In Co-Motion, theorist Paola Bacchetta proposes a new lexicon for analyzing power, subjects and alliances. Employing what she calls ‘theory-assemblages’ to describe how diverse theoretical and political approaches inspire movements and produce different kinds of alliances, Bacchetta engages the inseparability of power relations—such as colonialism, capitalism, racism, caste, misogyny, and speciesism—and how their combinations, operability, and the analyses they require, shift in different contexts and lives of subjects. Focusing on France, India, Italy, and the US from the 1970s to the present, Co-Motion addresses a wide activist, artivist, and social movement archive— group statements, banners, pamphlets, graffiti, posters, poetry, sit-ins, films, art exhibits—to think and feel with the many ways that people, historically and today, come together to act. Through her expansive engagement with varied bodies of scholarship, sites of analysis, and kinds of reading, Bacchetta offers new approaches to analyze, confront, and transforming power, and to enact freedom.
Paola Bacchetta is Professor and Chair in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the first Chair of Berkeley’s Gender Consortium. She currently serves as Co-coordinator of Decolonizing Sexualities Network, a transnational convergence of scholars, artivists and activists. Her books include: Co-Motion: On Feminist and Queer Solidarities (Forthcoming Duke University Press); Fatima Mernissi For Our Times, co-edited with Minoo Moallem (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2023); Global Raciality: Empire, Postcoloniality, and Decoloniality, co-edited with Sunaina Maira, Howard Winant (New York: Routledge, 2019); Femminismi Queer Postcoloniali (co-edited with Laura Fantone, Verona, Italy: Ombre Corte, 2015); Gender in the Hindu Nation (India: Women Ink, 2004); Right-Wing Women (co-edited with Margaret Power, New York: Routledge, 2002). She has published over 70 articles and book chapters on: feminist queer decolonial theory; transnational feminist and queer theory; lesbian and queer of color theorie artivisms and activisms; decolonial feminist translating; gender, sexuality and right-wing movements (India, France, U.S., Brazil). She has translated multiple texts, including Fatima Mernissi’s only (co-authored) film project, The Lionesses (French to English, forthcoming in Fatima Mernissi For our Times which Bacchetta co-edited with Minoo Moalem, for Syracuse University Press). She recently oversaw the translation of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera : The New Mestiza into French (2022). She is the recipient of multiple awards: Harvard Divinity School, Fulbright, Mellon Foundation, State of Kerala Erudite Scholar Award, European Union funding awards, France-Berkeley Fund award, and more.
The Atlantic Republic of Letters offers an alternative intellectual history of early America. Focusing on Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia, the book frames Euro-American colonialism as an intellectual enterprise, which was established not only through military and economic means but also through books, ideas, and cultural institutions.
Through research in dozens of archives and rare book libraries, Diego Pirillo brings together two interconnected histories. First, he recovers the place of British America in the cosmopolitan world of the Republic of Letters, studying the communication system that facilitated the transatlantic circulation of knowledge. Second, he shows that knowledge was weaponized in the effort to survey and control North America. While fashioning themselves as independent and cosmopolitan scholars, Franklin and his associates, including James and Martha Logan, Isaac Norris II, Pierre Eugène Du Simitière, and Jane Colden, among others, were in fact deeply tied to political power and tailored their ideas to the needs of their patrons. They served as agents of empire and helped to devise and put into practice the colonial project. Not only were books, libraries, and cultural institutions funded by the wealth created by the slave trade and the expropriation of Indigenous land, but, as Pirillo argues, the very taxonomies and classification systems that Euro-American scholars devised directly shaped the colonial enterprise.
In this respect, The Atlantic Republic of Letters illuminates the relationship among books, intellectuals, and colonial governance, and explores the ways in which knowledge circulated and shaped conquest.
Diego Pirillo (Ph.D., Scuola Normale Superiore) is Professor of Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also affiliated with the History Department. His work explores how mobility, displacement, and colonialism shaped the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Italy, Europe and the Atlantic world. He has a secondary interest in modern Italian intellectual history with special attention to authors such as Croce, Gentile and Gramsci. His previous book The Refugee-Diplomat: Venice, England and the Reformation (Ithaca, Cornell: University Press, 2018, was awarded the 2019 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies. The Refugee Diplomat offers an alternative history of early modern diplomacy, centered not on states and their official representatives but around the figure of “the refugee-diplomat” and, more specifically, Italian religious refugees who forged ties with English and northern European Protestants in the hope of inspiring an Italian Reformation.
Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s edges, it tells a new story about those on the move, the technologies unleashed on them at borders, the racialized and colonial histories that inform these technologies, and the artistry with which migrants and allies bear witness to displacement. The book reorients us toward the creativity and movement of migrants themselves– their “arts of the border”—as well as toward the political force of the arts that represent them, whether in literature, documentary film, or art installations.
Sanyal proposes kino-aesthetics as a framework for capture and fugitivity at borders. From kino—to set in motion—and aesthetics— relating to sensory perception—kino-aesthetics conveys the force of bodies in motion and the image in its circulation. The book examines the simultaneity of capture and escape at thresholds of illegalization, from airport detention zones to Calais’s “jungle” and the Euro-African border at Ceuta and Melilla. What emerges throughout these case studies is a portrayal of border violence in its racial and colonial forms as well as an archive of refusal, fugitivity, and un-bordered imagining.
Debarati Sanyal is Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and Professor of French (affiliated with Critical Theory, The Center for Race and Gender, and European Studies). Debarati’s research and teaching interests range from 19th-century French literature to contemporary critical refugee studies. Her first book, The Violence of Modernity: Baudelaire, Irony and the Politics of Form (Johns Hopkins, 2006), reclaimed Baudelaire’s aesthetic legacy for ethical inquiry and historical critique. Her second book, Memory and Complicity: Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance (Fordham, 2015), addressed the transnational circulations of memory and complicity in the aftermath of the Shoah, from post-WWII to the present. It was translated in French as Mémoire et complicité: Au Prisme de la Shoah (PUV, 2018) with a preface by Éric Fassin. A Guggenheim Fellow (2021-2022), she is completing a book on migrant resistance, biopolitics and aesthetics in Europe’s current refugee “crisis.”
Concrete art and poetry—a radical avant-garde movement where the visual and spatial arrangement of words on the page carries as much weight as their literal meaning—emerged in Brazil during the 1950s, a time of rapid and transformative modernization. Professor Nathaniel Wolfson (Spanish & Portuguese) challenges the notion that concretism was socially passive, as some scholars have claimed. Instead, he presents it as the defining literary genre of the early information age.
Concrete Encoded: Poetry, Design, and the Cybernetic Imaginary in Brazil (Texas, 2025) examines how Brazilian poets, artists, and designers engaged with the rise of digital capitalism, forging a distinct cybernetic vision. Wolfson’s study reinterprets concretism—not just as Brazil’s most internationally influential artistic movement, but as a network connecting both prominent and overlooked figures. By mapping these creative exchanges, the book reveals broader, transnational conversations about technology and its critical possibilities.
From Macron, L’an I: pardon de vous le dire par Zef, Kak, and Degreff (Paris: Florent Massot, 2018.)
Recent acts of censorship of late night television talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have spurred interest in not only reposting this ever pertinent blog post originally published on November 27, 2018 but also updating it with some relevant books acquired since then. With or without humor, we find both presidents still (or again) in power and in the satirical spotlight. Enjoy! Amusez-vous!
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As two of the oldest modern democracies, France and the United States share a long tradition of freedom of speech and of the press (and at times governmental censorship). The two societies have found catharsis in the mockery of their highest elected officials through caricatures, cartoons, and critical writings. Here are a few recent library acquisitions, in English and in French, from both sides of the Atlantic in this category of political critique:
Please find this selection of books in Catalan recently received and cataloged for your reading pleasure. Catalan is a Western Romance language and is the official language of Andorra, and the official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian.
Catalan is considered a Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL) in Europe and has received special support from the U.S. Department of Education under the auspices of Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Other languages of interest to research and teaching at Berkeley and historically supported by this program administered by the Institute of European Studies include Dutch, Portuguese, Modern Greek, Occitan, Yiddish, Galician, Danish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and more.
Photo by Harold Ellwood. Italians reading war news, North Beach, 1935. Fang family San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive Negative Files. The Bancroft Library. UC Berkeley. BANC PIC 2006.029–NEG box 625, sleeve 092981_01
The UC Berkeley Library has rich collections pertaining to Italian-American communities in California. An online exhibition Italian Americans in California created in 2007 imparts little known facts about centuries of immigrants to the Golden State and is now archived on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Here are just a few from this marvelously researched exhibit:
Though small in number, Italians were some of the first European explorers and settlers of California. From 1687 to 1711, Father Eusebio Chino (probably pronounced Kee–no) traveled in northern Mexico and Lower California. He was the first person to prove that Lower California was a peninsula, not an island. Other early Italian visitors to the shores of California were sailors and fishermen.
Though we often associate Italians in California with San Francisco, the initial Italian settlers established themselves in such diverse communities as Monterey, Stockton, and San Diego during the years of Spanish Rule. While the majority of Italians settled in the urban centers of the east, many, especially northern Italians came out west. As late as 1890, there were more Italian immigrants on the Pacific coast than in New England.
As early as the 1840s, settlers from Genoa began to arrive in the valleys of northern and central California after hearing their Ligurian (the region that includes Genoa) sailing relatives talk about how ideal the valleys were for vinting. Despite the fact that Liguria is not a major wine producing region in Italy, the wine industry in California was mostly built by Genoese.
The first significant wave of Italian immigrants came to California during the Gold Rush. Those who came quickly moved to buy land or work in service industries, rather than stay in the mines.
The majority of these Italian immigrants to California came from northern Italy. They began building communities, introduced Italian Opera to California in 1851, and founded an Italian language newspaper in San Francisco as early as 1859. Amadeo Giannini founded what became the Bank of America, first known as the Bank of Italy, in 1904 as a way for Italian immigrants to save and borrow small amounts, but the genius of his bank was the first use of branches put in locations closer to his customers.
The aftermath of the Gold Rush brought even more northern Italians to California. The ostentatious wealth of those who succeeded during the Gold Rush years brought with it a demand for stone and marble cutters from Italy to work on the mansions of the newly rich. The fishing grounds and warm climate began to attract Sicilian fishermen, especially in the Bay Area and San Diego.
San Francisco’s Little Italy bounced back from the 1906 earthquake in better shape than ever. At the same time, Italian immigrants had established themselves as the primary fishermen in the San Francisco Bay, and as a major agricultural force as well. Some children of the first wave of immigrants were coming of age in the 1900s to the 1930s, and these achieved greater success than their parents in law, politics, business, and agriculture, especially wine.
The cultural contributions of generations of Italian Americans in San Francisco in particular is impressive. Writers such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, Philip Lamantia and others fostered the Beat movement in the post-World War II years, rebelling against the conventions of mainstream American life (consumerism, racism, homophobia, etc.).
From Doe Library’s collection in the Main Stacks and NRLF, here are some noteworthy publications:
Garibaldi, C. G. (active ca. ). At the Play [Portraits of Prominent San Franciscans, California]. Robert B. Honeyman, Jr. Collection of Early Californian and Western American Pictorial Material. The Bancroft Library. UC Berkeley. BANC PIC 1963.002:0501–ESelect Finding Aids from The Bancroft Library
Early California Italian-American Newspapers in The UC Berkeley Library
ll Corriere del Popolo. San Francisco, CA: Pedretti Bros., 1914-1943, 1948-1967 (lacks issues)
L’Eco d’Italia. San Francisco, CA: Pierino Mori, 1966-1980.
L’Italo-Americano. Los Angeles, CA: Scalabrini Fathers, 1985-2016. Online archive for 2012-present available via UCB only. Former titles: Eco d’Italia and Italo-Americano di Los Angeles
Italian fisherman with no crabs at Fisherman’s Wharf. Fang family San Francisco Examiner Photograph Archive Negative Files. The Bancroft Library. UC Berkeley. BANC PIC 2006.029–NEG box 644, sleeve 093662_02
Published by Europa Editions, The Passenger series offers an unconventional take on typical travel guides with new writing, original photography, art, and reportage from around the world. The series was first launched in 2018 by the independent Italian publisher Iperborea, and was brought into English by Europa in 2020. It has also been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean.
The book-magazine travels far and wide to bring back the best writing from the places it visits. It assembles not only reportage, but also long-form journalism and narrative essays with the aim of telling stories of the contemporary life of a place and its inhabitants: “It takes readers beyond the familiar stereotypes to portray the shifting culture and identity of a place, its public debates, the sensibilities of its people, its burning issues, its pleasures and its pain.”
An Author Recommends section provides cultural tips on books, films, music and more from contemporary authors such as Valeria Luisell (Mexico), Banana Yoshimoto (Japan), Enrique Vila-Matas (Barcelona), Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Thailand), Paolo Macry (Naples), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) and more. Digging Deeper provides short bibliographies for further reading, and The Playlist links to curated Spotify playlists of music from the featured city, country, or region. To date there have been eighteen volumes published in English, and all are shelved in Morrison Library’s travel section, waiting for their next trip.
Map of Luso-African Literary Publishers by City generated by Bee Lehman
More than 80 works of literature from Angola, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique arrived in Doe Library last week. This selection of poetry, short stories, and novels in Portuguese was made possible through a generous 3-year grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) in Lisbon. The absence of Lusophone African literature from mainstream African literary studies (mostly in English and French) has been noted by contemporary scholars. These new works of post-colonial fiction and verse listed below are held by few academic libraries and reflect the UC Berkeley Library’s longstanding commitment to collect and make accessible underrepresented voices from across the world in more than 400 distinct languages. Please enjoy this curated list by book dealer Susanne Bach Books which provides a snapshot of the rich literary output from Lusophone Africa over the past three years:
100 poemas para Neto / Poetas da União dos Escritores Angolanos. Luanda, Angola: EAL – Edições de Angola, 2022.
Just in time for the end of the semester, a couple hundred ebooks have recently flown in from from Spain from publishers like Akal, CSIC, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, Ediciones Universidad de Cantabria, Plaza y Valdés, Dickinson, Editorial Egales, Trotta Editorial, Ediciones Complutense and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. All are available through the Digitalia Hispánica platform. Below are some highlighted from Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert available to you wherever you may find yourselves this summer:
As two of the oldest modern democracies, France and the United States share a long tradition of freedom of speech and of the press (and at times governmental censorship). The two societies have found catharsis in the mockery of their highest elected officials through caricatures, cartoons, and critical writings. Here are a few recent library acquisitions, in English and in French, from both sides of the Atlantic in this category of political critique:
Collard, Susan P., ed. 
Drezner, Daniel W. 
Lee, Bandy X. 
Ngono, Emmanuel. 
![At the play [portraits of prominent San Franciscans, California]](https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/at-the-play.png)
