A Note on the New Cover

Abstract

The new cover of Italian Culture was designed by Arianna Lodeserto and Lilia Angela Cavallo and features a photograph by Marley Nichelle, a Charlottesville-based photojournalist whose statement on the image appears above. The photograph shows the statue of Columbus that stood in Richmond’s Byrd Park until its toppling on June 9, 2020. The uprisings prompted by the murder of George Floyd on May 25 were ongoing when, on June 9, “about a thousand protestors gathered,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “to stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples.” In this context, “Protestors used ropes to pull down the approximately 8-foot statue, then moved it some 200 yards across the road ... and submerged it in Fountain Lake. According to a social media post, the statue was briefly set on fire.” But there was more than one post, as Nichelle notes when he refers to “Columbus Discovers Lake.” This headline or joking caption conveys some of the collective energy and exuberance of that moment of protest, which the journal’s new cover image records. “Columbus Discovers Lake” reminds us, in other words, that, for all their seriousness, the uprisings were also scenes of courageous reinvention. They were occasions for mourning but also for the demonstration and the celebration of “powers and solidarity.” We thank Marley for the photograph and Arianna and Lilia for their work designing the new cover. We hope that this cover, replacing the monumental and still-standing columns shown in journal’s former cover image, will serve as a reminder of the difference that collective “powers and solidarity” can make. But we also see the image as a welcome challenge to the field, as a question addressed to the study of Italian history, literature, and art. An ocean away from his native Genoa, Columbus finds himself in a different port, subject to a different fate, not enshrined but overthrown. And given the his abiding association with “Italian culture” in the United States, a certain familiar version, a received understanding, of this culture is overthrown with him. Before its fall, statue of Columbus in Richmond stood on