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"This book examines how a group of transnational British-Italian women affiliated with the exiled patriots of the Italian Left repurposed traditionally feminine activities, such as fundraising, gift-giving, maternity, and memory collection, to make a substantial contribution to Italian Unification and state-building. Through their actions, Mary Chambers, Sara Nathan, Giorgina Saffi, Julia Salis Schwabe, and Jessie White Mario transcended the boundaries of acceptable behavior for middle-class women and participated in the broader female emancipation movement. By drawing attention to their activities, this book reveals how nineteenth-century female activists achieved their most revolutionary goals by using conservative, domestic, or anti-Catholic language. Adding to the growing understanding of the Italian Risorgimento as a transnational phenomenon, it also shows how non-Catholic and non-Italian women participated in the creation and development of the Italian state. Finally, the book argues for the continuing importance of religion in both politics and philanthropy throughout the nineteenth century."
Deriving from the 20th Anniversary Women’s History Network Conference entitled ’20 Years of the Women’s History Network: Looking Back – Looking Forward’, this volume reflects on the state of women’s and gender history as well as showcasing the diversity of the current field. The range of contributions is broad and stimulating, covering such themes as transnational movements, gender and space, sexualities, motherhood, and women in politics. Together, the interdisciplinary chapters reflect the rich diversity of current women’s history and historiography, and will offer important insight to students and scholars researching the past, present and future of feminist studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women’s History Review.
This book is the first epoch-spanning study on Jewish participation in the Italian women’s movement, focussing in a transnational perspective on the experience of Italian-Jewish protagonists in Liberal Italy, during the First World War and the Fascist dictatorship until 1945. Drawing on ego-documents, contemporary journals and Jewish community archives, as well as records by the police and public authorities, it examines the tensions within the emancipation process between participation and exclusion. The book argues that the racial laws from 1938 did not represent the sudden end of an idyllic integration, but rather the climax of a long-term development. Social marginalization, the persecution of Jewish rights, and the assault on Jewish lives during fascism are analysed distinctly from the perspective of Jewish women. In spite of their significant influence on the transnational orientation of the Italian women’s movement, their emancipation as women and Jews remained incomplete.
In the nineteenth century, new cemeteries were built in many Italian cities that were unique in scale and grandeur, and which became destinations on the Grand Tour. From the Middle Ages, the dead had been buried in churches and urban graveyards but, in the 1740s, a radical reform across Europe prohibited burial inside cities and led to the creation of suburban burial grounds. Italy’s nineteenth-century cemeteries were distinctive as monumental or architectural structures, rather than landscaped gardens. They represented a new building type that emerged in response to momentous changes in Italian politics, tied to the fight for independence and the creation of the nation-state. As the first...
This is the first in-depth study of the feminist movement that swept Italy during the "long 1970s" (1968-1983), and one of the first to use a combination of oral history interviews and newly-released archive sources to analyze the origins, themes, practices and impacts of "second-wave" feminism. While detailing the local and national contexts in which the movement operated, it sees this movement as transnationally connected. Emerging in a society that was both characterized by traditional gender roles, and a microcosm of radical political projects in the wake of 1968, the feminist movement was able to transform the lives of thousands of women, shape gender identities and roles, and provoke p...
The meaning of our concern for mortal remains—from antiquity through the twentieth century The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters—for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how a...
The province of Grosseto in southern Tuscany shows two extremes in the treatment of Italian and foreign Jews during the Holocaust. To the east of the province, the Jews of Pitigliano, a four hundred-year-old community, were hidden for almost a year by sympathetic farmers in barns and caves. None of those in hiding were arrested and all survived the Fascist hunt for Jews. In the west, near the provincial capital of Grosseto, almost a hundred Italian and foreign Jews were imprisoned in 1943–1944 in the bishop's seminary, which he had rented to the Fascists for that purpose. About half of them, though they had thought that the bishop would protect them, were deported with his knowledge by Fascists and Nazis to Auschwitz. Thus, the Holocaust reached into this provincial corner as it did into all parts of Italy still under Italian Fascist control. This book is based on new interviews and research in local and national archives.
Christian Giudice's Occult Imperium explores Italian national forms of Occultism, chiefly analyzing Arturo Reghini (1878-1946), his copious writings, and Roman Traditionalism. Trained as a mathematician at the prestigious University of Pisa, Reghini was one of the three giants of occult and esoteric thought in Italy, alongside his colleagues Julius Evola (1898-1974) and Giulian Kremmerz (1861-1930). Using Reghini's articles, books, and letters, as a guide, Giudice explores the interaction between occultism, Traditionalism, and different facets of modernity in early-twentieth-century Italy. The book takes into consideration many factors particular to the Italian peninsula: the ties with avant-garde movements such as the Florentine Scapigliatura and Futurism, the occult vogues typical to Italy, the rise to power of Benito Mussolini and Fascism, and, lastly, the power of the Holy See over different expressions of spirituality. Occult Imperium explores the convergence of new forms of spirituality in early twentieth-century Italy.
Coppa provides the first full-length study of Giacomo Antonelli, friend and advisor to Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono) and his Secretary of State and chief minister from 1849 to 1876. Based on the documents of the secret Vatican Archives, and neglected family papers in the State Archive in Rome, the book gives an important reevaluation of this key diplomatic figure, separating the man from the myth and delving into his character and policies. The book examines both the personality and policies of the Cardinal, who was seen to be the Popes Richelieu and Mazarin combined. Confronting the polemical literature which has charged him with sexual misconduct and venality, the study examines his early formation and career, the inspiration for his European policies, his relationship to Pio Nono, and the part he played in the Counter-Risorgimento and the Papal reaction. By improving our understanding of Papal, Italian, and European developments during these crucial decades, this study provides new insights into Romes fortress mentality and its rejection of the main currents that were transforming western life currents that influenced not only the Catholic Church but European society as a whole.
As the number of the non-affiliated and religiously indifferent is on the rise, this book adds a hitherto absent historical dimension to the field of secular studies. It shows a variety of ways in which the non-religious at large - be it organizations, networks or even committed individuals - impact upon the interface between the state and the religious or the non-religious. To what specific legal statuses have these processes led? What elements were taken into consideration when making these decisions? Who opted for a recognition of a non-confessional lifestance and why? Conversely, who opted for a wall of separation and why? Are things that clear cut? Doesn't the variety of choices and frameworks offer a more varied spectrum? What continuities and discontinuities are to be observed in the history of seculars and their organizations? These patterns, divergent and entangled, are developed and explained within the broader conception of 'multiple secularisms'.