Description
Book SynopsisA study of Italian colonial history and culture, this text gathers articles which highlight the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. It delves into the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Italian Colonial Cultures Patrizia Palumbo PART I. THE SHAPING OF ITALIAN COLONIAL HISTORY: POLITICAL PRACTICES AND THEORETICAL LEGITIMIZATION The Myths, Suppressions, Denials and Defaults of Italian Colonialism Angelo Del Boca Studies and Research on Fascist Colonialism, 1922--1935: Reflections on the State of the Art Nicola Labanca Italian Anthropology and the Africans: The Early Colonial Period Barbara Sorgoni The Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea: The Liberal and Early Fascist Period (1897--1934) Giulia Barrera PART II. COLONIAL LITERATURE: FROM EXPLORATION TO A DOMESTIC EMPIRE Gifts, Sex, and Guns: Nineteenth-Century Italian Explorers in Africa Cristina Lombardi-Diop Incorporating the Exotic: From Futurist Excess to Postmodern Impasse Cinzia Sartini-Blum Alexandria Revisited: Colonialism and the Egyptian Works of Enrico Pea and Giuseppe Ungaretti Lucia Re Mass-Mediated Fantasies of Feminine Conquest, 1930--1940 Robin Pickering-Iazzi Orphans for the Empire: Colonial Propaganda and Children's Literature during the Imperial Era Patrizia Palumbo PART III. THE COLONIAL PRODUCTION OF AFRICA AND THE SILENT SCENE OF DECOLONIZATION Colonial Autism: Whitened Heroes, Auditory Rhetoric, and National Identity in Interwar Italian Cinema Giorgio Bertellini Black Shirts/Black Skins: Fascist Italy's Colonial Anxieties and Lo Squadrone Bianco Cecilia Boggio Empty Spaces: Decolonization in Italy Karen Pinkus Notes on Contributors
