- Ghent, Belgium
- University College Cork, Italian, Post-DocRoyal Holloway, University of London, Modern Languages, Alumnus, and 2 moreadd
- Second World War, Italian fascism, Italian Novel, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Memory Studies, Cultural Memory, and 11 moreSeconda Guerra Mondiale, Ritirata Russia, Curzio Malaparte, Raul Lunardi, Giovanni Pirelli, Renzo Biasion, Ugo Pirro, Mario Rigoni Stern, Moral Responsibility, Difficult heritage, and Coming to Terms with the Pastedit
Mediating Historical Responsibility brings together leading scholars and new voices in the interdisciplinary fields of memory studies, history, and cultural studies to explore the ways culture, and cultural representations, have been at... more
Mediating Historical Responsibility brings together leading scholars and new voices in the interdisciplinary fields of memory studies, history, and cultural studies to explore the ways culture, and cultural representations, have been at the forefront of bringing the memory of past injustices to the attention of audiences for many years. Engaging with the darkest pages of twentieth-century European history, dealing with the legacy of colonialism, war crimes, genocides, dictatorships, and racism, the authors of this collection of critical essays address Europe’s ‘difficult pasts’ through the study of cultural products, examining historical narratives, literary texts, films, documentaries, theatre, poetry, graphic novels, visual artworks, material heritage, and the cultural and political reception of official government reports. Adopting an intermedial approach to the study of European history, the book probes the relationship between memory and responsibility, investigating what it means to take responsibility for the past and showing how cultural products are fundamentally entangled in this process.
Research Interests:
Il libro offre il primo studio approfondito dei modi in cui la letteratura italiana del secondo dopoguerra ha rappresentato le guerre di aggressione e i regimi di occupazione dell’Italia fascista durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, una... more
Il libro offre il primo studio approfondito dei modi in cui la letteratura italiana del secondo dopoguerra ha rappresentato le guerre di aggressione e i regimi di occupazione dell’Italia fascista durante la Seconda guerra mondiale, una serie di eventi che vengono qui chiamati “Guerra dell’Asse”. Grazie a una metodologia innovativa, che combina teorie dei memory studies, storiografia, narratologia e critica tematica, il volume delinea un viaggio testuale lungo tre decenni che attraverso lo studio di figure di ripetizione quali topoi, temi e masterplots esplora il contributo delle opere letterarie alla formazione di una memoria della guerra e del fascismo. Passando in rassegna i numerosi contenuti etici di questa spesso dimenticata letteratura di guerra, il testo indaga il rapporto fra letteratura e memoria collettiva chiedendosi fino a che punto la letteratura della Guerra dell’Asse sia stata in grado di aiutare i lettori a sviluppare un senso di responsabilità per i crimini del passato.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The book investigates the representation of the Axis War – the wars of aggression that Fascist Italy fought in North Africa, Greece, the Soviet Union, and the Balkans, from 1940 to 1943 – in three decades of Italian literature. Building... more
The book investigates the representation of the Axis War – the wars of aggression that Fascist Italy fought in North Africa, Greece, the Soviet Union, and the Balkans, from 1940 to 1943 – in three decades of Italian literature. Building on an innovative and interdisciplinary methodology, which combines memory studies, historiography, thematic criticism, and narratology, this book explores the main topoi, themes, and masterplots of an extensive corpus of novels and memoirs to assess the contribution of literature to the reshaping of Italian memory and identity after the end of Fascism. By exploring the influence that public memory exercises on literary depictions and, in return, the contribution of literary texts to the formation and dissemination of a discourse about the past, the book examines to what extent Italian literature helped readers form an ethical awareness of the crimes committed by members of their national community during World War II
Research Interests:
Questo libro nasce dalla rielaborazione della tesi di laurea magistrale di Guido Bartolini sulla relazione tra letteratura classica e cultura moderna all’inizio del 900. Il centro attorno a cui si sviluppa questo studio è il concetto di... more
Questo libro nasce dalla rielaborazione della tesi di laurea magistrale di Guido Bartolini sulla relazione tra letteratura classica e cultura moderna
all’inizio del 900. Il centro attorno a cui si sviluppa questo studio è
il concetto di classico, con i suoi plurimi significati, i suoi riusi e le
sue contraddizioni. Il mondo classico
occupa oggi giorno una posizione periferica all’interno del campo
degli studi letterari; tuttavia esso ha costituito per secoli il baricentro
della cultura Occidentale ed anche il XX secolo non ha mai smesso
di interrogarsi sul rapporto tra cultura antica e contemporaneità.
all’inizio del 900. Il centro attorno a cui si sviluppa questo studio è
il concetto di classico, con i suoi plurimi significati, i suoi riusi e le
sue contraddizioni. Il mondo classico
occupa oggi giorno una posizione periferica all’interno del campo
degli studi letterari; tuttavia esso ha costituito per secoli il baricentro
della cultura Occidentale ed anche il XX secolo non ha mai smesso
di interrogarsi sul rapporto tra cultura antica e contemporaneità.
Research Interests:
Complicities in the Second World War: Literature of Occupation, Collaboration, and Impure Resistance Date: 4-5 October 2024 Location: Monasterium Poortackerey, Gent, Belgium Deadline to submit a paper proposal: 6 May 2024 The global... more
Complicities in the Second World War:
Literature of Occupation, Collaboration, and Impure Resistance
Date: 4-5 October 2024
Location: Monasterium Poortackerey, Gent, Belgium
Deadline to submit a paper proposal: 6 May 2024
The global impact of World War II has been profound and enduring. Narrated across the globe in a myriad of ways — as a just struggle by democracies against oppressive forces, as a testament to the resilience and heroism of nations, as a past that refuses to go away and demands confrontation, as the source of liberation from fascism, as the catalyst for the end of colonial domination, as the birth of new illiberal regimes and occupations, or as the acme of destruction and genocidal violence — World War II has constituted a cornerstone of collective memory leaving an indelible mark on the conscience of humanity.
As a result of its importance, the memory of World War II has acquired a strong ethical dimension and has become a source of metahistorical reflections, prompting questions about human agency and the burden of guilt and responsibility for injustices. These ethical considerations come into sharp focus in the context of military occupations. The territories occupied by the Axis Powers and the Allies during World War II constituted a “contact zone” (Pratt 1992) between people of different nationalities endowed with asymmetric power that confronted the members of the occupied communities with weighty choices of collaborating, resisting, or navigating the complex spectrum in between.
The ethical questions and dilemmas inherent in military occupations constitute a crucial component of the vast literary production that throughout the decades has represented the Second World War. Cultural memory scholarship reveals how literature holds a unique position in addressing the memory of occupations: not only can it configure the past in meaningful, memorable, evocative, and immersive ways (Erll 2011; Rigney 2008), but it can also challenge instrumental national accounts, break silence, and compel readers to grapple with the most unsettling and difficult aspects of history. Literature’s capacity to generate complex ethical reflections about occupations aligns with the interdisciplinary scholarship that has sought to address past and present injustices over the past twenty years. In doing so, scholars have emphasised the need to move beyond binary conceptions, such as the guilty-innocent or victim-perpetrator dichotomies, and they have advocated the use of nuanced understandings of the ideas of complicity (Afxentiou et al 2007; Sander 2003; Sanyal 2015), responsibility (Young 2011; Niemi 2021), and implication (Meretoja 2018; Rothberg 2019). Literature constitutes an extremely fertile ground for cultivating these complex perspectives on history and, as such, it stands as a crucial domain for addressing the ethical dilemmas posed by World War II occupations.
This conference invites scholars working on the literary representation of World War II across any cultural context and language to present case studies that, through the analysis of the complex positionalities that literature constructs, can address the ethical issues woven into the fabric of military occupations. In particular, scholars are encouraged to explore the complicities of collaborators, the responsibilities of implicated subjects, and the form of resistance that Mihaela Mihai (2022) calls “impure”, which rather than promoting idealised heroic models foster a multifaceted understanding of the ethical complexities inherent in the struggle against occupation.
Topics that scholars can address through the study of literature include, but are not limited to:
The agency of perpetrators under occupation.
The relationship between occupiers and collaborators.
Indirect participation in genocide and war crimes.
The thematisation of guilt and responsibility for collaboration.
Ethical dilemmas faced by collaborators and resistants.
“Impure resistance” and its manifestations.
The use of violence in resistance movements.
Multiple positionalities and cases of “complex implication”.
Narratives that challenge silence and taboos in a memory culture.
Self-serving representations that fail to engage with the complexity of occupations.
World War II occupations and decolonisation.
Please submit a paper proposal (300 words) and a short academic bio by Monday 6 May 2024. Please note that the working language of the conference will be English.
Submissions and any queries should be sent to Dr Guido Bartolini at Literatureofoccupation@gmail.com
Further info: https://www.literatureofoccupation.ugent.be
Bibliography
Afxentiou, Dunford, Michael Neu, and Robin Dunford. Eds. Exploring Complicity: Concept, Cases and Critique. New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2007.
Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture, trans. by Sara Young. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011a.
Meretoja, Hanna. The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History and the Possible. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Mihai, Mihaela. Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care: The Art of Complicity and Resistance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.
Niemi, Minna Johanna. Complicity and Responsibility in Contemporary African Writing: The Postcolony Revisited. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.
Rigney, Anne. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts between Monumentality and Morphing.” Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2008. 345–356.
Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Sander, Mark. Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid. Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, 2003.
Sanyal, Debarati. Memory and Complicity. Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance. New York, Fordham University Press, 2015.
Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Literature of Occupation, Collaboration, and Impure Resistance
Date: 4-5 October 2024
Location: Monasterium Poortackerey, Gent, Belgium
Deadline to submit a paper proposal: 6 May 2024
The global impact of World War II has been profound and enduring. Narrated across the globe in a myriad of ways — as a just struggle by democracies against oppressive forces, as a testament to the resilience and heroism of nations, as a past that refuses to go away and demands confrontation, as the source of liberation from fascism, as the catalyst for the end of colonial domination, as the birth of new illiberal regimes and occupations, or as the acme of destruction and genocidal violence — World War II has constituted a cornerstone of collective memory leaving an indelible mark on the conscience of humanity.
As a result of its importance, the memory of World War II has acquired a strong ethical dimension and has become a source of metahistorical reflections, prompting questions about human agency and the burden of guilt and responsibility for injustices. These ethical considerations come into sharp focus in the context of military occupations. The territories occupied by the Axis Powers and the Allies during World War II constituted a “contact zone” (Pratt 1992) between people of different nationalities endowed with asymmetric power that confronted the members of the occupied communities with weighty choices of collaborating, resisting, or navigating the complex spectrum in between.
The ethical questions and dilemmas inherent in military occupations constitute a crucial component of the vast literary production that throughout the decades has represented the Second World War. Cultural memory scholarship reveals how literature holds a unique position in addressing the memory of occupations: not only can it configure the past in meaningful, memorable, evocative, and immersive ways (Erll 2011; Rigney 2008), but it can also challenge instrumental national accounts, break silence, and compel readers to grapple with the most unsettling and difficult aspects of history. Literature’s capacity to generate complex ethical reflections about occupations aligns with the interdisciplinary scholarship that has sought to address past and present injustices over the past twenty years. In doing so, scholars have emphasised the need to move beyond binary conceptions, such as the guilty-innocent or victim-perpetrator dichotomies, and they have advocated the use of nuanced understandings of the ideas of complicity (Afxentiou et al 2007; Sander 2003; Sanyal 2015), responsibility (Young 2011; Niemi 2021), and implication (Meretoja 2018; Rothberg 2019). Literature constitutes an extremely fertile ground for cultivating these complex perspectives on history and, as such, it stands as a crucial domain for addressing the ethical dilemmas posed by World War II occupations.
This conference invites scholars working on the literary representation of World War II across any cultural context and language to present case studies that, through the analysis of the complex positionalities that literature constructs, can address the ethical issues woven into the fabric of military occupations. In particular, scholars are encouraged to explore the complicities of collaborators, the responsibilities of implicated subjects, and the form of resistance that Mihaela Mihai (2022) calls “impure”, which rather than promoting idealised heroic models foster a multifaceted understanding of the ethical complexities inherent in the struggle against occupation.
Topics that scholars can address through the study of literature include, but are not limited to:
The agency of perpetrators under occupation.
The relationship between occupiers and collaborators.
Indirect participation in genocide and war crimes.
The thematisation of guilt and responsibility for collaboration.
Ethical dilemmas faced by collaborators and resistants.
“Impure resistance” and its manifestations.
The use of violence in resistance movements.
Multiple positionalities and cases of “complex implication”.
Narratives that challenge silence and taboos in a memory culture.
Self-serving representations that fail to engage with the complexity of occupations.
World War II occupations and decolonisation.
Please submit a paper proposal (300 words) and a short academic bio by Monday 6 May 2024. Please note that the working language of the conference will be English.
Submissions and any queries should be sent to Dr Guido Bartolini at Literatureofoccupation@gmail.com
Further info: https://www.literatureofoccupation.ugent.be
Bibliography
Afxentiou, Dunford, Michael Neu, and Robin Dunford. Eds. Exploring Complicity: Concept, Cases and Critique. New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2007.
Erll, Astrid. Memory in Culture, trans. by Sara Young. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011a.
Meretoja, Hanna. The Ethics of Storytelling: Narrative Hermeneutics, History and the Possible. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Mihai, Mihaela. Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care: The Art of Complicity and Resistance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.
Niemi, Minna Johanna. Complicity and Responsibility in Contemporary African Writing: The Postcolony Revisited. New York: Routledge, 2021.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992.
Rigney, Anne. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts between Monumentality and Morphing.” Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Eds. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2008. 345–356.
Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019.
Sander, Mark. Complicities: The Intellectual and Apartheid. Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, 2003.
Sanyal, Debarati. Memory and Complicity. Migrations of Holocaust Remembrance. New York, Fordham University Press, 2015.
Young, Iris Marion. Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Research Interests:
Although the world seems to be drifting towards the conflictual opposition between large geopolitical blocs, and the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped the dynamics of globalisation, there is no doubt that many of the key... more
Although the world seems to be drifting towards the conflictual opposition between large geopolitical blocs, and the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reshaped the dynamics of globalisation, there is no doubt that many of the key issues of our time are global in nature and scope. Indeed, we could argue that the most important social and political battles of the twenty-first century are fought in the global arena. Climate change, international migrations, pandemics, neoliberal capitalist exploitation, racialised patterns of exclusion and discrimination, gentrification are just some of the global challenges that characterise our time. As Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò argues in Reconsidering Reparations, because slavery and colonialism fundamentally shaped the world we live in, we should be thinking more broadly and holistically about how to remake the world system. Moreover, since human beings have become a geophysical force capable of radically affecting the climate system of the planet as a whole, the ‘planetary’ is also emerging as an analytical category and as a matter of human concern. Indeed, as Dipesh Chakrabarty points out in The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, ‘in our own awareness of ourselves, the “now” of human history has become entangled with the long “now” of geological and biological timescales, something that has never happened before in the history of humanity’ (p. 7). We therefore need to connect the planetary with the global, the geologic arc of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene with the time of human history and experience, with a particular attention to the colonial, racial, and gendered oppressions that link the human world to the vast processes and timescale of the Earth system.
Bringing together literary and cultural studies, art and film studies, critical race theory, environmental humanities, and philosophy, this international conference will explore how different cultural texts might facilitate our critical and political engagement with forms of violence and injustice that are global in nature and scope. Drawing connections between the concepts and the practices of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’, the conference will discuss how different natural, social, and cultural forces shape the habitability of different environments on Earth, as well as our individual and collective responsibility for making the world not just habitable but also compatible with the flourishing of different beings.
The key questions that this conference seeks to address are:
How can literature, film, and other forms of art help us to think through the notions of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’?
What makes the Earth habitable, and how does human culture, action and neglect affect that habitability?
To what extent and in what sense are we responsible for making the Earth a place where different forms of human and nonhuman life can live and thrive?
What are the conditions for a good life and how are these conditions represented in mass culture?
How and to what extent can cultural work challenge political and social structures of oppression?
How can different cultural texts and artistic media develop our political imagination and sense of responsibility?
How does the past influence habitability and life conditions in the present?
How do ongoing patterns of violence, injustice, and accumulation affect habitability and life’s capacity to flourish?
What does it take for life to survive and flourish?
This international conference welcomes scholars across the arts & humanities working in all geographical areas and theoretical frameworks, and encourages proposals that take an interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary approach.
Suggested topics include (but are not restricted to):
Literature, film, art, philosophy and the question global responsibility
Critical perspectives on what makes an environment habitable sociologically, culturally, and ecologically
Intersectional analyses of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’
How the global racial empire affects ‘habitability’ and ‘global responsibility’
Cultural texts that address forms or patterns of injustice that are global in nature and scope
Cultural work, differentiated solidarity, and the challenge of ‘elite capture’ (Táíwò 2022)
Literature, film, art, philosophy and the struggle of ‘remaking the world’ (Getachew 2019)
Bringing together literary and cultural studies, art and film studies, critical race theory, environmental humanities, and philosophy, this international conference will explore how different cultural texts might facilitate our critical and political engagement with forms of violence and injustice that are global in nature and scope. Drawing connections between the concepts and the practices of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’, the conference will discuss how different natural, social, and cultural forces shape the habitability of different environments on Earth, as well as our individual and collective responsibility for making the world not just habitable but also compatible with the flourishing of different beings.
The key questions that this conference seeks to address are:
How can literature, film, and other forms of art help us to think through the notions of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’?
What makes the Earth habitable, and how does human culture, action and neglect affect that habitability?
To what extent and in what sense are we responsible for making the Earth a place where different forms of human and nonhuman life can live and thrive?
What are the conditions for a good life and how are these conditions represented in mass culture?
How and to what extent can cultural work challenge political and social structures of oppression?
How can different cultural texts and artistic media develop our political imagination and sense of responsibility?
How does the past influence habitability and life conditions in the present?
How do ongoing patterns of violence, injustice, and accumulation affect habitability and life’s capacity to flourish?
What does it take for life to survive and flourish?
This international conference welcomes scholars across the arts & humanities working in all geographical areas and theoretical frameworks, and encourages proposals that take an interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary approach.
Suggested topics include (but are not restricted to):
Literature, film, art, philosophy and the question global responsibility
Critical perspectives on what makes an environment habitable sociologically, culturally, and ecologically
Intersectional analyses of ‘global responsibility’ and ‘habitability’
How the global racial empire affects ‘habitability’ and ‘global responsibility’
Cultural texts that address forms or patterns of injustice that are global in nature and scope
Cultural work, differentiated solidarity, and the challenge of ‘elite capture’ (Táíwò 2022)
Literature, film, art, philosophy and the struggle of ‘remaking the world’ (Getachew 2019)
Research Interests:
The World Wars are two historical events that were characterized by an abundance of documents written by individuals. The upsurge of popular writings concerned all the countries that were involved in both Wars. These documents are... more
The World Wars are two historical events that were characterized by an abundance of documents written by individuals. The upsurge of popular writings concerned all the countries that were involved in both Wars. These documents are important both historically and linguistically. The study of war writings has always been extremely important but it has been characterized by a new vigour due to the recent centenary of the First World War, and because of the emergence of new theories, such as gender and conflict theories, or the development of new tools, for example the Digital Humanities.
Our aim is to take stock of the state of studies on war writing at the turn of the two world wars.
The focus of this conference is to start from a comparative and multilingual perspective and then move on to the specific case of Italy. These two days of study form part of the MSCA-funded project Last Letters from the World Wars: Forming Italian Language, Identity and Memory in Texts of Conflict that will be presented during the event.
The first day will be devoted to English-language contributions on European war writing. We would like to propose an overview of war writings in European countries in several languages such as English, French, Spanish, Irish, etc. for the first day. The subsequent day will be dedicated to Italian studies and papers in both English and Italian will be accepted.
Our aim is to take stock of the state of studies on war writing at the turn of the two world wars.
The focus of this conference is to start from a comparative and multilingual perspective and then move on to the specific case of Italy. These two days of study form part of the MSCA-funded project Last Letters from the World Wars: Forming Italian Language, Identity and Memory in Texts of Conflict that will be presented during the event.
The first day will be devoted to English-language contributions on European war writing. We would like to propose an overview of war writings in European countries in several languages such as English, French, Spanish, Irish, etc. for the first day. The subsequent day will be dedicated to Italian studies and papers in both English and Italian will be accepted.
Research Interests:
Online Seminar Series and Symposium hosted at University College Cork on April-May 2022. The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating... more
Online Seminar Series and Symposium hosted at University College Cork on April-May 2022.
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC).
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC).
Research Interests:
Online Symposium hosted on 19-20 May 2022 at University College Cork. The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern... more
Online Symposium hosted on 19-20 May 2022 at University College Cork.
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC).
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC).
Research Interests: Cultural Memory, Dictatorships, Southeast Asian history, Representations of Nazism, Novel of the Dictatorship, and 8 moreSouth America History, Military Dictatorship, Soviet Union, Fascismo, Politics of Memory in Chile, Chilean Dictatorship, Memory and Representation of the Spanish Civil War and Dictatorship, and difficult past
Online Seminar Series and Symposium hosted by University College Cork. Registration Link: https://linktr.ee/Memory_Past_Dictatorships Seminar Series: 12 April 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm Michael Lazzara (University of California, Davis)... more
Online Seminar Series and Symposium hosted by University College Cork.
Registration Link: https://linktr.ee/Memory_Past_Dictatorships
Seminar Series:
12 April 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Michael Lazzara (University of California, Davis)
¡Desobedientes!: Implicated Subjects, Memory, and Responsibility in Post-Dictatorship Chilean Documentaries
27 April 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Juliane Prade-Weiss (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Implication in Commemoration: On Current Interests in Past Complicities
4 May 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow)
Remembering Cold War Pasts Across a World of Cinemas
Symposium (19 - 20 May 2022):
8 Panels with more than 30 speakers from all around the world.
2 Keynote addresses by Minna Johanna Niemi (The Arctic University of Norway) and Jie-Hyun Lim (Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul).
1 Roundtable discussion with Michael Lazzara, Juliane Prade-Weiss, and David Martin-Jones.
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC)
Registration Link: https://linktr.ee/Memory_Past_Dictatorships
Seminar Series:
12 April 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Michael Lazzara (University of California, Davis)
¡Desobedientes!: Implicated Subjects, Memory, and Responsibility in Post-Dictatorship Chilean Documentaries
27 April 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
Juliane Prade-Weiss (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Implication in Commemoration: On Current Interests in Past Complicities
4 May 2022, 5.00 – 6.00 pm
David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow)
Remembering Cold War Pasts Across a World of Cinemas
Symposium (19 - 20 May 2022):
8 Panels with more than 30 speakers from all around the world.
2 Keynote addresses by Minna Johanna Niemi (The Arctic University of Norway) and Jie-Hyun Lim (Critical Global Studies Institute, Sogang University, Seoul).
1 Roundtable discussion with Michael Lazzara, Juliane Prade-Weiss, and David Martin-Jones.
The event is generously supported by the Irish Research Council (IRC), The National University of Ireland (NUI), the ERC project ‘Translating Memories: The Eastern European Past in the Global Arena’ funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and The Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures of University College Cork (CASiLaC)
Research Interests:
This Symposium brings together scholars working on the representation of past dictatorships through the study of cultural products. Adopting Michael Rothberg’s concept of implication as a common thread, the Symposium aims to investigate... more
This Symposium brings together scholars working on the representation of past dictatorships through the study of cultural products. Adopting Michael Rothberg’s concept of implication as a common thread, the Symposium aims to investigate the ways in which cultural products engage with the ethical dilemmas of complicity, guilt, and responsibility that dictatorships create. In representing past dictatorships, how do cultural products construct and problematise the notions of victim, perpetrator, beneficiary, bystander, collaborator, and implicated subject? How can cultural products help us think about the ways ordinary citizens are involved in dictatorial regimes? What are the benefits and limitations of using aesthetically refined works to pose ethical questions about the past? By approaching these issues in a global, comparative, and transnational perspective, the Symposium also aims to explore the tensions between local and global circulation of narratives of implication assessing which visual and narrative tropes and templates are used to appeal to both global and local audiences.
Research Interests:
The Department of Italian at University College Cork and The Society for Italian Studies are delighted to host a two-day online Workshop for Early Career Academics (ECAs), which will address Methodologies and Theoretical Approaches within... more
The Department of Italian at University College Cork and The Society for Italian Studies are delighted to host a two-day online Workshop for Early Career Academics (ECAs), which will address Methodologies and Theoretical Approaches within the Humanities and their application to the study of Italian language and culture. The event will also host two professional development sessions, which are designed to enhance the professionalisation of Early Career Academics. These consist of a session on ‘Publishing your first academic book’ delivered by an editor from an academic press, and a roundtable on ‘What we look for in an article submission for an academic journal’, where the Editors of the journal Italian Studies, Professor Ruth Glynn, Dr Catherine Keen, and Professor Giuliana Pieri, will present on what they think constitutes a strong submission, while also identifying common pitfalls. They will also advise on writing an effective Book Review.
The workshop is structured around four dedicated sections, each one of which will comprise a panel of ECA speakers in dialogue with a keynote speaker:
1) Digital Humanities
Keynote: Prof. Massimo Riva, Brown University
Organiser: Dr Ana Stefanovska, UCC
2) Mediating Subjectivities
Keynote: Prof. Loredana Polezzi, Stony Brook University
Organiser: Dr Valentina Mele, UCC
3) Intermediality
Keynote: Prof. Giancarlo Lombardi, City University of New York
Organiser: Dr Guido Bartolini, UCC
4) Deconstructing Whiteness
Keynote: Dr. Gaia Giuliani, University of Coimbra
Organiser: Dr Guido Bartolini, UCC
Workshop Dates: 24-25 June 2021
Mode of Delivery: The event will be held online
Full Programme available here: SIS ECA Workshop 2021
Book of Abstracts available here: Book of Abstracts ECA 2021
This conference is generously supported by The Society for Italian Studies and the Department of Italian, UCC.
Register for free on Eventbrite using the following link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/italian-studies-theory-and-practice-an-sis-workshop-for-ecas-tickets-156425335389
Please note: All participants will need to be registered members of The Society for Italian Studies by 1 June 2021. http://italianstudies.org.uk/the-society/membership/
PANEL DESCRIPTIONS:
1) Digital Humanities
Panel Description: In recent years, the interdisciplinary area of Digital Humanities has promoted numerous projects carried out by researchers from all over the world. By bringing together theoretical approaches from the Humanities with new digital tools, the field has introduced innovative ways of approaching art, literature, history, and geography. The two-fold dimension of Digital Humanities, or the interest in the wide-ranging digital instruments that set the stage for new ways of studying Humanities, and the ongoing humanistic debates on the extent to which technology impacts today’s cultural studies, allows us to examine more in depth how this new field has enriched Italian studies, as well as the ways in which it has contributed to the creation, promotion, and reception of new cultural products in Italy. This panel welcomes papers interested in taking notice of the various forms of interaction between Digital Humanities and Italian culture, including digital archives, monographs, and online resources for the study and teaching of Italian language and literature, as well as papers that question the most recent ways of storytelling through digital platforms, from the Italian hypertext fiction to the social media phenomena such as Instapoets.
2) Translating Subjectivities
Panel Description: Translation is a crucial process contributing to the reception of Italian culture. This panel seeks to explore the many ways in which Italian authors and works have been appropriated, distributed, and canonised over the centuries, and by whom, aiming to investigate the complex dynamics of translation and reception as well as their impact on the construction of literary subjectivities and cultural histories both within and beyond Italy. Why and how have some authors received particular attention in a specific historical period, and how have translations of their works shaped and influenced current ways of reading and interpreting them? This panel welcomes proposals considering translation according to a broad meaning, including artistic, cinematic, and political translations, as well as theories and practices of translation and self-translation, and addressing ways in which these forms of articulating subjectivity emblematise or divert from a given historical and cultural context.
3) Intermediality
Panel Description: In the last two decades, the study of intermediality has grown into a lively field of research in the Humanities, allowing scholars to go beyond the notion of intertextuality and develop a particularly productive perspective on cultural production. Today, thanks to the language of intermediality, not only can we valorise boundary-crossing artistic practices, but also gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of cultural transmission, shedding new light on interartistic exchanges, canon formations, reception processes, and the circulation of cultural memories. While the creation of a specific terminology for the study of intermedial relations among the arts constitutes a development of contemporary culture, intermedial phenomena are not new per se and have long characterised Western culture, as the notions of ekphrasis and the Renaissance debate on the sister arts testify. For this panel, we welcome paper proposals that can address forms of intermediality in any era of Italian culture, focusing either on theoretical notions, such as those of multimediality, transmediality, and remediation, or specific case studies that offer examples of intermedial relationships within Italian cultural production.
4) Deconstructing Whiteness
Panel Description: The idea of whiteness has become increasingly important in the study of the construction of Italian national identity. Scholarship has shown that beyond overtly racist discourses that dominated Italian culture at different times, such as nineteenth century Lombrosian inspired science and the policies promoted by Fascism, the idea of Italianness in itself has been articulated in accordance with implicit racial ideas (Patriarca and Deplano 2018). Such racialised discourse has long remained unexplored in scholarship, also because of the universalist perspective that informed the political discourse of the Italian Republic, which objected to the use of the category of race. From this came the necessity of works that could use this conceptual tool in order to expose the role that whiteness played in the Italian identity process (Giuliani and Lombardi Diop 2013; InteRGRace 2018). This panel welcomes proposals that could either address the construction of whiteness across Italian cultural production or put such a racial trope into question by considering forms of hybrid identities and post-colonial perspectives within Italian culture.
The workshop is structured around four dedicated sections, each one of which will comprise a panel of ECA speakers in dialogue with a keynote speaker:
1) Digital Humanities
Keynote: Prof. Massimo Riva, Brown University
Organiser: Dr Ana Stefanovska, UCC
2) Mediating Subjectivities
Keynote: Prof. Loredana Polezzi, Stony Brook University
Organiser: Dr Valentina Mele, UCC
3) Intermediality
Keynote: Prof. Giancarlo Lombardi, City University of New York
Organiser: Dr Guido Bartolini, UCC
4) Deconstructing Whiteness
Keynote: Dr. Gaia Giuliani, University of Coimbra
Organiser: Dr Guido Bartolini, UCC
Workshop Dates: 24-25 June 2021
Mode of Delivery: The event will be held online
Full Programme available here: SIS ECA Workshop 2021
Book of Abstracts available here: Book of Abstracts ECA 2021
This conference is generously supported by The Society for Italian Studies and the Department of Italian, UCC.
Register for free on Eventbrite using the following link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/italian-studies-theory-and-practice-an-sis-workshop-for-ecas-tickets-156425335389
Please note: All participants will need to be registered members of The Society for Italian Studies by 1 June 2021. http://italianstudies.org.uk/the-society/membership/
PANEL DESCRIPTIONS:
1) Digital Humanities
Panel Description: In recent years, the interdisciplinary area of Digital Humanities has promoted numerous projects carried out by researchers from all over the world. By bringing together theoretical approaches from the Humanities with new digital tools, the field has introduced innovative ways of approaching art, literature, history, and geography. The two-fold dimension of Digital Humanities, or the interest in the wide-ranging digital instruments that set the stage for new ways of studying Humanities, and the ongoing humanistic debates on the extent to which technology impacts today’s cultural studies, allows us to examine more in depth how this new field has enriched Italian studies, as well as the ways in which it has contributed to the creation, promotion, and reception of new cultural products in Italy. This panel welcomes papers interested in taking notice of the various forms of interaction between Digital Humanities and Italian culture, including digital archives, monographs, and online resources for the study and teaching of Italian language and literature, as well as papers that question the most recent ways of storytelling through digital platforms, from the Italian hypertext fiction to the social media phenomena such as Instapoets.
2) Translating Subjectivities
Panel Description: Translation is a crucial process contributing to the reception of Italian culture. This panel seeks to explore the many ways in which Italian authors and works have been appropriated, distributed, and canonised over the centuries, and by whom, aiming to investigate the complex dynamics of translation and reception as well as their impact on the construction of literary subjectivities and cultural histories both within and beyond Italy. Why and how have some authors received particular attention in a specific historical period, and how have translations of their works shaped and influenced current ways of reading and interpreting them? This panel welcomes proposals considering translation according to a broad meaning, including artistic, cinematic, and political translations, as well as theories and practices of translation and self-translation, and addressing ways in which these forms of articulating subjectivity emblematise or divert from a given historical and cultural context.
3) Intermediality
Panel Description: In the last two decades, the study of intermediality has grown into a lively field of research in the Humanities, allowing scholars to go beyond the notion of intertextuality and develop a particularly productive perspective on cultural production. Today, thanks to the language of intermediality, not only can we valorise boundary-crossing artistic practices, but also gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of cultural transmission, shedding new light on interartistic exchanges, canon formations, reception processes, and the circulation of cultural memories. While the creation of a specific terminology for the study of intermedial relations among the arts constitutes a development of contemporary culture, intermedial phenomena are not new per se and have long characterised Western culture, as the notions of ekphrasis and the Renaissance debate on the sister arts testify. For this panel, we welcome paper proposals that can address forms of intermediality in any era of Italian culture, focusing either on theoretical notions, such as those of multimediality, transmediality, and remediation, or specific case studies that offer examples of intermedial relationships within Italian cultural production.
4) Deconstructing Whiteness
Panel Description: The idea of whiteness has become increasingly important in the study of the construction of Italian national identity. Scholarship has shown that beyond overtly racist discourses that dominated Italian culture at different times, such as nineteenth century Lombrosian inspired science and the policies promoted by Fascism, the idea of Italianness in itself has been articulated in accordance with implicit racial ideas (Patriarca and Deplano 2018). Such racialised discourse has long remained unexplored in scholarship, also because of the universalist perspective that informed the political discourse of the Italian Republic, which objected to the use of the category of race. From this came the necessity of works that could use this conceptual tool in order to expose the role that whiteness played in the Italian identity process (Giuliani and Lombardi Diop 2013; InteRGRace 2018). This panel welcomes proposals that could either address the construction of whiteness across Italian cultural production or put such a racial trope into question by considering forms of hybrid identities and post-colonial perspectives within Italian culture.
Research Interests:
The Mediated Memories of Responsibility seminars bring together scholars working on the cultural representation of the violent past of the twentieth century across a variety of media and cultures. The seminar series examines the... more
The Mediated Memories of Responsibility seminars bring together scholars working on the cultural representation of the violent past of the twentieth century across a variety of media and cultures. The seminar series examines the contribution of cultural products to exposing the crimes of perpetrators and disseminating a sense of responsibility for the past in relation to events such as colonialism, wars, and dictatorships. Interdisciplinary in nature, the seminars will explore the construction of the idea of responsibility for past wrongdoings across textual and visual media while addressing ethical questions stemming from the study of past atrocities. Bringing together scholars working across the disciplines, the series aims to foster a cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches in Modern Languages, History, and Memory Studies.
This seminar has received generous support from the Humanities and Arts Research Institute (HARI) of Royal Holloway University of London, and University Council of Modern Languages (UCML)
This seminar has received generous support from the Humanities and Arts Research Institute (HARI) of Royal Holloway University of London, and University Council of Modern Languages (UCML)
Research Interests:
The IMLR Graduate Forum is a monthly meeting, taking place in Senate House, run by and for graduate students from the Colleges and Institutes in and around London, working on any cultural aspect of those parts of the world where Germanic... more
The IMLR Graduate Forum is a monthly meeting, taking place in Senate House, run by and for graduate students from the Colleges and Institutes in and around London, working on any cultural aspect of those parts of the world where Germanic or Romance languages are spoken. Forum members have the opportunity to present their research and discuss their work in an informal setting. As well as stimulating intellectual debate, the Forum is a great social occasion, giving students of the humanities, from their first year to the writing-up stage, the opportunity to meet and be inspired by each other’s work.
This postgraduate conference offered a platform for the discussion of the phenomena of war and conflict in Italian culture. Considered in their wide implications, war and conflict constituted two categories particularly fruitful for the... more
This postgraduate conference offered a platform for the discussion of the phenomena of war and conflict in Italian culture. Considered in their wide implications, war and conflict constituted two categories particularly fruitful for the exploration of the culture of an often divided and polarised country such as Italy. The conference had a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach in order to reflect the variety of research carried out by the postgraduate members of the SIS.
Research Interests:
Featured Member shines a spotlight on the diverse research interests of, and the exciting projects undertaken by, those affiliated with the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative. In this thirteenth instalment of the series, we speak to Guido... more
Featured Member shines a spotlight on the diverse research interests of, and the exciting projects undertaken by, those affiliated with the Cultural Memory Studies Initiative. In this thirteenth instalment of the series, we speak to Guido Bartolini, a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University working on the memory of Fascism in contemporary Italian literature. Dr Bartolini’s current project builds on and extends his previous research on the representation of the Second World War in pre-1989 Italian literature. While his peripatetic career trajectory has taken him from Italy to Belgium via the UK and Ireland, his overall research focus has remained remarkably constant, allowing him to make a singular contribution to literary studies, memory studies, and Italian memory politics. Some of the topics discussed in this conversation are the origins of Dr Bartolini’s interest in issues of memory, his hopes of generating societal impact, the notion of self-absolution for involvement in Fascism and how it is being counteracted, and the pros and cons of finding oneself at a distance from one’s object of study.
Research Interests:
The study of the cultural memory of World War II is still affected by disciplinary and language boundaries and would benefit from comparative and transnational approaches. This is particularly true in the case of the cultural memory... more
The study of the cultural memory of World War II is still affected by disciplinary and language boundaries and would benefit from comparative and transnational approaches. This is particularly true in the case of the cultural memory developed in countries that were former members of the Axis Powers, which tended to narrate the war according to narratives that were affected by the common experience of defeat and the necessity to evade blame for the past.
To contribute to transnationalising the study of cultural memory of World War II, I am interested in building a network of scholars who work on the representation of World War II in national cultures of former Axis Powers states or in states that were associated to the Axis through collaborationist regimes. If you are a researcher working on this topic through the study of any kind of cultural products (literature, cinema, graphic novels, etc…), please get in touch by writing to Dr Guido Bartolini at axis.cultural.memory@gmail.com.
To contribute to transnationalising the study of cultural memory of World War II, I am interested in building a network of scholars who work on the representation of World War II in national cultures of former Axis Powers states or in states that were associated to the Axis through collaborationist regimes. If you are a researcher working on this topic through the study of any kind of cultural products (literature, cinema, graphic novels, etc…), please get in touch by writing to Dr Guido Bartolini at axis.cultural.memory@gmail.com.
Research Interests:
With the one-hundredth anniversary of Fascism's seizure of power approaching, the time seems ripe for reconsidering how Italian culture has negotiated the legacy of its totalitarian past. Essays are sought for a special issue of Annali... more
With the one-hundredth anniversary of Fascism's seizure of power approaching, the time seems ripe for reconsidering how Italian culture has negotiated the legacy of its totalitarian past. Essays are sought for a special issue of Annali d'Italianistica Volume 41 (2023) that will explore the representation of Fascism in Italian cultural production from the postwar years to the present. The volume aims to critically assess how literature, cinema, and visual arts have represented and are representing the Fascist past and how they have contributed to constructing a memory of the dictatorship. Guest editors seek contributions that examine the representation of Fascism in specific cultural products (including but not limited to literature, cinema, and visual arts). Intermedial analyses are particularly welcome.
Research Interests:
This PhD thesis analyses a selection of texts that are part of the Italian literature of the Axis War, written between 1945 and 1975, examining the relationship between literary representations and the Italian collective memory discourse... more
This PhD thesis analyses a selection of texts that are part of the Italian literature of the Axis War, written between 1945 and 1975, examining the relationship between literary representations and the Italian collective memory discourse of World War Two. This study builds on a number of theoretical frameworks, combining memory studies, historiography, thematic criticism, and narratology, which are used to explore the relations between literature and memory narratives about the past.
The analysis of the primary literature centres on those figures of repetition (topoi, themes, masterplots) that characterise the texts of the corpus and that have been taken as points of connection between literary representations and collective memory narratives. Through the study of the most recurrent tropes across the corpus, this thesis pinpoints the existence of dominant structures that affected the literary representation of the Axis War, which have strong links to the ways in which the Second World War and the Fascist past have been narrativised in postwar Italy.
The literature of the Axis War represents the Italians as innocent victims, it abstains from portraying them as perpetrators of violence, and develops textual strategies that avoid conveying to their readers any sense of guilt, with only a minority of texts resisting this overbearing representation. These aspects are analysed through a series of close readings, which, whilst forming the backbone of the thesis, intersect with the examination of several theoretical issues, such as collective memory, the literary concepts of themes, motifs, and masterplots, the idea of silence in war writings, and questions of individual and collective guilt.
The analysis of the primary literature centres on those figures of repetition (topoi, themes, masterplots) that characterise the texts of the corpus and that have been taken as points of connection between literary representations and collective memory narratives. Through the study of the most recurrent tropes across the corpus, this thesis pinpoints the existence of dominant structures that affected the literary representation of the Axis War, which have strong links to the ways in which the Second World War and the Fascist past have been narrativised in postwar Italy.
The literature of the Axis War represents the Italians as innocent victims, it abstains from portraying them as perpetrators of violence, and develops textual strategies that avoid conveying to their readers any sense of guilt, with only a minority of texts resisting this overbearing representation. These aspects are analysed through a series of close readings, which, whilst forming the backbone of the thesis, intersect with the examination of several theoretical issues, such as collective memory, the literary concepts of themes, motifs, and masterplots, the idea of silence in war writings, and questions of individual and collective guilt.
Research Interests:
Vasco Pratolini’s Un eroe del nostro tempo (1949) and Alberto Moravia’s Il conformista (1951) share an odd similarity: these novels were harshly dismissed by their contemporary critics and represent two of the least successful works of... more
Vasco Pratolini’s Un eroe del nostro tempo (1949) and Alberto Moravia’s Il conformista (1951) share an odd similarity: these novels were harshly dismissed by their contemporary critics and represent two of the least successful works of these otherwise widely celebrated writers. Both texts featured a Fascist character as main protagonist, a common feature that contributed to their problematic reception. What most critics failed to notice, though, is that through their protagonists, these novels set out an interrelated reflection on the nature of Fascism that contrasts an essentialist interpretation of it with a psycho-sociological one. By relying on both close-readings and the study of postwar critical reception, the article shows the limits of Pratolini’s work, which conceptualises Fascism in accordance to a deviancy trope, and re-interprets Moravia’s novel as a coherent narrative revolving around the theme of implication in Fascist crimes.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This article consists of interviews with five world experts on the memory of Fascism. Taking the centenary of the March on Rome as an opportunity to rethink the development of Italian collective memory, the five interviewees were asked to... more
This article consists of interviews with five world experts on the memory of Fascism. Taking the centenary of the March on Rome as an opportunity to rethink the development of Italian collective memory, the five interviewees were asked to reflect on different aspects of the Italian memory of Fascism, addressing the dominant conceptualisations, limits, and transformations of the discourses used to narrate Fascism in Italian culture. The result of these conversations, which touch upon issues related to the memory of the Resistance, the Second World War, the Holocaust, and colonialism, is a rich overview of the main trends and current trajectories of Italian memory culture, which can help us imagine the future directions of the Italian memory of Fascism and enhance interventions in this field by memory scholars and memory activists.
Research Interests:
La guerra dell’Asse, combattuta dall’Italia fascista a fianco della Germania di Hitler, è per lungo tempo rimasta ai margini della ricerca accademica italiana ed internazionale. Negli ultimi venti anni, tuttavia, lo stato degli studi è... more
La guerra dell’Asse, combattuta dall’Italia fascista a fianco della Germania di Hitler, è per lungo tempo rimasta ai margini della ricerca accademica italiana ed internazionale. Negli ultimi venti anni, tuttavia, lo stato degli studi è profondamente cambiato ed una nuova generazione di storici ha mostrato un rinnovato interesse in questa fase della seconda guerra mondiale, pubblicando numerose opere sulle occupazioni italiane in Grecia, nei Balcani e nell’Unione Sovietica (Rodogno 2003; Gobetti 2007; Schlemmer 2009; Giusti 2016). Rispetto all’approfondirsi della comprensione storica, lo studio della produzione culturale legata alla guerra dell’Asse resta ancora parziale e limitato, concentrato più su una serie di casi specifici che su di una visione di insieme. Questo articolo vuole offrire una mappatura della rappresentazione cinematografica italiana della guerra dell’Asse nel corso del novecento, ricostruendo le fasi salienti del complicato rapporto che il cinema italiano ha instaurato con il difficile lascito della guerra fascista.
Partendo dalle numerose pellicole prodotte nel dopoguerra, già oggetto di recenti indagini scientifiche (Fantoni 2018), l’articolo mostra che a questa iniziale, acritica, ma ampia produzione, incentrata sui valori del nazionalismo cattolico, che recuperava stilemi del tardo cinema di guerra fascista (Ben Ghiat 2015; Zambenedetti 2017), è seguita una fase di progressiva estromissione della guerra dell’Asse dal panorama cinematografico italiano. Per illustrare tale processo l’articolo prende in esame una serie di film progettati negli anni 50 e 60 che, a seguito di meccanismi censorii diretti ed indiretti, non furono mai realizzati, come le sceneggiature sull’occupazione italiana in Grecia di Ugo Pirro e Renzo Renzi e gli adattamenti dei testi letterari di Renzo Biasion e Mario Rigoni Stern, che avevano attratto l’attenzione di registi del calibro di Roberto Rossellini ed Ermanno Olmi. Anche in conseguenza del fallimento di tali progetti, nei decenni successivi solo un numero esiguo di film ha trattato in modo specifico la guerra dell’Asse, dandone una rappresentazione edulcorata e auto-assolutoria, tutta incentrata sul mito identitario degli Italiani brava gente. L’articolo analizza questa costruzione discorsiva, che si è progressivamente affermata come perno centrale della memoria italiana della seconda guerra mondiale (Focardi 2013), concentrandosi su due film, I due colonnelli di Steno e Italiani Brava Gente di Giuseppe De Santis, mostrando il ruolo fondamentale della rielaborazione cinematografica nella trasmissione della memoria pubblica del passato (Erll 2011).
I due filoni principali della rappresentazione italiana della guerra dell’Asse indagati da questo articolo, ossia quello acritico nazionalista, dominante nel dopoguerra, e quello successivo, più rado, ma costante, incentrato sull’idea autoassolutoria degli italiani buoni ed innocui, hanno mascherato il ruolo di aggressore dell’esercito italiano sotto il fascismo, impedendo che il cinema potesse fungere da piattaforma per una riflessione sulle colpe e responsabilità degli italiani in relazione alla seconda guerra mondiale. L’articolo si chiude sondando se una rappresentazione diversa della guerra dell’Asse, che consentisse una riflessione critica sul passato, sia mai stata tentata dal cinema italiano, offrendone esempi tratti dai film Le soldatesse di Valerio Zurlini e Il generale dell'armata morta di Luciano Tovoli.
Partendo dalle numerose pellicole prodotte nel dopoguerra, già oggetto di recenti indagini scientifiche (Fantoni 2018), l’articolo mostra che a questa iniziale, acritica, ma ampia produzione, incentrata sui valori del nazionalismo cattolico, che recuperava stilemi del tardo cinema di guerra fascista (Ben Ghiat 2015; Zambenedetti 2017), è seguita una fase di progressiva estromissione della guerra dell’Asse dal panorama cinematografico italiano. Per illustrare tale processo l’articolo prende in esame una serie di film progettati negli anni 50 e 60 che, a seguito di meccanismi censorii diretti ed indiretti, non furono mai realizzati, come le sceneggiature sull’occupazione italiana in Grecia di Ugo Pirro e Renzo Renzi e gli adattamenti dei testi letterari di Renzo Biasion e Mario Rigoni Stern, che avevano attratto l’attenzione di registi del calibro di Roberto Rossellini ed Ermanno Olmi. Anche in conseguenza del fallimento di tali progetti, nei decenni successivi solo un numero esiguo di film ha trattato in modo specifico la guerra dell’Asse, dandone una rappresentazione edulcorata e auto-assolutoria, tutta incentrata sul mito identitario degli Italiani brava gente. L’articolo analizza questa costruzione discorsiva, che si è progressivamente affermata come perno centrale della memoria italiana della seconda guerra mondiale (Focardi 2013), concentrandosi su due film, I due colonnelli di Steno e Italiani Brava Gente di Giuseppe De Santis, mostrando il ruolo fondamentale della rielaborazione cinematografica nella trasmissione della memoria pubblica del passato (Erll 2011).
I due filoni principali della rappresentazione italiana della guerra dell’Asse indagati da questo articolo, ossia quello acritico nazionalista, dominante nel dopoguerra, e quello successivo, più rado, ma costante, incentrato sull’idea autoassolutoria degli italiani buoni ed innocui, hanno mascherato il ruolo di aggressore dell’esercito italiano sotto il fascismo, impedendo che il cinema potesse fungere da piattaforma per una riflessione sulle colpe e responsabilità degli italiani in relazione alla seconda guerra mondiale. L’articolo si chiude sondando se una rappresentazione diversa della guerra dell’Asse, che consentisse una riflessione critica sul passato, sia mai stata tentata dal cinema italiano, offrendone esempi tratti dai film Le soldatesse di Valerio Zurlini e Il generale dell'armata morta di Luciano Tovoli.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This report gives an account of the first two sessions of ‘Mediated Memories of Responsibility’, a cycle of four seminars hosted at the IMLR Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory throughout the 2020-2021 academic year. Curated by Guido... more
This report gives an account of the first two sessions of ‘Mediated Memories of Responsibility’, a cycle of four seminars hosted at the IMLR Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory throughout the 2020-2021 academic year. Curated by Guido Bartolini (University College Cork) and co-organised by Joseph Ford (IMLR) and Selena Daly (Royal Holloway), the seminar series explores the roles that cultural products play in addressing past atrocities and injustices, giving particular focus to the memories of wrongdoings committed by European societies during the twentieth century.
Research Interests:
The Axis War had a complex legacy in postwar Italy: it remained at the margin of the commemorations promoted by the state, was often overlooked by historical enquiries, and was generally neglected by cinematic mediations. As a result, the... more
The Axis War had a complex legacy in postwar Italy: it remained at the margin of the commemorations promoted by the state, was often overlooked by historical enquiries, and was generally neglected by cinematic mediations. As a result, the transmission and circulation of memory narratives of the Axis War within the Italian community of memory have been largely hampered. Yet, memories of the Axis campaigns and occupations circulated across the Italian community thanks, above all, to narrative texts, which constituted the main vectors of memory of Italy's participation in World War Two as a Fascist nation.
In this paper I would like to explore the representations developed by the Axis War literature in three decades after the end of the Second World War. I will show that among literary vectors of memory three texts, written in the 1950s by Pirro, Terrosi, and Lunardi, helped readers gain awareness of Italy's role as a repressive power, thanks to representations of the Italian use of violence and a thematisation of the protagonists' sense of guilt. However, the paper will highlight that a similar narrativisation of the war years, which encouraged readers to take on responsibility for Italy's Fascist past, has constituted an exception. The majority of narrative texts dealing with the Axis War presented the Italians as victims of war and adopted a series of topoi that conveyed the idea of Italy's innocence. This overbearing representation, continuously remediated across Italian society, hindered the formation of a responsible memory of the Axis War and contributed to evading Italy's responsibilities for Fascism.
In this paper I would like to explore the representations developed by the Axis War literature in three decades after the end of the Second World War. I will show that among literary vectors of memory three texts, written in the 1950s by Pirro, Terrosi, and Lunardi, helped readers gain awareness of Italy's role as a repressive power, thanks to representations of the Italian use of violence and a thematisation of the protagonists' sense of guilt. However, the paper will highlight that a similar narrativisation of the war years, which encouraged readers to take on responsibility for Italy's Fascist past, has constituted an exception. The majority of narrative texts dealing with the Axis War presented the Italians as victims of war and adopted a series of topoi that conveyed the idea of Italy's innocence. This overbearing representation, continuously remediated across Italian society, hindered the formation of a responsible memory of the Axis War and contributed to evading Italy's responsibilities for Fascism.
Research Interests:
The article discusses the story of the armata sagapò as a war rumour, putting it in relation to three other unverified stories of the Second World War that circulated in post-war Italy, i.e. the anecdote of the Soviet dispatch number 630,... more
The article discusses the story of the armata sagapò as a war rumour, putting it in relation to three other unverified stories of the Second World War that circulated in post-war Italy, i.e. the anecdote of the Soviet dispatch number 630, the speech attributed to Churchill on the performance of the Folgore divisions at El Alamein, and the myth of Italiani brava gente. It shows that all the considered narratives were structured around a common pro- cess of ventriloquisation and, by relying on the sociological scholarship that has investigated the phenomenon of rumours, argues that the formation and circulation of these pieces of hearsay were related to the process of renegotiation of Italian identity that followed the collapse of Fascism. While doing this, the article questions the veracity of the story of the sagapò nickname putting forward a new explanation for its creation.
Research Interests:
After World War II the memory of the war campaigns fought by Fascist Italy in the Axis War tended to be marginalised in the Italian memory culture. Among these neglected war theatres the Eastern Front was the one that received more... more
After World War II the memory of the war campaigns fought by Fascist Italy in the Axis War tended to be marginalised in the Italian memory culture. Among these neglected war theatres the Eastern Front was the one that received more attention: not only did it constitute a matter of political disputes during the 1950s, but was also a frequent subject of literary depictions. Yet the representation of Italy's participation in the invasion of the Soviet Union developed by postwar Italian culture was particularly biased and uncritical. Affected by suffering and by the experience of defeat, the memory narratives about this war campaign conveyed to the Italians a series of self-absolving myths, which were structured around concepts drawn from Catholic culture. Numerous historical works published in the last decade have exposed the limits of this memory discourse and might have paved the way to a renovation of the Italian memory of the 'Russian campaign'.
In this presentation, my primary aim is to develop a theoretical argument about the idea of responsibility and how it can inform a more just memory of the past. To do so, however, I will begin with a detour into the Italian memory of... more
In this presentation, my primary aim is to develop a theoretical argument about the idea of responsibility and how it can inform a more just memory of the past. To do so, however, I will begin with a detour into the Italian memory of Fascism, which is the broader context in which my research on Italian literature takes place. I will first provide a brief historical contextualisation and then a short discussion of the field of Italian literature. Finally, I will end the paper with the theoretical points I want to make.
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Responsibility in Memory: Re-thinking the dealing with the past agenda through theories of responsibility, History & Responsibility: Doing History In Times Of Conflicting Political Demands, 5th network conference of the International Network for Theory of History, Lisbon, Portugal, 22-24 May 2024more
For the past twenty-years, memory poliCcs and memory research across the world have been informed by what Barbara Misztal has called the “dealing with the past” agenda (Misztal 2010). This mnemonic perspecCve, which was strongly enhanced... more
For the past twenty-years, memory poliCcs and memory research across the world have been informed by what Barbara Misztal has called the “dealing with the past” agenda (Misztal 2010). This mnemonic perspecCve, which was strongly enhanced by the EU insCtuCons, operated under the assumpCon that the memorialisaCon of past crimes can strengthen democraCc values, fight racism, and prevent the reoccurrence of dictatorships and violent conflicts. This model has recently come under the scruCny of several scholars who have criCcised many of its presupposiCons—showing that these were based on ideas stemming from Western psychology and a ChrisCan concepCon of healing—and have argued that there is no evidence that such model for memory poliCcs can actually achieve its supposed goals (Gensburger Lefranc 2020; David 2020; Pisanty 2020). Such criCcism of the very basis of Cosmopolitan memory appeared at the same Cme of a growing interest in the themes of responsibility and complicity across varied academic disciplines. This paper argues that the interdisciplinary theoreCcal work that has been carried out around the noCon of responsibility can offer new remedies to the shortcomings that scholars have found in memory poliCcs across the world. Weaving together the works of varied theorists, puXng in dialogue poliCcal scienCsts (Young, Booth, and Mihai), historians (Torpey and Bloxham), philosophers (Thompson and Miller), and memory studies scholar (Rothberg and Sanyal), this paper aims to present a conceptualisaCon of responsibility based on the ideas of implicaCon, distributed agency, mulCtemporal solidarity, and an inclusive sense of proximity through which it is possible to establish a renewed memory culture that can address the limits of the dealing with the past agenda.
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Fascism and the Far-Right in Contemporary Italy: Thinking Critically about the Past with Francesca Melandriʼs Sangue Giusto, The phenomenon of the New Right in European and Latin American narrative literature: New perpetrators - old patterns of thinking?, Freie Universität, Berlin, 13 October 2023more
Since the 1990s, Italian memory culture has undergone a distinctive shift characterized by a "Revisionist" discourse. Advocates of this perspective sought to re-evaluate fundamental aspects of Italian collective memory, resulting in a... more
Since the 1990s, Italian memory culture has undergone a distinctive shift characterized by a "Revisionist" discourse. Advocates of this perspective sought to re-evaluate fundamental aspects of Italian collective memory, resulting in a diversification of narratives through which Republican Italy recounted its Fascist past and World War II. Scholars, however, have not failed to notice that these mnemonic interventions primarily functioned as a legitimizing strategy employed by emerging new-right parties, such as Alleanza Nazionale and Berlusconi’s Forza Italy, as they sought to affirm themselves in the national political landscape (Bongiovanni 2003; Focardi 2005). Such political manipulation of Italian memory was further amplified by a proliferation of novels and films challenging the country’s Antifascist tradition, fostering discourses that portrayed Italy as a victim during World War II (Cooke 2011; Knittel 2015). The revisionist discourse developed in the 1990s and 2000s disseminated uncritical views about the past, providing an ideal environment for the rise of populist right-wing sentiments, ultimately culminating in the ascent of Giorgia Meloni's post-fascist party in the Italian political arena. This paper contends that contemporary Italian literature is forging new pathways to engage with the past, effectively countering right-wing revisionism. This argument is substantiated through an analysis of Francesca Melandri’s Sangue giusto (2017). By re-considering the relationship that today’s citizens should establish with Fascist crimes, this family saga not only sheds light on the right-wing instrumentalization of the past, but it also develops critical agonistic approaches (Cento Bull and Hansen 2016) that overcome narratives of victimisation through a new attention given to the issue of Italian implication in (Rothberg 2019) and responsibility for the past.
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Throughout the 20 thcentury, the representation of the Axis War in Italian literature was strongly affected by recurrent tropes that aimed to minimise the collective responsibility for the war and conceal the implication of the Italian... more
Throughout the 20 thcentury, the representation of the Axis War in Italian literature was strongly affected by recurrent tropes that aimed to minimise the collective responsibility for the war and conceal the implication of the Italian people in the crimes of Fascism (Bartolini 2021). Disseminating the main stereotypes of Italian collective memory, Italian literature consistently conveyed to its readers the idea that during World War II the Italians acted decently and in ways that starkly contrasted with the behaviour of the Germans and the most radicalised Fascist supporters. Besides the most renowned stereotypes – such as the figures of the Good Italian and the evil German, which have been largely discussed by the historiographical scholarship of the past two decades (Focardi 2013) – Italian literature deployed several other tropes to articulate an unethical sense of innocence for the past. Building on James Wertsch’s work (2002), the paper will show that the self-absolving perspective supported by the Italian literary texts strongly relied on typified plot-lines centred on the experiences of sacrifice and conversion. Thanks to these two masterplots (Abbott 2008), Italian writers narrated the Axis War through stories of atonement and redemption that, as the paper will argue, allowed a conceptualisation of the war that was completely oblivious of questions of guilt and responsibility.
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In the international scholarship of Memory Studies, the 1990s is generally conceived as the decade of the so-called memory boom, which saw the explosion of cultural discourses in the West about the memory of the past both within and... more
In the international scholarship of Memory Studies, the 1990s is generally conceived as the decade of the so-called memory boom, which saw the explosion of cultural discourses in the West about the memory of the past both within and beyond academia (Huyssen 2003). In this regard, Italy was no exception: not only did the years that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall see a dramatic reshape of Italy's political order, but also the emergence of fierce discussions about the legacy of the past. The main historical debates of the time were centred on the 'discovery' of divided memories related to the Antifascist Resistance (Contini 1997; Pezzino 1997; Portelli 1999) and the controversies produced by right-wing revisionist waves that progressively challenged the Antifascist paradigm (Luzzatto 2004; Foot 2011). As Alessandro Portelli noticed, in these years the core of the debate did not concern so much Fascism itself but rather the legacy of Antifascism in a nation that was going through a phase of disruption and change (Portelli 1997). What remained often unnoticed was that, together with these controversies, the 1990s also saw the emergence of new, more complex and critical stories about the Fascist past that started to circulate through cultural prodcuts. Presenting some preliminary results of the FWO research project Facing up to the Dictatorial Past: Cultural Memory and the Responsibility for Fascism in post-1990 Italian literature, in this paper I will discuss the conceptualisation of Fascism developed by novels written at the end of the twentieth century, such as Carlo Lucarelli's Carta Bianca (1990), Alessandro Gennari's Le ragioni del sangue (1995), and Franca Cavagnoli's Una pioggia bruciante (2000). The analysis will show that these novels went beyond the tenets of the cultural representation of Fascism that had dominated the Cold War era and developed a more critical engagement with the legacy of the dictatorship. In this reading, the 1990s will be presented as a turning point that paved the way to new conceptualisations of Italy's relationship with its Fascist past. Bio: Guido Bartolini is a Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Cork where he works on the cultural memory of Italian Fascism in literature and cinema and the idea of responsibility for the past. He studied at
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Literary texts are widely recognised as important contributors in the diffusion of historical knowledge since they can create immersive, complex, and emotionally charged reconstructions of the past that lead readers to develop a thorough... more
Literary texts are widely recognised as important contributors in the diffusion of historical knowledge since they can create immersive, complex, and emotionally charged reconstructions of the past that lead readers to develop a thorough and personal engagement with the subject of history (Landsberg 2004; Rigney 2008; Kansteiner 2018). Besides highlighting this power, scholars of literature and cultural memory have often claimed that literary texts support and develop counter-discourses bringing to the fore events that remain forgotten or unnoticed in other cultural practices (Hartmann 1996, Neumann 2008, Erll 2011). On the basis of this perspective, how should we conceptualise the relationship between Literature and History? Do literary texts anticipate results of historical enquiry, or on the contrary, can they only disseminate what historians have already discovered? This paper will address these issues by considering examples taken from Italian culture of the 20 th century. It will show that there are clear cases, such as Ennio Flaiano’s anti-colonial novel Tempo di uccidere or Beppe Fenioglio’s short stories about the Italian antifascist Resistance, in which literature anticipates the results of historical research. Yet, through an examination of the wide corpus of literary texts that represented, in the postwar era, the Italian military participation in World War II, the paper will show that in many—perhaps most—cases, literary texts contribute to disseminating dominant stereotypes of their time, which only a critical historical work can fully debunk.
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The Axis War, which Italy fought as a Fascist country from June 1940 to September 1943 has long remained at the margin of the Italian collective memory. Giorgio Rochat defined the memory of this segment of World War II as a ‘discontinuous’... more
The Axis War, which Italy fought as a Fascist country from June 1940 to September 1943 has long remained at the margin of the Italian collective memory. Giorgio Rochat defined the memory of this segment of World War II as a ‘discontinuous’ memory: while few events, such as the retreat from the Eastern front, the defeat at El-Alamein, and the massacre of Cephalonia, acquired a certain relevance within the Italian public discourses, many other aspects of the war, especially the war crimes committed by the Italian army, remained shrouded by silence. In spite of the peripheral role it played within Italian collective memory, the Axis War has often been the object of literary mediation. Numerous literary texts represented the war campaigns and occupations in Greece, North Africa, the Balkans, and Russia passing down conceptualisations of this war to Italian readers. In this paper, I will offer an analysis of this broad cultural production presenting some of the main results discussed in the monograph The Italian Literature of the Axis War: Memories of Self Absolution and the Quest of Responsibility (Palgrave, 2021). The paper will offer an overview of the main topoi, themes, and plot structures characterising a corpus of more than 30 texts formed by novels, short stories, and memoirs, which were published over three decades after the end of World War II. By combining notions of Thematic Criticism and Memory Studies, the paper will show that Italian literature transmitted a selective and partial depiction of the Italian war experience narrating the Axis War through a series of self-absolving strategies that impeded the circulation of the idea of responsibility for the past with only a handful of texts resisting this overbearing conceptualisation.
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Alberto Moravia’s Il conformista and Vasco Pratolini’s Un eroe del nostro tempo offer, I argue, an interrelated but eventually opposed interpretation of the nature of Fascism. In this paper, I put forward this reading of the two novels... more
Alberto Moravia’s Il conformista and Vasco Pratolini’s Un eroe del nostro tempo offer, I argue, an interrelated but eventually opposed interpretation of the nature of Fascism. In this paper, I put forward this reading of the two novels against the backdrop of their postwar reception, which has consistently overlooked the contribution of the two novels to the articulation of a memory of Fascism.
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Throughout the 20th century, Italy’s participation in the Fascist war of aggression of World War II was narrated through self-absolving narratives that revolved around the stereotypes of Italiani brava gente and German evil and that... more
Throughout the 20th century, Italy’s participation in the Fascist war of aggression of World War II was narrated through self-absolving narratives that revolved around the stereotypes of Italiani brava gente and German evil and that overlooked the war crimes that the Italians had committed during the military occupations of foreign territories (Focardi 2013). Literary texts were instrumental in the dissemination of this perspective since they reproduced ideas that dominated public memory by representing the Axis War through self-exculpatory tropes and redemptive narrative structures that downplayed the notions of guilt and responsibility for the past (Bartolini 2021). This paper will argue that this self-absolving framework was not specific to the memory of World War II, but also affected the narrativisation of other segments of Italian 20th century history, and it constitutes, therefore, an unavoidable issue for those who want to reflect on the shortcomings of Italy’s memory culture. To develop this argument, the paper will examine the representation of the Holocaust within the literature of the Axis War. It will show that texts that dismiss the Italian responsibility for the military occupations fail to engage with the deportation of the Jews in ethically productive ways; by contrast, the few texts that address the Italian war crimes also manage to generate textual spaces to reflect on the Holocaust in its complexities.
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With the one-hundredth anniversary of Fascism's seizure of power approaching, the time seems ripe for reconsidering how Italian culture negotiated the legacy of its totalitarian past. The current dominant paradigm, supported by major... more
With the one-hundredth anniversary of Fascism's seizure of power approaching, the time seems ripe for reconsidering how Italian culture negotiated the legacy of its totalitarian past. The current dominant paradigm, supported by major scholars of Italian Fascism, contends that Italy has proven unable to deal with the difficult heritage of the dictatorship (Ben-Ghiat 1999; Pavone 2004; Labanca 2005; Schwarz 2010; Focardi 2013; Carter and Martin 2019). Despite its validity, this paradigm remains incredibly ill-defined and under-theorised, since the scholarship has not openly addressed the reasons why Italy's long process of negotiation over its totalitarian past should be deemed deficient. Recent developments within the field of Memory Studies can offer a way forward to better understand this aspect of Italian memory culture. Thanks to studies that managed to go beyond the victim-perpetrator dichotomy by considering the various degrees of individuals implication in a history of injustice (Meister 2010; Thanh Nguyen 2016; Robbins 2017; Rothberg 2019), we now have a nuanced theoretical language to explore the complex ethical positions that people occupy vis-à-vis the past. Presenting some preliminary results of my postdoctoral research project on the construction of a sense of Responsibility for Fascism in the Italian literature and cinema of the postwar decades, I will examine the articulation of the idea of implication in a corpus of Italian novels that represented the Fascist dictatorship. The analysis will show that in Italian culture the idea of the implication of the Italian people in the crimes of the dictatorship was developed only in extremely selective and partial manners. The limited articulation of the notion of implication has constituted, I will argue, one of the major shortcomings of the Italian memory of Fascism during the twentieth century, which facilitated the narrativisation of the past through a series of self-absolving strategies.
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The Italian collective memory of World War II has long been shaped around self-absolving ideas. Throughout the twentieth century, reassuring myths about the Italian participation in the war dominated the public scene while a layer of... more
The Italian collective memory of World War II has long been shaped around self-absolving ideas. Throughout the twentieth century, reassuring myths about the Italian participation in the war dominated the public scene while a layer of silence shrouded the crimes that the Italians had committed in the foreign lands they had occupied. The diffusion and maintenance of this problematic memory was facilitated by Italian cultural production which contributed to circulating and reinforcing many self-exculpatory tropes that characterised the Italian collective memory. Theories of intermediality can fully illuminate the role that literature and cinema played in the articulation of this self-absolving discourse. In this paper, I will draw examples from Italian literature and cinema of World War II to discuss several intermedial and transmedial phenomena that were instrumental in the creation of an unethical self-absolving memory discourse. By relying on theories of intermediality, the paper will also shed light on fundamental principles that inform the dynamics of cultural memory.
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Between June 1940 and September 1943, Italy attacked and occupied several countries across Europe and North Africa as part of the Fascist plan to redesign a new world order. In the postwar years, however, the memory of the Axis War... more
Between June 1940 and September 1943, Italy attacked and occupied several countries across Europe and North Africa as part of the Fascist plan to redesign a new world order. In the postwar years, however, the memory of the Axis War occupied a peripheral role in the Italian memory discourse of World War II and the idea of collective responsibility for the occupations and war crimes that the Italians committed as a Fascist country remained shrouded in silence. While being marginalised in public discourse, the Axis War has often been the object of literary mediations. As a result, literary texts have constituted some of the most important vectors of memory of this war, transmitting to new generations information about this little known segment of Italian history. Drawing from the numerous cases studies that I discuss in the forthcoming monograph The Italian Literature of the Axis War: Memories of Self-Absolution and the Quest for Responsibility, the paper will offer a survey of some of the most recurrent representations of this literary production, showing that Italian literature has been instrumental in shaping the self-absolving framework that has characterised the Italian memory of World War II.
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Since the end of the Second World War the legacy of Fascism has constituted a key concern for Italian culture. Politicians, intellectuals, and historians have continuously reflected on what Fascism meant for Italian history and on what... more
Since the end of the Second World War the legacy of Fascism has constituted a key concern for Italian culture. Politicians, intellectuals, and historians have continuously reflected on what Fascism meant for Italian history and on what relationship democratic Italy should establish with its past as a totalitarian dictatorship. The centrality of this burdensome legacy has been well reflected in the cultural realm, where numerous products, of both high and popular culture, chose to deal with Fascism. In this paper, I aim to offer an overview of some of the main and most recurrent metaphors, tropes, and themes that were used for the representation of Fascism by Italian writers and filmmakers of the postwar decades. Spread across Italian society by cultural vectors of memory, these tropes highly influenced the Italian memory culture and contributed to shaping the way in which Fascism has been remembered. The study of the main representations of Fascism across Italian culture can help us to understand and better define the claim that many historians have recently made about Italy’s incapacity of dealing with its Fascist past.
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Despite being marginalised in the public memory of the postwar decades, the Italian participation in the Axis War has often been the object of literary and cinematic mediations. The conspicuous corpus of literary and cinematic texts that... more
Despite being marginalised in the public memory of the postwar decades, the Italian participation in the Axis War has often been the object of literary and cinematic mediations. The conspicuous corpus of literary and cinematic texts that portrayed the Italians as soldiers and occupiers during the Fascist wars of aggression was, however highly affected by the perspective of the postwar years, which saw the wars that had been planned by the Fascist dictatorship as something that belonged to the past, for which the Italians should not be deemed responsible. Drawing from the numerous cases studies that I discuss in the forthcoming monograph The Italian literature of the Axis War: Memories of Self-Absolution and the Quest for Responsibility, the paper will offer a survey of the most recurrent self-representations that the Italians developed in the literary texts portraying the country’s participation in the Fascist war of aggression. The paper will show that many of these depictions constituted both a self-absolving strategy that denied responsibility for the war and an attempt to redefine the national community after the collapse of Fascism.
The study of literature in relation to collective memories is a complex endeavour that necessitates of appropriate methodologies. In her seminal works on the relationships between memory and culture, Astrid Erll has stressed that since... more
The study of literature in relation to collective memories is a complex endeavour that necessitates of appropriate methodologies. In her seminal works on the relationships between memory and culture, Astrid Erll has stressed that since cultural products have only a ‘potential’ for memory making, scholars should focus on processes that actualise their function as media of cultural memory. These may include the examination of canonisation mechanisms, the investigation of literary afterlives, and, above all, the survey of the various forms of cultural reception through which readers and societies respond to literary products (Erll 2011). Similarly, Wulf Kansteiner has considered the study of the reception of the cultural production as one of the few viable ways to link cultural products to the memory narratives negotiated within a given community (Kansteiner 2002; Kansteiner and Fogu 2006).
In this paper, I would like to argue that there is another approach through which literary texts can be studied in connection to collective memories, which consists in investigating the various forms of repetition (e.g. topoi, motifs, themes, and masterplots) that characterise the given narrative works. By identifying and analysing these figures of repetition within a broad body of texts dealing with a specific subject, it becomes possible to develop an entirely textually-based approach through which both the texts’ memory-reflective function and their memory-productive capacity can be revealed.
The paper will initially discuss the theoretical bases supporting the development of such an approach, examining theories drawn from both Memory Studies and Thematic Criticism. Then, the last part of the paper will exemplify this approach by considering a series of case studies offered by the Italian literature of the Axis War published in the first three decades after the end of World War II.
In this paper, I would like to argue that there is another approach through which literary texts can be studied in connection to collective memories, which consists in investigating the various forms of repetition (e.g. topoi, motifs, themes, and masterplots) that characterise the given narrative works. By identifying and analysing these figures of repetition within a broad body of texts dealing with a specific subject, it becomes possible to develop an entirely textually-based approach through which both the texts’ memory-reflective function and their memory-productive capacity can be revealed.
The paper will initially discuss the theoretical bases supporting the development of such an approach, examining theories drawn from both Memory Studies and Thematic Criticism. Then, the last part of the paper will exemplify this approach by considering a series of case studies offered by the Italian literature of the Axis War published in the first three decades after the end of World War II.
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CAIS (Canadian Association for Italian Studies) annual conference.
13-16 June 2019, Palazzo dei Congressi, Orvieto.
13-16 June 2019, Palazzo dei Congressi, Orvieto.
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In this talk I discussed four war legends concerning the Italian participation in the Axis War: the stories of the Soviet dispatch number 630, of Churchill's speech after the battle of El-Alamein, of the Sagapò army, and of Italiani brava... more
In this talk I discussed four war legends concerning the Italian participation in the Axis War: the stories of the Soviet dispatch number 630, of Churchill's speech after the battle of El-Alamein, of the Sagapò army, and of Italiani brava gente. The creation of these stories, and even more their circulation in postwar Italian society, found an explication in a common narrative mechanism that structured all of them, which cast light on the process of re-negotiation of the idea of Italian identity that took place after the collapse of Fascism.
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Several scholars have stressed that the Italian memory of the Fascist past has been structured around the avoidance of the ideas of guilt and responsibility. This is well reflected in the ways in which the Second World War has been... more
Several scholars have stressed that the Italian memory of the Fascist past has been structured around the avoidance of the ideas of guilt and responsibility. This is well reflected in the ways in which the Second World War has been remembered. The Italian memory narratives of this period put forward a series of self-absolving myths, which fostered the idea of Italy’s innocence; at the same time, they displaced guilt outside the perimeter of the national community, by channelling it towards the Germans.
In recent decades, though, narratives on the responsibility that the Italians bear for their past have started to circulate across society. Around the end of the twentieth century a much more widespread recognition of the national involvement in the Holocaust opened the way to historical investigations on the legacy of Italian colonialism and on the Italian war crimes carried out during World War II. In particular, the awareness of the misdeeds committed by the Italians during the colonial era has also circulated outside the narrow field of academia, informing the literary works of several writers and a series of exhibitions.
The circulation of memory narratives that give emphasis on the wrongdoings committed by the Italian people during the first half of the twentieth appears as an original and important trend in the Italian public discourse, which might affect other narratives about the national past. With the fasting approach of the 100 year anniversary of Fascism’s seizure of power, the time seems ripe, if not for a paradigmatic shift in the Italian memory of Fascism, for a more nuanced and complex way of narrating this time of Italian history.
In recent decades, though, narratives on the responsibility that the Italians bear for their past have started to circulate across society. Around the end of the twentieth century a much more widespread recognition of the national involvement in the Holocaust opened the way to historical investigations on the legacy of Italian colonialism and on the Italian war crimes carried out during World War II. In particular, the awareness of the misdeeds committed by the Italians during the colonial era has also circulated outside the narrow field of academia, informing the literary works of several writers and a series of exhibitions.
The circulation of memory narratives that give emphasis on the wrongdoings committed by the Italian people during the first half of the twentieth appears as an original and important trend in the Italian public discourse, which might affect other narratives about the national past. With the fasting approach of the 100 year anniversary of Fascism’s seizure of power, the time seems ripe, if not for a paradigmatic shift in the Italian memory of Fascism, for a more nuanced and complex way of narrating this time of Italian history.
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In this paper I analysed the representations of World War I developed by the Italian literature of the Axis War, published in the first three decades after the end of World War II. In several of these texts, such as those written by... more
In this paper I analysed the representations of World War I developed by the Italian literature of the Axis War, published in the first three decades after the end of World War II. In several of these texts, such as those written by Pirelli, Terrosi, Rigoni Stern, Bedeschi, and Preti, memories of World War I, mediated by the families and by the Fascist state, informed the expectations about the war that the protagonists of these stories had, contributing to shaping what George Mosse's called the 'Myth of the War Experience'. Notwithstanding the romantic appeal that some authors attributed to this conceptualisation of warfare, the literature of the Axis War criticised and contested this myth. As a result, the general condemnation of war that these literary texts put forward is also extended to the Great War. This prevailing representation is then compared to Giorgio Mario Bergamo's Addio a Recanati, a memoir that tried to separate the memory of World War I from that of World War II.
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In this paper I explored the construction and transmission of the memory of the Axis War in the Italian culture of the postwar years. In this period the circulation of memory narratives about the Axis War was largely hampered. In fact,... more
In this paper I explored the construction and transmission of the memory of the Axis War in the Italian culture of the postwar years. In this period the circulation of memory narratives about the Axis War was largely hampered. In fact, this war had only a marginal role in the Italian public memory of the Second World War and was mediated by cinematic vectors of memory in extremely limited and biased fashions. Richer and more various depictions can instead be found in the realm of literature. The paper examined three war novels written by Ugo Pirro, Mario Terrosi, and Raul Lunardi, in order to show how these texts, through the representation of the Italian use of violence and a thematisation of the protagonists' sense of guilt, helped readers to gain awareness of Italy's role as a repressive power. The depiction put forward by these three novels, however, contrasted with the one developed by the vast majority of texts of the Axis War literature. The latter presented the Italians as victims of war and adopted a series of topoi that conveyed the idea of Italy's innocence. This overbearing representation, continuously remediated across Italian society, hindered the formation of a responsible memory of the Axis War and contributed to evading Italy's responsibilities for Fascism.
In this paper I explored the representation of the Allied occupation of Southern Italy put forward by texts that dealt with the Italian occupations of foreign territories in the Second World War. This study contributed to showing that,... more
In this paper I explored the representation of the Allied occupation of Southern Italy put forward by texts that dealt with the Italian occupations of foreign territories in the Second World War. This study contributed to showing that, compared to other events of World War Two, the Allied occupation had a marginal role in the Italian memory: several texts, despite dwelling on the period of July–September 1943, do not acknowledge the Allied invasion, but focus instead on the dismissal of Mussolini and on the surrender of the 8th of September, which constituted the most important lieux de mémoire of the Second World War. Secondly, the paper showed that, when it is addressed, the Allied invasion is represented in a consistent manner: as the sign of Italy's inevitable defeat. This representation, developed by texts published in the 1950s and 1960s, shows an early circulation of the idea of defeat in relation to the Allied occupation also in texts not ideologically connected to neo-Fascism, in partial contrast with what has been argued by historians (Gallerano 1997, Baris 2015).
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In this paper I argued that after the Second World War Antifascism has offered a convenient discursive strategy through which the issue of the national responsibility for the Fascist wars of aggression could be avoided. This is reflected... more
In this paper I argued that after the Second World War Antifascism has offered a convenient discursive strategy through which the issue of the national responsibility for the Fascist wars of aggression could be avoided. This is reflected in novels such as Giulio Preti’s Giovinezza giovinezza and Venturi’s Bandiera bianca di Cefalonia, and in Revelli’s memoire La guerra dei poveri, which all present a narrative progression that finds in the conversion of the protagonist to Antifascism a moment of redemption that diverts and pushes away the ideas of guilt and responsibility. The paper then discussed Pirro’s Le soldatesse and Terrosi’s La casa di Novach – both selected and published by Luciano Bianciardi for Feltrinelli in 1956 –which offered a different pathway. In these two novels the feeling of guilt for having participated in the Axis War is not dismissed, but constitutes a crucial factor in the protagonist’s evolution toward Antifascism. In this way these two novels offered to their readers a positive ethical perspective, showing that it was possible to embrace Antifascist values while keeping alive a sense of responsibility for having fought a war of aggression.
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In this paper I gave an overview of the main features of the literary representations of the Axis War European campaigns. A series of structuring motifs, recurrent topoi and dominant masterplots have shaped the cultural representations of... more
In this paper I gave an overview of the main features of the literary representations of the Axis War European campaigns. A series of structuring motifs, recurrent topoi and dominant masterplots have shaped the cultural representations of this war and have moulded a series of narratives focusing on victimhood and on the avoidance of Italian responsibilities. Examples of this typified representation were given from a variegated corpus of texts, published between 1944 and 1974. The discussed texts included the works by renowned authors such as Rigoni Stern, Nuto Revelli and Marcello Venturi, successful novels, such as Bedeschi’s Centomila Gavette di Ghiaccio and Preti’s Giovinezza, Giovinezza, and the war narratives written by a series of less studied figures such as Renzo Biasion, Raul Lunardi, Persio Nesti and Ugo Pirro.
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In this presentation, I explore the Italian memory of Fascism through the lens of cultural memory studies, focusing on Alessandro Gennari's 1997 novel Le ragioni del sangue (The Reasons for Blood). The analysis highlights three key... more
In this presentation, I explore the Italian memory of Fascism through the lens of cultural memory studies, focusing on Alessandro Gennari's 1997 novel Le ragioni del sangue (The Reasons for Blood). The analysis highlights three key aspects of the relationship between literature and collective memory: literature as a repository of cultural narratives, a catalyst for disseminating new ideas, and a medium that can perpetuate uncritical storytelling. By contextualizing the historical background addressed in the novel, the paper traces the Italian Republic's origins to the resistance against Fascism, emphasizing the contentious nature of Antifascist memory in Italian political discourse. The analysis shows that while the novel reveals the complexities of the Antifascist Resistance, it simultaneously develops uncritical and unethical representations of the Axis War, perpetuating self-absolving tropes that have shaped the narrativization of this event in Italian culture. The presentation illustrates how literature can both challenge and perpetuate memory narratives, highlighting the necessity of critically engaging with cultural products to understand their role within memory cultures. This underscores the dual potential of literature to either advance or hinder the process of coming to terms with the past, emphasizing the importance of studying each text to decode its specific functions and impacts on collective memory.
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In 2005, Enzo Traverso argued that a problematic trend was affecting European culture; while the notion of totalitarianism was spreading, there was a progressive "disparition de la notion de 'fascism' du champ historiographique"... more
In 2005, Enzo Traverso argued that a problematic trend was affecting European culture; while the notion of totalitarianism was spreading, there was a progressive "disparition de la notion de 'fascism' du champ historiographique" [disappearance of the concept of 'fascism' from historiography]. Nearly twenty years later, with the worrying rise of far -right and populist movements around the world, the land scape has changed drastically, and discussions about fascism and its possible resurgence have gained momentum. Within the current cultural and political landscape, the Italian context can offer some interesting points of reflection for anyone interested in questions of memory. On the one hand, as the birthplace of the first Fascist movement, Italy has a long tradition of dealing with its dictatorial past, especially through cultural mediation; on the other hand, scholars and memory activists have often criticised the country's collective memory, arguing that Italy has failed to come to terms with its Fascist past. In this talk, I will examine some of the main trends and debates that have characterised Italian memory culture, discussing them from the perspective of transnational memory studies and cultural memory studies. The talk will show that by conceptualising many of the shortcomings of Italian memory through theories of responsibility, complicity, and implication, it is possible to gain important insights into the process of dealing with the past, which are relevant for understanding the relationship between the present and the past beyond Italian culture.
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In this talk I propose a theoretical reflection on memory and the process of dealing with the past, which underpins my current research on the cultural memory of Fascism in Italian literature. For the past twenty-years, memory politics... more
In this talk I propose a theoretical reflection on memory and the process of dealing with the past, which underpins my current research on the cultural memory of Fascism in Italian literature. For the past twenty-years, memory politics and memory research across the world have been informed by what Barbara Misztal has called the “dealing with the past” agenda (Misztal 2010). This mnemonic perspective, which has been strongly enhanced by international institutions, operated under the assumption that the memorialisation of past crimes can strengthen democratic values, fight racism, and prevent the reoccurrence of dictatorships and violent conflicts. This model has recently come under the scrutiny of several scholars who have criticised many of its presuppositions—showing that these were based on ideas stemming from Western psychology and a Christian conception of healing—and have argued that there is no evidence that such model for memory politics can actually achieve its supposed goals (Gensburger Lefranc 2020; David 2020; Pisanty 2020). This recent trend of criticism deconstructs the foundations of memory studies research, challenging axioms that underpin the entire field, such as notions of the duty to remember, justice for victims of past human rights violations, and the need to face up to the past. In this talk, I aim to offer a way forward that accepts many of these critiques without running the risk of denying the social value of memory work. In order to develop this perspective, I argue that it is necessary to rethink the process of dealing with the past, which needs to be reassessed in the light of theories of forgetting and a more thorough understanding of responsibility and complicity.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this talk, I outlined the research questions of my current IRC project: Adapting to a Difficult Heritage: The Memory and Responsibility for Fascism in Italian Literature and Cinema. To explain how this research project came into being,... more
In this talk, I outlined the research questions of my current IRC project: Adapting to a Difficult Heritage: The Memory and Responsibility for Fascism in Italian Literature and Cinema. To explain how this research project came into being, I discussed some of the main outcomes of my forthcoming monograph – The Italian Literature of the Axis War: Memories of Self-Absolution and the Quest for Responsibility (Palgrave Macmillan: 2021) — based on my PhD research. I showed that postwar Italian literature transmitted an extremely partial and biased depiction of the Italian participation in the 1940-1943 Fascist war of aggression, contributing to the formation of the self-absolving framework that has shaped the Italian memory of World War II. My study of the cultural memory of the Axis War points at the troubling relationship that Italian culture established with the Fascist past, which is the topic I will address in my new research project at UCC.