The Dialectics of Modernity: Modernism, Modernization, and the Arts Under European Dictatorships.

The history of Italian Fascism has always attracted a substantial amount of academic and non-academic attention, but considerably less systematic attention has been paid to the aesthetic achievements promoted during the dictatorship. This project examines the relationship between arts and politics in the age of European totalitarian regimes and presents the first comprehensive view of the arts system during the Italian Fascist dictatorship from an interdisciplinary perspective. Hence, this research is relevant to exploring how the past and its uses have an impact on our understanding of the role of the humanities in shaping our perception of society and civic participation.

During the Ventennio, the Italian Fascist regime created totalitarian aesthetic apparatuses together with new forms of social and cultural patronage for the control of the individual/citizen in the social sphere, seeking mass consensus and the constitution of the 'new man/woman' as the foundation of a modern collective social identity. Specifically, by drawing on a wide-ranging set of modernist journals and artefacts, spanning public building, artworks and novels, this project explores how the Italian Fascist regime's participation in an aesthetic movement (modernism) and in its transformation into a social phenomenon (modernization) created a distinctive system of the arts, which, in the 1930s, also had a profound influence across the whole of Europe. In this research, we argue that these debates and artistic expressions were of key importance for the regime's existence, as they played a foundational role in shaping the aesthetics orientations of Italian culture, in creating its transnational profile, and strengthening the power of the arts during political repression. This project's distinctive contribution to knowledge consists in its sustained analysis of the unique synergy between artistic and political discourses on the modernist aesthetics and totalitarian politics it supports through a wealth of primary data. Such data will become available to both academic and non-academic beneficiaries via the database/website and the series of outreach activities planned.

The applicant has published extensively on the topic of early twentieth-century literary journals, modernism, translation and fascist cultural policies and is currently the co-Investigator in a major UK-based AHRC-funded project looking at intellectual, publishers and journals in post-WWII Italy. She is supervising postdoctoral fellows on Irish modernism and Italy as well as on the role of the PCI in the post-war intellectual debate. She has written a monograph on Fascist cultural policies on translation and published on literary journals and intellectual history from the early 20th century to the 1960s. This project builds on these works on fascist culture, literary journals, and intellectual history, and will result in a major, interdisciplinary monograph entitled Fascist Modernism: The Arts Under Dictatorship, an interactive database/website.

The proposed research programme of impact and dissemination activities will assure the engagement of a wide range of academic and non-academic audiences both in the U.K. and in Italy. Through a series of interconnected public events (e.g. radio conversations, events in bookshops, theatres, and museums, an exhibition, and a round table), designed to increase awareness of the arts' social dimension, the project will involve the broader community in discussions on the arts and humanities ethics of resistance and their social/cultural significance in times of political crisis and transitions.

In view of our belief in the constant permeability between artistic practices and their transferable social value, this project's main impact strategy consists in demonstrating the importance of the arts both in shaping the public sphere and in promoting the role of the individual in intellectual debates features in literary journals which have championed democratic participation. Through a book, a database/website, an online academic journal, a Visiting professorship, an exhibition, and a series of interconnected public events, this project will engage academics and broader audiences, such as undergraduate students, families and the elderly, who might have an interest in the aesthetic and political dynamics of European integration as well as in the Fascist period. These audiences could benefit from discussions, which cover historical events in light of contemporary issues about the role of the arts in society. The main beneficiaries of the research fall within the following groups:

1. Individuals and bodies within the UK and EU public sector and organizations, interested in the relationships between arts and politics, e.g. museums, art galleries. The exhibition planned in Manchester will cover this aspect of the project. The exhibition will display a significant selection of the artefacts stored in the database/website and, through explanatory running texts, it will primarily dialogue with wider audiences, such as the public at large, local school children and library or gallery visitors (see Pathways). By proposing set of narratives comprising of a balanced mix of texts and images, a public lecture and some school visits, the exhibition will present the material accessibly. It will thus contribute to increasing the number of visitors and the library/gallery portfolio of activities.

2. Think tanks and interest grounds concerned with both a) the call for reconsidering the very limits of national sovereignty and centralised forms of control; and b) the humanities and the modern foreign language crisis of legitimation. These issues will be addressed during the public roundtable at the People's History Museum and will aim at developing collaborative conceptual frameworks, which Think-tanks and interest groups might also adopt to problematize these issues with audiences comprising non-experts. Experts will, instead, guarantee that the debate will make solid references to an extensive range of historical data, explored as part of the project's research agenda. The roundtable will be held in conjunction with similar events the PI will be involved as director of the Manchester-based Interdisciplinary Research Centre in the Arts and Languages (CIDRAL), thereby streamlining venues and maximizing impact on different audiences. The event will thus be part of both the Museum and CIDRAL programme of events and will guarantee visibility and outreach. The People's History Museum will also be able to attract visitors and publicize its own collections.

3. The broader British and Italian public interested in understanding not only the history of Fascist Italy but also its inner cultural workings. The project's outputs will be discussed in events focusing on how political crisis and aesthetic transformations have fostered the presence of the arts in the public sphere. To this end, results will be disseminated by way of conversations with Q&A session and pre-distributed questions and taking place at easily accessible museums, libraries, the radio, independent youth social spaces (Centro sociale occupato), private foundations and bookstore. Due to their dialogical and informal nature, the conversations will involve diverse audiences both in the U.K. and in Italy with varying degrees of specific knowledge on the topic and belonging to different age groups. Each institution will have the chance to attract the public and gain visibility in their own market share. The bookshops will also have the chance to promote their own book sales.