Angela Dalle Vacche, Professor in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture and an internationally renowned film scholar has been honored with the prestigious Choice award for her book, Diva: Defiance and Passion in Early Italian Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2008). Choice is the official publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries in the United States and bestows the award annually in recognition of an exceptional scholarly work.

The culmination of 15 years of research and work at premier film archives in Bologna and Amsterdam, Diva offers the first authoritative study of an important pre-WWI (1913-1918) film genre. Dalle Vacche analyzed some seventy films and developed a seminal iconography. "Animated by a luminous goddess at its center, the diva film provided a forum for denouncing social evils and exploring new models of behavior among the sexes. These melodramas of themes including courtship, seduction, marriage, betrayal, abandonment, child custody, and public reputation offered women a vision of""if not always a realistic hope for""emancipation and self-discovery" at the dawn of the mechanistic age.

Dalle Vacche examined the work of actresses such as Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli, and Pina Menichelli to establish what the diva film contributed to the modernist development of the "new woman." Contrasting the Italian diva with the Hollywood vamp Theda Bara and the famous Danish star Asta Nielsen, Dalle Vacche shows how the diva oscillates between articulating Henri Bergson's vibrant life-force ( lan vital) and representing the suffering figure of the Catholic mater dolorosa.

A fascinating tour that includes the Ballets Russes, orientalism, art nouveau, Futurism, fashion, prostitution, stunt women in the circus, aviation, anti-Semitism, colonialism, and censorship, Diva sheds light on the eccentric implantation of modernity in Italy, as well as on how, before World War I, the filmic image was associated with the powers of the occult (rather than Freudian unconscious, as had been previously argued).

Perhaps a highlight of the book for technology-focused readers is the chapter on aviation, Wings of Desire. "The invention of the airplane marked the twinning of modern technology with visual vertigo," writes Dalle Vacche. "The airplane's ability to move between ground and sky matched the diva's oscillation between historical change and personal ruin."

The book is accompanied by a DVD of archival film clips Diva Dolorosa.