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“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.

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.

These paper focuses on defining a research project related to the history of Italian geography in the first half of the 20 century. Focusing especially on the period between the two World Wars, this study will fill the gap in current italian literature about the relations between geography, nationalism and imperialism. The aim is to compare Italian geography with other European schools in a transnational perspective, through the methodological approach of Histoire Croisée. Beside the analysis of the most important geographical works (particularly prominent is the research project on the Italian country house), this research will mainly use archive sources, to understand the complex cross of ideas, methodological approaches and scientific communication involving scholars of different countries.