The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to invite you to this online workshop that seeks to provide a reassessment of the Allied occupation of Italy between 1943 and 1945 from a historical and cultural perspective, eighty years after the beginning of the occupation. Despite its significance, the Allied occupation of Italy has been marginalised in the scholarly literature for a long time. While in Italy attention predominantly focused on the more traumatic experiences of the German occupation and the civil war, in Britain and in the US the Italian Campaign did not fit easily into the dominant narrative of the ‘path to the liberation of Europe’.
For decades, exploring the Allied presence in Italy through the lens of ‘occupation’ was highly controversial since the concept carried derogatory overtones and was consequently rejected. This slowly started to change following the pioneering work of David Ellwood, who in 1977 published in Italian the first – and only – comprehensive history of the politics of the occupation. We are delighted that Professor Ellwood has agreed to give the keynote presentation at the workshop.
In recent years, scholars have further reinvigorated the field by exploring a range of hitherto neglected aspects of the period, gradually shifting the research agenda from high politics to include the occupation’s social and cultural dimensions. The result is a rich and diverse, but also fragmented research landscape that lacks a shared centre of gravity.
This workshop seeks to draw together these different strands and provide the first comprehensive reassessment of the subject by showcasing new research approaches. In doing so, the contributions seek to speak not only to those interested in Italian history, society, and culture, but also to those working in the fields of occupation studies and international relations more broadly.
To register, please e-mail: christopher.knowles@
Programme (all times are CET)
13.00 Welcome
13.05 Introduction: Reconsidering Allied Rule in Italy, 1943-1945
Camilo Erlichman (Maastricht University) and Fabio Simonetti (Brunel University London)
13.20 The Contact Zone of Occupation: Encountering the ‘Other’ in Wartime Italy
Fabio Simonetti (Brunel University London)
14:00 Feeding Former Foes: Food and Occupation in Italy, 1943-1945
Fabio De Ninno (Università di Siena)
14.40 Coffee break
14.50 Corporeal Metaphors in Cinematic Adaptations of the Allied Occupation of Naples
Ruth Glynn (University of Bristol)
15:30 American Soldiers and Italian Women during the Occupation/Liberation Period
Silvia Cassamagnaghi (Università di Milano)
16:10 Coffee break
16.20 Cronaca Nera: The Racialization of Crime in Occupied Italy
Charles L. Leavitt IV (University of Notre Dame)
17.00 The Grammar of the Occupation: The Advisory Council and the Evolution of Allied Control in Italy, 1943-45
Marco Maria Aterrano (Università di Messina)
17.40 Coffee break
17.50 Keynote presentation: L’alleato nemico, Forty-Five Years Later
David W. Ellwood (Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe, Bologna)
18.30 Final roundtable discussion
19.00 Workshop en