Transmedial Resonance

Name: Transmedial Resonance
Price: 243 AUD
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ISBN: 9781531512682

The Acoustic Afterlives of Italo Calvino

Robert A. Rushing

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Hardback

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English

Fordham University Press
20 January 2026

Performance art; Literary studies: general; Media studies

Introduces a new way of understanding influence, reception, and adaptation via the work of Italy’s most famous modern writer

In Transmedial Resonance, Robert A. Rushing addresses the remarkable and ongoing responses to the imagination of Italo Calvino, Italy’s most important modern writer. Since his death in 1985, Calvino’s writing has served as a constant figure of inspiration for other artists, and tellingly, that inspiration has been ""more outside than inside."" Although Calvino’s reputation as a writer is immense, his influence has in fact been vastly larger outside of literature, including in architecture, city planning, community organizing, design, visual arts, video games, the performing arts, and much more. That influence is not only transmedial. It has also been ""more outside than inside"" across national boundaries, particularly in the English-speaking world.

Rushing thinks about Calvino’s influence through the metaphor of resonance. When something resonates, he argues, it may be ""inspired"" to do so, but it does so in its own voice, singing its own song. In fact, resonance offers an entirely different way of thinking about influence and artistic reception, stressing the energy of the inspiration rather than fidelity to the original. In keeping with that underlying sonic metaphor, Rushing looks at specifically acoustic responses to Calvino. They include Chris Cerrone’s Pulitzer-nominated ""opera in headphones"" based on Invisible Cities, Lisa Mezzacappa’s Cosmicomics jazz suite, and Ashwini Ramaswamy’s multimedia dance performance of Invisible Cities, which combines traditional South Indian Bharatanatyam, urban breaking, and African American modern dance. These works, Rushing shows, tell the story of a very different Calvino, one who is (in Mezzacappa’s words) ""nerdy and neurotic,"" playfully perverse, and profoundly political.

Bringing together sound studies with literary studies and cultural reception, Transmedial Resonance argues for a radical re-imagination of how we think about artistic and cultural influence, calling for a completely new understanding of this major figure of modern Italian and world literature.

By: Robert A. Rushing
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781531512682
ISBN 10: 1531512682
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 20 January 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Robert A. Rushing is Professor of European Languages and Transcultural Studies at UCLA, where he also holds an affiliate appointment in Film, Television and Digital Media. He is the author of Resisting Arrest: Detective Fiction and Popular Culture (2007) and Descended from Hercules: Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen, winner of the 2016 AAIS (American Association for Italian Studies) Film/Media book prize. He is coeditor of two volumes on North American television: Mad Men, Mad World (2011) and Orphan Black (2018), and has published widely on Italian literature and cinema, especially popular genres and, of course, Italo Calvino.

Reviews for Transmedial Resonance: The Acoustic Afterlives of Italo Calvino

""Just in time for those who thought they knew Calvino comes Robert Rushing’s eloquent, funny, and always direct book on the Italian author. The result is surprising and welcome: less the cold geometrician and a more playful, more creative, more politically engaged author emerges. Add to the mix Rushing’s own voice, which proves as surprising and welcome as the Calvino he reveals, and you have one of the most important and enjoyable books on Calvino in recent years."" - Timothy C. Campbell, Cornell University