Roberta Pergher transforms our understanding of Fascist rule. Examining Fascist Italy's efforts to control the antipodes of its realm - the regions annexed in northern Italy after the First World ...War, and Italy's North African colonies - she shows how the regime struggled to imagine and implement Italian sovereignty over alien territories and peoples. Contrary to the claims of existing scholarship, Fascist settlement policy in these regions was not designed to solve an overpopulation problem, but to bolster Italian claims to rule in an era that prized self-determination and no longer saw imperial claims as self-evident. Professor Pergher explores the character and impact of Fascist settlement policy and the degree to which ordinary Italians participated in and challenged the regime's efforts to Italianize contested territory. Employing models and concepts from the historiography of empire, she shows how Fascist Italy rethought the boundaries between national and imperial rule.
An exploration of how film has made legible the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transitionTraditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and ...politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini sees this relationship as an impasse. To illustrate this theory, Resmini turns to Italian cinema to explore how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68.Italian Political Cinema conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian.A comprehensive and novel redefinition of political film, Italian Political Cinema introduces its audience to lesser-known directors alongside greats such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, and Bellocchio. Resmini offers access to untranslated work in Italian philosophy, political theory, and film theory, and forcefully advocates for the continued artistic and political relevance of these films in our time.
The history of Italians and of modern Italian culture stems from
multiple experiences of mobility and migration: between the late
19th century and the early 20th century, 27 million Italians
migrated ...and 60 to 80 million people worldwide see their identity
as connected with the Italian diaspora. Since the time of Italian
unification, a series of narratives about mobility have been
produced both inside and outside the boundaries of Italy, by agents
such as the Italian state, international organizations or migrant
communities themselves.
The essays in Transcultural Italies follow the multiple
trajectories of this complex history and of its representations.
They do so by focusing on the key concepts and practices of
mobility, memory and translation. Taken together, they represent a
contrapuntal series of case studies that offers a fresh perspective
on the study of modern and contemporary Italy. The essays in the
volume explore the meanings that 'transnational' and
'transcultural' assume when applied to the notion of Italian
culture.
Contributors: Charles Burdett, Jennifer Burns, Derek
Duncan, Chiara Giuliani, Viviana Gravano, Giulia Grechi, Margaret
Hills de Zárate, Eliana Maestri, Valerie McGuire, Loredana Polezzi,
Barbara Spadaro, Ilaria Vanni, Naomi Wells, Rita Wilson
Among the world's hotly contested, obsessively controlled, and often dangerous borders, none is deadlier than the Mediterranean Sea. Since 2000, at least 25,000 people have lost their lives ...attempting to reach Italy and the rest of Europe, most by drowning in the Mediterranean. Every day, unauthorized migrants and refugees bound for Europe put their lives in the hands of maritime smugglers, while fishermen, diplomats, priests, bureaucrats, armed forces sailors, and hesitant bystanders waver between indifference and intervention-with harrowing results.
InCrimes of Peace, Maurizio Albahari investigates why the Mediterranean Sea is the world's deadliest border, and what alternatives could improve this state of affairs. He also examines the dismal conditions of migrants in transit and the institutional framework in which they move or are physically confined. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of places, people, and European politics, Albahari supplements fieldwork in coastal southern Italy and neighboring Mediterranean locales with a meticulous documentary investigation, transforming abstract statistics into names and narratives that place the responsibility for the Mediterranean migration crisis in the very heart of liberal democracy. Global fault lines are scrutinized: between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; military and humanitarian governance; detention and hospitality; transnational crime and statecraft; the universal law of the sea and the thresholds of a globalized yet parochial world.Crimes of Peaceilluminates crucial questions of sovereignty and rights: for migrants trying to enter Europe along the Mediterranean shore, the answers are a matter of life or death.
Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist
Filmmaking explores the work of contemporary
Italian women directors from feminist and ecological
perspectives. Mostly relegated to the margins of
...the cultural scene, and concerned with women's marginality, the
compelling films Wandering Women sheds light on tell
stories of displacement and liminality that unfold through the act
of walking in the city. The unusual emptiness of the cities that
the nomadic female protagonists traverse highlights the absence of,
and their wish for, life-sustaining communities. Laura Di Bianco
contends that women's urban filmmaking-while articulating a claim
for belonging and asserting cinematic and social agency-brings into
view landscapes of the Anthropocene, where urban decay and the
erasure of nature intersect with human alienation. Though a minor
cinema, it is also a powerful movement of resistance against the
dominant male narratives about the world we inhabit.
Based on interviews with directors, Wandering Women
deepens the understanding of contemporary Italian cinema while
enriching the field of feminist ecocritical literature.
The movement we know as the Renaissance used to be regarded as the replacement of one system of ideas and literary and visual conventions (the “Gothic”) with another system (the “Classical”). ...However, it has become increasingly obvious that Gothic and Classical coexisted for a long time, and also that they interacted, producing hybrid forms not only of thought, art, literature and especially architecture, but also of language, literature, music, philosophy, law and religion. As the Renaissance movement spread outside Italy, to other parts of Europe and also beyond, from Goa to Quito, different local traditions made their contribution to the mix. Given the interest in cultural hybridity long shown by Natalie Davis, this theme allows Burke to pay homage to the work of Davis as well as to explore what was for long a neglected theme in Renaissance studies.
The past two decades have witnessed increasing opposition to mafia influence and activities in Italy. Community organizations such as Libera, founded in 1995, and Addiopizzo, originating in 2004, ...exemplify how Italian society has tried to come together to promote antimafia activities. The societal opposition to mafia influence continues to grow and the Internet has become a frontline in the battle between the two groups.
The Italian Antimafia, New Media, and the Culture of Legality is the first book to examine the online battles between the mafia and its growing cohort of opponents. While the mafia’s supporters have used Internet technologies to expand its power, profits, and violence, antimafia citizens employ the same technologies to recreate Italian civil society. The contributors to this volume are experts in diverse fields and offer interdisciplinary studies of antimafia activism and legality in online journalism, Twitter, YouTube, digital storytelling, blogs, music, and photography. These examinations enable readers to understand the grassroots Italian cultural revolution, which makes individuals responsible for promoting justice, freedom, and dignity.
Feeding Fascism explores how women negotiated the politics of Italy’s Fascist regime in their daily lives and how they fed their families through agricultural and industrial labour. The book looks at ...women’s experiences of Fascism by examining the material world in which they lived in relation to their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Over the past decade, Diana Garvin has conducted extensive research in Italian museums, libraries, and archives. Feeding Fascism includes illustrations of rare cookbooks, kitchen utensils, cafeteria plans, and culinary propaganda to connect women’s political beliefs with the places that they lived and worked and the objects that they owned and borrowed. Garvin draws on first-hand accounts, such as diaries, work songs, and drawings, that demonstrate how women and the Fascist state vied for control over national diet across many manifestations – cooking, feeding, and eating – to assert and negotiate their authority. Revealing the national stakes of daily choices, and the fine line between resistance and consent, Feeding Fascism attests to the power of food.
Cassiodorus—famed throughout history as one of the great Christian exegetes of antiquity—spent most of his life as a high-ranking public official under the Ostrogothic King Theoderic and his heirs. ...He produced the Variae, a unique letter collection that gave witness to the sixth-century Mediterranean, as late antiquity gave way to the early middle ages. The Variae represents thirty years of Cassiodorus's work in civil, legal, and financial administration, revealing his interactions with emperors and kings, bishops and military commanders, private citizens, and even criminals. Thus, the Variae remains among the most important sources for the history of this pivotal period and is an indispensable resource for understanding political and diplomatic culture, economic and legal structure, intellectual heritage, urban landscapes, religious worldview, and the evolution of social relations at all levels of society during the twilight of the late-Roman state. This is the first full translation of this masterwork into English.
