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This paper considers the 1934 experimental radio work In Linea by Livio Castiglioni and Renato Castellani. A sound-collage characterized by an abstract approach to combining music and noise, In Linea nevertheless offered listeners a clear metaphor for fascist political education. The play’s three sections move from a dark, noisy chaos, within which arises an anxious, belligerent crowd that can be calmed only by a clear, authoritative voice offering a new path forward. At the heart of In Linea is a fervent belief in the power of the authoritative radiophonic voice. This paper examines the nature of this voice on the radio, asking what it meant to represent the most controversial and powerful radio voice of all – the voice of Mussolini himself. The stakes of such a representation cannot be overstated, given that radio broadcasts of the Duce’s speeches were the primary way that most Italians listened to and engaged with their heroic leader. This paper argues that the persistent focus on Mussolini’s image has led scholars to disregard the symbolic power held by the dictator’s voice, a voice that was both magnified and transformed through its transmission over the radio.

Launched in 2019 by Francesca Ceccarelli, Frisson. Oltre il piacere describes itself as a “feminist magazine” dedicated to sexuality, pleasure, rights and intersectionality. The magazine places special emphasis on its visual dimension through resolutely pop art graphic design and the choice of striking photographs. In the age of social networks, Frisson chooses to publish on paper, but also makes extensive use of the internet to disseminate its publications and discuss its ideas. This article shows how the magazine forms part of a double tradition, that of the feminist press and the women’s press, and at the same time subverts their codes by placing the question of the body and sexuality at the centre of its reflections. With its multimedia approach, Frisson is a modern quarterly in its aesthetics, is politically engaged, and showcases on its glossy paper a “fourth-wave” feminism, which is international, inclusive and intersectional.

This paper examines the ethical and political issues of gesture in Early Modern diplomacy, based on a discussion of the problems raised by the interpretation of the gestures that appear on the surface of the ambassador and his counterpart’s body. Our aim is to know how this semiotics of the body became a matter of debate in the literature on the ambassador that spread throughout Europe from the late Middle Ages onwards. The paper focuses in particular on Italian and French works. Some writings from diplomatic practice are also used to provide examples and a complement to our analysis.

“The revolution of a planet can only be seen from another” said the famous writer and biographer Emil Ludwig, who conversed with Mussolini in the famous Colloqui. By this, he meant that geographical distance made it easier to understand a phenomenon. In the case of interwar France and fascism, nothing is less certain. This paper aims to answer this question by shifting or clarifying the focus of analysis: by choosing a coherent corpus that facilitates methodological reflection: the French cultural journals, which were different from the press, more prone to the vertigo of the moment, and offered polished approaches, often from illustrious writers who took the time for deeper analysis. We also examine the figure of Mussolini, who took on three roles, three “characters”: the man, the leader – with the question of charisma and political seduction – and the very face of fascism, its quintessence, with whom he seemed to merge, source of much debate.This article discusses the effects of sources and editorial strategies in cultural journals. More than ever before, the Janus figure, so conventional and recurrent when it came to Mussolini, was unavoidable.

As the most recent historiography on Fascism has amply analysed, art and culture occupied an important place in the Fascist totalitarian project. Mussolini himself had a privileged relationship with writing, whether literary, poetic or journalistic. The aim of this paper is to analyse all the occurrences of ‘arte’ and ‘poesia’ (and their closest derivatives) and the contexts in which they are used throughout Benito Mussolini’s Opera omnia, in order to understand the meaning and political issues that these terms encompassed for him throughout his life and career. What emerges above all from this study is the fact that words such as ‘arte’ and ‘poesia’ are not used solely in the aesthetic sphere: Mussolini also used them to describe both his own politics and those of his opponents. During the socialist period, they were used to describe – and discredit – the discourse of his political opponents, but at the time of the Caporetto turning point, the lexical field of art was used in both a positive and metaphorical sense. On the one hand, Mussolini developed the metaphor of the political artist to define the political leader he intended to be for the Italians; on the other, he enhanced the idea of poetry as action while stripping the word of its literal meaning.

This article is part of a broader study which seeks to reconstruct a female political tradition in order to ascertain some of the enduring reasons for the discrepancy between women’s formal and real access to decision-making. The ultimate goal is to highlight the role and contribution of women—especially those who have faded into oblivion—in the establishment of a democratic and republican Italy since they first participated in the National Consultative Assembly. The archives of the Chamber of Deputies and the Sturzo Institute, along with journal articles from the time, were the primary research sources.The Consulta was inaugurated on 25 September 1945 and, in a country where free assembly and public debate had not been the norm for some time, this represented the first step toward the reconstruction of democratic institutions. Convened by Parri’s government, the Consulta was chaired by Carlo Sforza, and included 13 women among its 430 members. Angela Cingolani Guidi (1896-1991) and Laura Bianchini (1903-1983) took part in it, representing the Christian Democrats. For them, as for the other members of the Consulta, it was a “political baptism” in institutions. Through an examination of the acts of the National Consulta and the press from the period, the paper explores the contribution of the above-mentioned members of the Consulta to debate on the issue of the reconstruction of the country and the affirmation of the new role of women both within institutions and the Party.

The quarterly journal Lapis. Percorsi della riflessione femminile began life in Milan on 1 January 1987, and remained active until 1996, publishing a total of 32 issues. The editor-in-chief was Lea Melandri, a philosopher, essayist, and activist in the feminist movement in Italy. The publishing project was not driven by a clearly defined and permanent group of female writers. On the contrary, Lapis sought to create an open space for reflections, testimonies, and stories from the world of women, starting with individual experiences, beyond any temptation to symbolism and metaphysics. Our paper aims to highlight how Lapis engaged in the most innovative and potentially revolutionary feminist practices of the 1970s, particularly the analysis of suppressed themes—such as the connection between love and violence, the dynamics of emotional and sexual life, and the problems created by the dualist vision specific to the patriarchy—which silently influence the network of human relations in both private and public life.

This paper traces the history, main themes and goals of three important Italian feminist magazines DonnaWomanFemme (DWF) (1975 to present), Via Dogana (1991-2014) and Leggendaria (1997 to present). Each of these magazines is an essential document which explains the evolution of and changes in Italian feminism, the emergence and circulation of ideas, practices and feminist theories from the 1970s to the present day, and their cultural, social, and political impact, in a national and international perspective. The analysis of these publications is structured around five thematic axes: feminist politics; feminist archives, bookshops and libraries; work, insecurity, care; body, sexuality, gender; writing, literature, literary criticism, languages.

This paper analyses French and Italian exchanges on the subjects of feminism and gender in the light of French translations of books originally published by specialised publishing houses and collections in Italy. The focus on translation firstly provides a panoramic perspective on feminism, women and gender in Italy and also assesses how specialised publishing affects cultural exchanges through the transfer of these texts. Whilst the publication of a book in a specialised house provides a framework for interpreting it or reinforces its militant message, the transfer from one language to another does not always involve homologous structures. Nonetheless, through their translation, policies, specialised publishers helped to promote the transnational circulation of feminist thought, in languages other than English, through the export of various texts. The development of a new offer—previously unpublished, translated, or rediscovered, of local origin or from elsewhere—reflects the editorial rivalry generated by the opening up of a new market from the activist core, a market which was later populated by better positioned publishers.

The paper analyses transformations in higher education, and specifically in Italian universities, during and after the Covid-19 crisis. The main focus is on visual and digital media and on their role in reshaping the relationship between teachers and students: on the one hand, teachers have to act as technological performers, following a method in which teaching becomes a show and an event; on the other, students watch on the other side of the screen in a voyeuristic, consumerist way. As a result, education as a lived experience gives way to a mechanical transfer of standardised content, designed as products and commodities in a video platform market.

Compagna, a four-page, four-column magazine, first appeared in Rome on 5 March 1922. It was designed to be the platform of the central office of the Communist Party of Italy, a forum for use by women: workers, housewives, labourers and proletarians. It was, at least in the early days, a propaganda tool for the Communist revolution; it then, rather quickly, became a tool of anti-fascist resistance, before it ultimately disappeared. The editors were convinced that the transformation of the feminine condition was closely linked to that of the proletariat, following the example of the Russian Revolution. In this paper we will explore the contents of Compagna and analyse in greater detail the methods employed to educate women, sowing in them the seeds of revolution, as well as the idea of the connection between the resolution of the female problem and the victory of the proletariat. Our analysis will be limited to the period 1922-1925.

Little attention has been paid to the analysis of individualism and libertarianism in student and feminist movements. This paper aims to highlight these subjects, by analysing differences and similarities between student protest and the women’s liberation movement with respect to their attitude towards society. To do this, we will study Noi donne (a pivotal magazine for the traditional Italian feminist movement) and the neo-feminist movement’s magazines Effe and Sottosopra, both of which were founded in 1973, but are characterised by a different ideological structure. This analysis reveals a shared vision of progress and how to achieve it: both movements assumed that progress could be achieved not by society and its oppressive structures, but by efforts made by individuals. Only if people learnt to free their true selves, overcoming prejudices and influences, could they liberate themselves from an oppressive and unfair society.

Immediately after World War I, while Italian feminist associations were experiencing a structural crisis, women’s ambition for social and political recognition led to the creation of a number of periodicals produced by and for women. These included Chiosa. Commenti settimanali femminili di vita politica e sociale (Genoa, 1919-1927), which was founded by the journalist Flavia Steno. The periodical declared itself neither “feminine” nor “feminist”: it was designed as an information and political and cultural education tool for women. Accordingly, La Chiosa discussed current events, examined social, political and cultural matters affecting women in Italy and abroad and, by involving women with different skills and Weltanschauung on the editorial board, promoted fruitful debate on women’s issues and feminism. This paper deals with these facets of La Chiosa’s activity and with its editorial history and political editorial line. The aim is to investigate how La Chiosa discussed feminism and femininity from its “marginal” viewpoint (in terms of gender, decentred geographical location, and relative disconnection from the major Italian cultural networks), and how it challenged the growing antifeminism of the Fascist regime.

Our paper reconstructs the way in which opera creators, both theorists and practitioners, conceive the relationship between words and gestures, by comparing texts that set down stage gestures in writing, between instruction and reception. It seems that they attribute to stage gestures an auxiliary function of communication, semantic clarification and pathetic amplification of affetti and ideas conveyed by words – as the recitar cantando is based on the primacy of the poetic text. We will then question in what way these concepts may condition the very genesis of poetic-dramatic writing. By analysing the stage direction and the relationship between narration and the direct mimesis of movement and gesture in librettos of Ottavio Rinuccini, we will question the notion of theatrical visibility, and its implication in terms of the hierarchy between verbal, musical and corporeal eloquence.

This paper’s starting point is the famous passage from Leonardo da Vinci’s A Treatise on painting concerning the description of battle. In the text, da Vinci evokes the “sound” of violence. We wonder whether this notion, as described by da Vinci, was already part of a well-established iconographic and literary tradition. Surprisingly, the study of the battle painting genre has revealed that open mouths revealing bared teeth, so as to express a cry of desperate violence, are rare. In the past, these expressive attitudes were sometimes given to animals, and to humans only when the artist wished to express their animal nature (in depicting the enemy, for example). In this sense, the cross-study of education manuals has allowed us to better define how the social and cultural connotations of the wide-open mouth displaying dentition to demonstrate a strong connotation of human degradation. The semiotic value of this facial expression therefore perfectly illustrates da Vinci’s idea of war as “pazzia bestialissima” (bestial madness).

Luce d’Eramo lived in Germany in 1944-1945, when she was 18: she arrived as a volunteer worker, was later interned in Dachau, escaping three months later to share the precarious existence of a wandering mass of illegal foreigners under the bombs during the Third Reich. In the autobiographical novel Deviation (1979), she explored little-known aspects of the Nazi camps, such as the social origin of inmates and jailers, and the condition of foreign workers. In Deviation the concentration camp experience is intertwined with the recognition of what happened afterwards: how she repressed the memory of that experience and how it could re-emerge and become the object of writing only after a long period of time. This repression is related to the fact that the protagonist of Deviation is a different deportee: repatriated due to her fascist family after a factory strike organised by the French Resistance, she came across a group of people captured by Nazis in the streets and was arrested along with them, threw away her identity papers and ended up in Dachau. A ‘blind leap forward’, a story so difficult to tell that she ignored it for thirty years. Yet, little by little, she managed to face it through seeking – around herself and within herself – the reasons for her own silence. The unspeakable here does not depend on facts assumed to be beyond words, as it does for Adorno or Wiesel, but centres on the social context and social conscience of the protagonist, and gradually melts to become a vivid, precise tale, that succeeds in sharing an extreme experience, on the path traced by Primo Levi.

Judge, professor of civil law at the Studio of Siena, then of Naples, and special advisor to Pandolfo Petrucci, Antonio Giordani da Venafro is perhaps one of the most emblematic case studies to draw the first definition of the essential traits of the secretary at the very moment of the historical affirmation of this institutional figure. This paper aims at painting a faithful and dynamic portrait of Venafro, that stands at the crossroads between the biographical notes narrated in the chronicles, the memories of the contemporaries who knew him and the making of the legend that follows the end of his political career. This article therefore aims at briefly tackling the three stages that make up the entire “Venafro’s trajectory”: from life to memory; from memory to myth. The narrative proposed to the reader then dwells on concrete events that punctuated the material life led by Pandolfo Petrucci’s secretary, leading up to Venafro’s identification with the ideal type of the cunning and ingenious secretary drawn up in Nicolas Machiavelli’s letters or in Francesco Vettori’s Journey in Germany. Eventually this character becomes the ultimate secretary described in Machiavelli’s sketches in the Prince’s twenty-second chapter with the mythical allure of the outstanding and unscrupulous advisor that Lodovico Domenichi depicts in the Detti, et fatti di diversi Signori et persone private in 1562.

After the return to power of Medicis in Florence in 1512, Niccolò Machiavelli never stopped being interested in Florentine political life, fuelled by his hope to have the opportunity to help his city again. The present paper is a study of the Discursus florentinarum rerum after Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici asked Machiavelli to think about institutional reforms which were needed in Florence, following the death of Lorenzo II de’ Medici in 1519. John P. McCormick attaches the utmost importance to this text, considering that it demonstrates Machiavelli’s democratic commitment: in his proposal for rebuilding a republic in Florence, in favour of the people, Machiavelli would reinvent the tribunes of the plebs in Ancient Rome in his proposal to institute the Florentine provosts (proposti). He would support the people by assigning them a specific institution to defend themselves again “the great” (grandi). This measure should inspire us to address the problem of oligarchic dimension of contemporary democracies. For our part, we will demonstrate that such a reading and such use of the Discursus are highly debatable, on the one hand insisting on the concept of “order” (ordine), and on the other hand, underlining the problem of finding ways to update Machiavelli’s reflection, taking better account of differences in historical context.

On 15 August 1807, in Paris a new newspaper appears, whose title is the Corriere d’Italia. Drafted in Italian, it would be published every day until the spring by the French printer Guitard. Thanks to its editorial-line, this newspaper wins the Emperor’s support, who is always interested in controlling the dissemination of news beyond the Alps. In fact, despite the opposition of the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy Eugène de Beauharnais and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ferdinando Marescalchi, Napoleon decrees a government funding to allow facilitate its diffusion in Italy. After examination of the distribution of the Corriere, this paper deepens its editorial line in order to understand the political purposes supporting this initiative. In this way, the aim is to reduce the dichotomy between political practices and cultural practices: the latter is not a simple alternative to the first one, but a way of re-articulating, in another context and under other forms, the commitment of previous years.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Casa dei Matti in Aversa and Palermo were renowned throughout Europe for using music to treat the insane. In an innovative approach to mental illness inspired by Pinel’s moral treatment, patients took regular part in theatrical productions, operas, and musical performances. This paper investigates the methods used at Aversa and Palermo in light of contemporary medical debates. I argue that the use of music and theater in these institutions should be understood not only within the context of the emerging field of psychiatry, but also as interacting with popular notions of the national characteristics of Italians. Relying on both historical accounts and fictional narratives, I end by considering how depictions of musical-theatrical treatment expressed the assumption that Italian minds and bodies had a special sensitivity to the arts.