PrintThe Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America
From Africa to the
Balkans:
New Perspectives on
Fascist History and Material Culture
Speaker
Bios & Abstracts
Joshua Arthurs is a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Mason University, and earned his doctorate
in History from the University of Chicago in 2007. His dissertation,
"A Revolution in the Idea of Rome: Excavating Modernity in Fascist
Italy," recently received the Best Unpublished Manuscript Award from the
Society for Italian Historical Studies. His research interests include the
politics of archaeology, the classical tradition and reflexive historiography.
Roads, Arches and
Aqueducts: Fascism and the Material Culture of Empire
Abstract: This paper examines Fascism's appropriation of ancient Roman material culture
and its significance to the regime's imperial ideology.
Archaeologists and ideologues focused upon architectural and engineering
achievements that were seen as distinctively Roman – the road, the arch
and the aqueduct. More than any others, these forms were seen as encapsulating
the essential virtues of the Roman (and Italian) race: a propensity for
unity, synthesis, hierarchy and discipline. The remains of the Empire
also provided a topography for a new order irradiating from the Eternal
City. Drawing on the Roman model, Fascism articulated a
"universal" conception of empire that was meant to be distinct from
other modes of European colonialism.
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Pamela Ballinger is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Bowdoin College. She is author of History
in Exile: Memory and Identity at the Borders of the Balkans. She has published on topics that include Trieste
and imperial nostalgia, the Adriatic seascape, hybridity, the repressed memory
movement, and postsocialist transition in coastal Croatia.
Military Defeat,
Violence, and the Fate of Italians in Africa and the Balkans
Abstract: This
paper examines the fate of civilians in Italy’s African and Balkan possessions
when the fascist war machine met with defeat. An analysis of territories with
different statuses (colonies, departments, and integral parts of the Italian
state) and historical relationships with Italy illuminates common elements in
the experiences of individuals from the ex-possedimenti (lost territories) who migrated to Italy as national
refugees. In both Africa and the Balkans, repatriation proved neither
unidirectional nor uncomplicated; migratory processes that began during World
War II unfolded over more than a decade. Although analytically productive, such
a comparison of Italian refugees from Africa and the Balkans proves politically
fraught in the context of contemporary reconfigurations of memory about Fascism.
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Charles Burdett,
Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at Bristol University, specializes on
Italian culture under Fascism. He is the author of Journeys through Fascism:
Italian Travel Writing between the Wars (2007).
He is the editor with Claire Gorrara and Helmut Peitsch of European
Memories of the Second World War (1999) and
with Derek Duncan, of Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing of
the 1930s (2002).
Imperialism and
Religion: Justifications of Expansionism in the 1920s and 1930s
Abstract: The paper takes its starting point from the theoretical work of John Gray on the impact throughout the twentieth century of ideology constructed as apocalyptic religion. It focuses on the way in which writers, commentators and officials at various levels of the state’s hierarchy presented fascist ideology as a religion of the nation that could appeal to the subject population of Italy’s recently created colonies. Looking in depth at a series of elaborate vindications of Italian rule in Libya, the paper attempts to reveal the silences and contradictions that are embedded in the portrayal of Italian expansion as a kind of evangelism.
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Meredith
Carew is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, where she is
currently completing her PhD thesis entitled ‘Sex, race and health in fascist
colonial policy: the fight against venereal disease in Italian Africa,
1922-1943’. She completed her MA
in Modern European History at Oxford, and she attained 1st class
honors in history at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Sex, race and health in Italian fascist policy: the fight against venereal disease in North Africa and the Balkans, 1940-43
Abstract: This paper is intended to highlight a seldom considered aspect of Italian
military policy during WWII. It addresses the subject of prostitution and
venereal disease (VD) control in areas occupied by Italian forces. It focuses
on Libya and Greece, and analyses the efforts of Italian commanders to limit
infection rates among the troops. The paper relies primarily on rarely-used documents located at the Italian army
archives in Rome. It will consider the approaches to prostitution management in
different areas; the implementation of these policies; and what this subject
tells us about attitudes to sex, race, and gender in Mussolini's army.
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Derek Duncan is Professor of Italian Cultural Studies at the University of Bristol. He works
on modern Italian culture with reference to questions of gender and sexuality.
He is the author of Reading and Writing Italian Homosexuality (2006) and co-edited a volume of essays on the
memory of Italian colonialism.
Istruzione,
entusiasmo e virile commozione: Colonial Cinema and the Extent of Imperial
Ambition
Abstract: This
paper looks at how the broad category of ‘colonial cinema’ was conceptualized
in Africa Italiana. The emphasis is on
how ‘colonial cinema’ came to be considered a field of diverse social praxis,
the ramifications of which extended beyond the confines of AOI. I will focus
particularly on issues of place and spectatorship as set out in Africa
Italiana, and will analyze its response to
Gallone’s film Harlem (1943), as
a case study in the racial dimension of spectatorship. This example extends the
understanding of Italy’s role in Africa to reflect on the interaction between
Italians and other ‘white’ populations.
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Michael Ebner is Assistant Professor of History at Syracuse University. He is the
author of several articles on police repression and violence in fascist Italy,
and is currently working on a book manuscript entitled The Fascist
Archipelago: Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy.
Fascist
Archipelagos: Domestic Coercion and Peripheral Violence
Abstract:
This paper explores the ideological and programmatic links between domestic
institutional violence (police repression, physical assault, informing) and
temporally and geographically peripheral violence (squadrismo, colonial conquest, military atrocities). It
asks whether or not, and to what extent, this violence was really “fascist.”
In answering this question, the primary aim of the paper is to examine domestic
institutional violence in quantitative and qualitative terms. A secondary line
of inquiry, however, will ask whether or not domestic repression affected, was
affected by, or was otherwise linked to the more overt and murderous violence
that characterized squadrismo,
foreign conquest, and occupation policies.
Jennie Hirsh is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department
of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
She received her MA and PhD in the History of Art from Bryn Mawr College and an
MA in Italian from Middlebury College. Her research and publications focus on the production and reception of
art and architecture under Italian Fascism, paying particular attention to the
classical tradition in this context. She is currently completing a monograph on
Giorgio de Chirico.
Constructing Fascism over Time and in Space
Abstract: This paper surveys fascist material
culture with a view toward identifying patterns that point toward cumulative
effects over time and across geographical boundaries within Italy and the
colonies. Considering a vast array
of architectural, graphic, pictorial, and sculptural evidence, my paper asserts
and questions stylistic and thematic trends within fascist material culture in
an attempt to theorize the relationship between the distant and recent past as
well as geographical distance and proximity in this context. In particular, I attempt to calibrate
the value of tensions between regional and national priorities, as well as
canonical icons and newly minted “historical” images in the cultivation of
“modern tradition.”
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Sanela Hodzic is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Berne, where she
is completing her dissertation on the German and Italian occupation in the
Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945. She is a recipient of a scholarship from the Paul and Gertrud Hofer-Wild
Foundation, and she completed undergraduate studies in History at the
University of Bamberg and in East European Studies at the University of Munich.
Italian Occupation
in Croatia 1941-1943: Practices of Violence and Their Limits
Abstract: Due to the special situation in
Croatia I argue that there were three reasons limiting Italian practices of
violence: the discipline problems in the Italian army, the bargains with the
Croatian authorities, and the special role of the Serb population due to the
Italian conflicts with the Croats on the one hand and Chetnik assistance in
fighting the partisans on the other. Thus, as the population in the occupied
Croatia consisted of Croats and Serbs, and as both groups enjoyed certain
protection, the Italians were hindered in following the intended hard
counter-insurgency measures.
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Stephanie
Hom Cary is Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of
Oklahoma. She received her MA and PhD in Italian Studies from UC Berkeley, and
her BA in International Relations from Brown. Her research explores the
variegated relationships between modern mass tourism, colonialism, and Italian
national identity.
Constructing
Hospitable Colonies: The Fiera di Tripoli, the Balkans, and Italian
Colonial Representation
Abstract: By
juxtaposing the figurative strategies of the Italian colonies with those of its
potential colonies—the Fiera di Tripoli and the Balkans,
respectively—my paper aims to theorize a system of colonial
representation specific to modern Italy. I contend that it is a system that
hinges on tourism, a discourse that has been integral to making the Italian
nation-state since the mid-nineteenth century. By comparing built environment
to text, we can see how tourism propaganda conditioned physical colonization,
and how Italian colonial representational practices shifted across geographies
and historical moments.
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Marco Jacquemet is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication, University
of San Francisco. His current research seeks to assess the communicative
mutations resulting from the intersection in the Mediterranean area between
mobile people and media. He has published three monographs (Credibility in
Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra’s Trials, Cambridge U.P. 1996; Il Galateo del
Cibernauta, Castelvecchi 1996; Ethereal
Shadows: Communication and Power in Contemporary Italy, Autonomedia 2008) and multiple articles in edited
volumes and refereed journals.
Order-Words,
National Language, And Italian-Albanian Phrasebooks
Abstract: In
all colonial conquests, one of the colonizers’ first imperatives has been to
learn the autochthonous languages and to incorporate them into discourse
practices for the control and rule of local populations. Colonial powers
usually produce an apparatus of texts (grammar, dictionaries, and phrasebooks)
as the first step in a process of symbolic domination over subaltern subjects.
One of the preparatory steps undertaken by Italy for its colonization of
Albania was the production in 1913 of a couple of Albanian phrasebooks for
Italian soldiers and entrepreneurs. In this paper, I discuss two factors that
influenced the production of these textbooks: the colonial imagination behind
the social practices deemed crucial for military and economic penetration
(locating food, enlisting help, identifying enemies) and the Italian role in
the struggle for a standardized, written version of Albanian that could be
perceived (and received) as a national language.
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Alessandro Pes is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Cagliari, where he received his PhD
in Modern History (2007). His main research interest is Italian cultural and social history under Fascism and its
legacy. He has written on Mussolini’s speeches concerning Italian expansionism,
on the experience of Italian women in the colonies and on the fascist concept
of bonifica. His current research stems from his PhD
thesis and aims to explore the changing memory of the Italian presence in
Africa.
Building a new colonial subject? Comparing Fascist Education system
in Albania and Ethiopia
Abstract: In the
late 1930s, the fascist Government dedicated notable resources to educating
natives in occupied territories. The Italian army occupied Ethiopia in 1936
and, in 1939, conquered Albania. The Italian occupation of these countries was
not simply military. Rather, with the fascist occupation, both Ethiopia and
Albania experienced both cultural and educational changes. The aim of the paper
is to compare the Albanian and Ethiopian cases in order to understand if
Italian occupation can be considered a form of colonial occupation or merely a
form of military occupation.
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David Rifkind teaches Architectural History and Theory in the School of Architecture at
Florida International University. He completed his dissertation, Quadrante
and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy, at Columbia University in 2007. A practicing
architect, he is a graduate of McGill University’s program in Architectural
History and Theory and the Boston Architectural Center.
The Very Model of
a Modern Imperial City: Gondar, Ethiopia
Abstract:
Italian urbanism during the fascist era illustrates the disquieting
compatibility between progressive planning practices and authoritarian
political regimes. Cities built in Italian-occupied East Africa further
demonstrate the extent to which modern urban design could participate in the
coercive project of constructing imperial identities, both amongst Italian
settlers and among African colonial subjects. As a case study in the design and
construction of Ethiopian cities under Italian colonial rule, Gondar displays
the themes of identity formation and ideological representation that animated
urbanism in Italy’s
African empire.
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Lidia Santarelli is
Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow in the Center for European and
Mediterranean Studies at New York University. She earned her Laurea in Arts and Humanities from the Università degli
Studi "La Sapienza" - Roma 1 and her PhD in History and Civilization
from the European University Institute. Her research interests focus on
Italian Fascism, nations and nationalism in the Balkans, and collective memory
in post-1945 Europe.
Colonizing the
Mediterranean: Italian Ruling Strategies and Practices of Violence from Africa
to the Balkans
Abstract: From Africa to the Balkans, the 1930s represented a long
decade of wars in the history of Fascist Italy. Libya, Ethiopia and the
Dodecanese were laboratories for strategies of governance and repression that
would characterize the Italian policy of occupation in South-eastern Europe
during World War II. By the late 1930s, Fascist culture transferred notions,
principles and disciplines from both colonial studies and anti-Semitic theories
to the debate focusing on the supposed anthropological inferiority of both
Slavs and Greeks. This paper will address the crucial issues of continuity and
rupture in Fascist wartime culture and practices of violence from the colonial
wars to the New Order.
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Johanna Rossi
Wagner is a PhD candidate at Rutgers University. She is an editor of La Fusta: Journal of Italian Literature and Culture and the Vice President of the Graduate Caucus for
the Northeast Modern Language Association. Recently Johanna was the recipient
of a Joseph Sr. and Clementina Coccia Scholarship and serves as a fellow at the
Institute for Research on Women in New Jersey. She has published on Italian
theater and is currently working on her dissertation on Italian postcolonial
women writers.
Negotiating the
cultural divide in colonial Eritrea in the works of Erminia Dell'Oro
Abstract: Italian
colonialism has only recently been the subject of Italophone literary
production. The burgeoning of these texts revisiting colonial episodes in East
Africa come in the wake of a renewed scholarly interest about Italy's much
neglected imperial enterprise. Erminia Dell'Oro, arguably the first of these
authors, revisits colonial Asmara in her two autobiographical works Asmara
Addio and La gola del diavolo breathing life into a colony/country/culture
essentially unknown by its colonizers. This project looks at the cultural and
literary hybridization inherent in colonial spaces presented by Dell'Oro and
the ways in which these texts inaugurate a postcolonial literary discourse.