Alessandra Gissi

Under the Fascist regime, maternity became a public duty towards the state. Under the regime’s legal reforms, abortion was classified within the new category of crimes against “the integrity and the health of the race”. No fewer than 11 articles were dedicated to abortion practices and contraceptive practices. Prohibition extended to all means of prevention or interruption of pregnancy. Nevertheless, despite the emphasis on the exclusively reproductive function of the female body, the ban on contraceptives resulted in the survival, if not in a wider diffusion, of abortion. Whilst the Fascist regime tried to control the health and fecundity of Italian women, these totalitarian aspirations were often thwarted. Especially – but not only – thanks to judicial sources, this chapter analyzes behaviors of subjects and networks in everyday life, placed at the highly problematic intersection of the public and private spheres, caught between the new ideology of maternity and the range of practices which had been used by women for centuries.

Perception of guilt and remorse is tied to the complicated question of
what is an abortion. There is no doubt that abortion practices have had a
long and complex history. Abortion is, in fact, a ‘mobile’ category, whose
definition and identification depends on several factors and is related
to the context and - not least - the complex question of identifying the
actual voluntariness of the act. The frequency of spontaneous abortions,
due to excessive force or working conditions, and the inevitability of the
appeal to the interruption of pregnancy in the absence of other means of
fertility control methods, allowed a widespread lack of guilt, testified also
by language even in the mid-twenties, when the fascist regime begins to
structure a policy that culminates, during the thirties, in unprecedented
emphasis on the role and the female body in an exclusively procreative
function and configuration of maternity as a patriotic duty particularly
enshrined in the new Penal code of 1930.

“May not a firestorm fall from the sky”. The italian science theatre
during the Cold War

With the coming of the nuclear era, but most of all in the Cold War years, the complex evolution of natural sciences invaded with vehemence public

debate asa soon as, in an unprecedented and global measure, there took place a

redefinition of the symbolic power of science in its relationships with collective

cultural capital and the formalization/narration of specialized knowledge.

While Italy was facing up to its most sweeping phase of modernization,

experiencing – though often confusedly – forms of cultural interchange and

divulgation hitherto ignored, public debate would draw attention on scientific

themes and in particular on the controversial issue of scientific progress. This

essay examines the wide-range discourses grown around a limited corpus

of representations, in an attempt to add information on how, in the period

considered, both the ultimate goal of science and presence, competence and

social role of scientists were given a renewed treatment.

This paper analyzes Italian scientific migration to the United States, following the introduction of the Fascist regime's anti-Semitic laws in 1938. While German, British and American historiography has devoted considerable attention to the issue of 1930s scientific migration to the US, scholars have mostly overlooked the Italian case. Drawing on individual biographies, institutional histories, and theoretical contributions, the paper provides a new analytic approach on the scientific migration from Italy. Using various sources, especially the records of the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, deposited at New York Public Library this paper challenges the idea that Italian scientific wave to the United States can be considered not just as an exile or an escape, as the Italian historians use to do, because it present certain traits typical of migrations. The placement of scholars, for example, took place through a series of migration networks, which are analyzed as well as the integration/assimilation process.

In 1930-40s Italy resorting to abortion practices was still a widespread phenomenon. Despite the emphasis on the exclusively reproductive function of the female body, the ban on contraceptives resulted in the survival, if not in a wider diffusion, of abortion, practised by both qualified midwives and the old "mammane" and their younger daughters. Maternity being a patriotic duty, and the "interest of the Nation" being the victim of the crime, stemming this phenomenon became an urgent matter. An important part of the "Codice Rocco" (1930) illustrated the significance of demographic power, and Article 545 included abortion in the new class of crimes against "the wellbeing and healthiness of the race". Nevertheless, reaching a verdict of guilt against those who practised abortion was made impossible by the lack of evidence against them, and called for an alternative solution in order to impose exemplary punishments. Exile offered a nimble solution, making sure midwives would be punished for practising abortion. Being an administrative sanction, exile eliminated any need for evidence or defence from the decisions taken by the judging body, and its use confirmed the rule of a police state in the sphere of crime suppression, its methods and its time requirements. Therefore the reception and reconstruction of rumours became a fundamental element, as in case of exile these could represent "evidence". Unexpectedly, then, rather than appearing like ancient remains in the context of a modernizing society, rumours took the form of fundamental materials for the functioning of particular legal proceedings.

Il saggio ricostruisce i diversi percorsi delle donne condannate al confino politico dal novembre 1926 al luglio 1943. L’istituto del confino, deputato a isolare le "classi pericolose per la società e l’ordinamento dello Stato", offre infatti la possibilità di comprendere verso quali comportamenti femminili il fascismo esplicasse una ferma volontà di prevenzione e repressione. Vengono prese in considerazione le motivazioni delle condanne, che non riguardarono soltanto le attiviste dei partiti antifascisti clandestini, ma un universo di figure femminili, diverse e difficilmente classificabili, che si trovarono catalogate come "sovvertitrici degli ordinamenti dello Stato" e come tali allontanate dalla famiglia e dal contesto sociale di appartenenza. Le espressioni e le esperienze di queste donne, prive della cosiddetta coscienza politica, che si configurano come testimonianze di un vissuto complesso e molteplice, sono state a lungo trascurate, giacché erano considerate inservibili per la ricostruzione storica della società italiana. Nel saggio vengono, inoltre, indagate le specificità femminili di una realtà, quella del confino politico, tradizionalmente immaginata e descritta come eminentemente maschile. La vita quotidiana delle confinate, il problema delle prime necessità, la salute, la gravidanza, la cura dei figli sono descritte attraverso i documenti prodotti dall’Ufficio confino politico e dalle questure ma anche attraverso le lettere scritte dalle confinate.

Ce volume qui rassemble les actes d'un colloque tenu à Gênes en 2008 se présente comme un véritable kaléidoscope, une série articulée de fragments se proposant d'analyser, selon différentes perspectives, les identités et les représentations de genre dans l'Italie des xixe ...