The Graduate Studies Seminar at cordially invites you to a lecture by Valerie McGuire
Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, 2013-14
Fascism’s Mediterranean Empire: Italian Colonial Modernity in the Dodecanese Islands (1923-43)
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, AT 6:00 P.M. VILLA LA PIETRA
Via Bolognese, 120, 50139 Firenze
Relatively small and sparsely inhabited, the Dodecanese Islands are typically historicized
as having only strategic value for Fascist Italy’s wider expansion plans for a colonial empire from
the Balkans to Africa. This talk rethinks such a premise on the basis of myriad cultural
artifacts that characterized Italian rule of the islands, from new public works of architecture
to propaganda in film, photography and travel literature, to programs to educate the next
generation in Italian language and Fascist culture. From the time of conquest during the
Italo-Turkish War (1912) until the 1943 armistice when Italy was forced to relinquish all
claims to colonies abroad, radical ideologies held these islands up as the “pearl” of Italy’s
Mediterranean empire. Analyzing new imperial identities and experiments in citizenship
and forms of national belonging, this talk tracks the alternative colonial modernity that
Italy promoted to foil its reputation as a backward or insignificant imperial power and to
restore the prestige associated with its ancient dominance of the Mediterranean.
Valerie McGuire received her PhD in Italian Studies from New York University. A Fulbright Scholar for
Greece in 2012-13, she is currently a Max Weber Postdoctoral fellow in History at the European University
Institute. She has published her research on Italian colonialism and postcolonialism in volumes of Italian
Studies.
Valerie McGuire
Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, 2013-14
Fascism’s Mediterranean Empire:
Italian Colonial Modernity in the Dodecanese Islands
(1923-43)
As spaces are limited please R.S.V.P. 055 5007.202 or lapietra.reply@nyu.edu
