food studies and environmental humanities. She is the author of three books and a TED speaker, and serves on the board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.
