A Place in the Sun : Africa in Italian Colonial Culture From Post-Unification to the Present

Given the centrality of Africa to Italy's national identity, a thorough study of Italian colonial history and culture has been long overdue. Two important developments, the growth of postcolonial studies and the controversy surrounding immigration from Africa to the Italian peninsula, have made it clear that the discussion of Italy's colonial past is essential to any understanding of the history and construction of the nation. This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. During the Risorgimento, Africa was invoked as a limb of a proudly resuscitated Imperial Rome. During the Fascist era, imperialistic politics were crucial in shaping both domestic and international perceptions of the Italian nation. These contributors offer compelling essays on decolonization, exoticism, fascist and liberal politics, anthropology, and historiography, not to mention popular literature, feminist studies, cinema, and children's literature. Because the Italian colonial past has had huge repercussions, not only in Italy and in the former colonies but also in other countries not directly involved, scholars in many areas will welcome this broad and insightful panorama of Italian colonial culture. Introduction: Italian Colonial Cultures......Page 10 part one: The Shaping of Italian Colonial History......Page 24 The Myths, Suppressions, Denials, and Defaults of Italian Colonialism......Page 26 Studies and Research on Fascist Colonialism, 1922–1935......Page 46 Italian Anthropology and the Africans: The Early Colonial Period......Page 71 The Construction of Racial Hierarchies in Colonial Eritrea: The Liberal and Early Fascist Period (1897–1934)......Page 90 part two: Colonial Literature: From Exploration to a Domestic Empire......Page 126 Gifts, Sex, and Guns: Nineteenth-Century Italian Explorers in Africa......Page 128 Incorporating the Exotic: From Futurist Excess to Postmodern Impasse......Page 147 Alexandria Revisited: Colonialism and the Egyptian Works of Enrico Pea and Giuseppe Ungaretti......Page 172 Mass-Mediated Fantasies of Feminine Conquest, 1930 –1940......Page 206 Orphans for the Empire: Colonial Propaganda and Children’s Literature during the Imperial Era......Page 234 part three: The Colonial Production of Africa and the Silent Scene of Decolonization......Page 262 Colonial Autism: Whitened Heroes, Auditory Rhetoric, and National Identity in Interwar Italian Cinema......Page 264 Black Shirts/Black Skins: Fascist Italy’s Colonial Anxieties and Lo Squadrone Bianco......Page 288 Empty Spaces: Decolonization in Italy......Page 308 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS......Page 330 INDEX......Page 334 >This collection, the first to gather articles by the most-respected scholars in Italian colonial studies, highlights the ways in which colonial discourse has pervaded Italian culture from the post-unification period to the present. - [publisher](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520232341/a-place-in-the-sun) Italian studies has only recently begun to dedicate its attention to Italian colonialism. Edited By Patrizia Palumbo. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.