From Africa to the Balkans:
New Perspectives on Colonialism and Material Culture in Fascist Italy
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His dissertation, "A Revolution in the Idea of Rome: Excavating Modernity in Fascist Italy," recently received the Best Unpublished Manuscript Award from the Society for Italian Historical Studies.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.
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.
Charles Burdett, Senior Lecturer in Italian Studies at the University of Bristol,
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.
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
infectionrates 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.
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.
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.”
Sanela Hodzicis 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg is Associate Professor of Italian Studies and Comparative Literature at Brown University. She is also Director of Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of "Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siecle (Cornell University Press, 1998), of "The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860-1920)" (University of Chicago Press, 2008), which won the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Best Manuscript in Italian Studies in 2007, and of "Imaginary Socialities: Five Essays on Psychoanalysis, Politics and Anna Freud" (under consideration at the University of Chicago Press). Her current book project is entitled "A History of Italian Repression: Sexuality, Psychoanalysis and the War Against Memory.
Parentheses Or: The Repression of Psychoanalysis in Italy
Abstract:The "parenthesis" is a recurring trope in Italian historiography frequently used in order to marginalize discourses that seem to challenge a master narrative. One of the elements that has been parenthesized in Italy is psychoanalysis, in particular as an analytic tool in the study of Italian history. Through a reading of two texts, one by Roberto Vivarelli and the other by Umberto Saba, I argue that the repression of psychoanalysis in Italy has prevented a coming to terms with the fascist past.
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.
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