This book sheds new light on the role of the military in Italian society and culture during war and peacetime by bringing together a whole host of contributors across the interdisciplinary spectrum of Italian Studies. Divided into five thematic units, this volume examines the continuous and multifaceted impact of the military on modern and contemporary Italy. The Italian context offers a particularly fertile ground for studying the cultural impact of the military because the institution was used not only for defensive/offensive purposes, but also to unify the country and to spread ideas of socio-cultural and technological development across its diverse population.

Autorentext

Mattia Roveri is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Italian Studies at New York University, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of History in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Hostos Community College, City University of New York.

Inhalt

INTRODUCTION**

1.     The Military and Us: Towards a New Approach to the Study of the Military in Culture

Mattia Roveri

I. JOURNALISM

2.     'What an Aesthetic War': The Italian Media Strategy and the Military during the First World War*

Marco Mondini

3.     Sports and the Military in Italian Newspapers from the First World War

Francesca Gatta 4.     The Army and Military Policies of Post-Unification Italy in the Milanese Radical Press Morena Corradi II. LITERATURE

5.     Verga's 'L'amante di Gramigna': Outlaws and Disorder in Militarized PostUnification Italy Susan Amatangelo 6.     Military Service in Textbooks for Italian Soldiers, 18611914 Marco Rovinello 7.     The Montale Siblings and the Great War Giuseppe Gazzola III. MEMORY

8.     Two Italian Colonial Massacres

David Forgacs

9.     'Contadini in divisa': Conscription's Making and Unmaking of Italians from Rural Piedmont

Fiona M. Stewart 10.  Italy's Fields of Glory: WWI Battlefield Travel and the Uses of Public Memory, 19191953 David Aliano

IV. IDEOLOGY

11.  Visualizing Italy through a Militant Lens: F.T. Marinetti and Italy's Military Experience

Ernest Ialongo

12.  The Artist-Officer: War, Beauty and the Nation in Ardengo Soffici's Kobilek

Simona Storchi

13.  Squadrismo and the Militarization of Politics

Alessandro Saluppo

V. VISUALS

14.  Imaging the Military in Modern and Contemporary Italian Art

Adrian R. Duran

15.  Soldiers for the Mob: The Military as Metaphor for Italian Organized Crime

Rebecca Bauman

16.  The Black American Soldier: Italian Cinematic Reflections*

Shelleen Greene and Mattia Roveri, New York University