Title: Between Roots and Horizons
Subtitle: Memory, Song, and Cultural Life in an Arbëresh Community
Subject Classification:  Anthropology, Psychology, Society and Culture  
BIC Classification: JHM, JFFN, JMU
BISAC Classification: SOC002010, PSY031000, SOC008000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Dec 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-883-0
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-884-7

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Description

Between Roots and Horizons offers a profound exploration of Arbëresh (Italian Albanian) culture, moving beyond historical and ethnographic description to illuminate the living, stratified world where memory and identity are continuously forged. Author Barbara Gabriella Renzi deploys an original framework, integrating anthropology and psychoanalysis to reveal the intimate, often overlooked dimensions of cultural transmission. Through analyses of lullabies, children’s games, and communal rituals, the book demonstrates how culture is embodied and internalized long before it is consciously understood—shaping experience through rhythm, gesture, and shared symbolism. Renzi examines how the natural environment, from the cycles of plant life to the flight of birds, provides a rich symbolic language for expressing belonging, displacement, and resilience. By treating cultural memory as a form of collective psyche, this work presents a model for understanding how minority and diasporic communities sustain and recreate their heritage. It is an essential read for scholars in anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, and diaspora studies.The book is a companion to A Journey Into the Albanian Communities in Italy: Echoes From a Merged Horizon, by the same author, published by Ethics International Press, 2025.

Biography

Author(s):  Dr. Barbara Gabriella Renzi is a philosopher, psychologist, and university lecturer whose interdisciplinary work bridges the humanities and social sciences. Holding two PhDs, her research concentrates on the connections between cultural identity, language, and memory, with a particular expertise in the Arbëresh (Albanian) communities of Italy. She has published extensively on topics of heritage, migration, and cognition, employing a unique blend of ethnographic and psychoanalytic methods. Her scholarship is distinguished by its focus on the internal, psychological dimensions of cultural life, offering new perspectives on how memory is transmitted across generations and how identity is shaped by lived experience and symbolic expression.

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