At the beginning of October, a group of fascists assaulted the main office of the CGIL, the most important workers’ union in Italy. The action had a huge symbolic resonance, but it’s just the most visible events that witnesses the presence of the extreme right in Italy. This presence is evident in arts and culture too, with the discussion on monuments or the use of former fascist buildings as sites of exhibition.
 
What does it mean to talk about (Italian) Fascism in Twentieth Century? How do we account for it? Next year will be the one hundredth anniversary of the rise of the Fascist Regime, is there a danger of going back of a century or we are talking about a different fascism?
 
We will discuss these and other issues with a panel of experts:
·      Francesca Billiani (Manchester), author of Fascist Modernism in Italy. Arts and Regimes (I.B. Tauris, 2021)
·      John Foot (Bristol), author of Blood and Power. The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism (Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2022)
·      Respondent: Claudio Fogu (UC Santa Barbara), author of The historic imaginary. Politics of history in fascist Italy (Toronto UP, 2003)
·      Chair: Luca Peretti (Warwick)