1. Introduction to Italian Fascism

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we provide a short introduction to Benito Mussolini and the Fascist regime in Italy, before introducing the key questions that will be explored in the rest of the course.

Course

In this course, Dr Hannah Malone (University of Cambridge) explores the rise of Italian Fascism, focusing in particular on five key questions: (1) How did the experience of the First World War contribute to the rise of Fascism? (2) Was Fascism a forward-looking ideology? Did it embrace modernity or tradition? (3) What was the role of the dead in Fascism? (4) Why did the Fascist regime seek to gain colonies—in Libya, Ethiopia, and in the Balkan Peninsula? (5) How did Fascism seek to impact the lives of ordinary men and women?

Lecturer

Hannah is currently Lumley Junior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge as well as a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

She is primarily interested in how buildings operate as vehicles for political exchange, exploring the relationships between architecture, nationalism, and power. Her other interests include the national memory, the ideal of political martyrdom, and heritage issues.

As a Junior Research Fellow (2014-17) at Magdalene College, she undertaking a monograph on Marcello Piacentini, the most prominent architect of Mussolini's fascist regime. Formerly, as a Fellow of the British School at Rome (2013-14), she worked on a project on Italy's fascist ossuaries of the Great War, which focused on how the fascist state exploited death as propaganda. A book based on her doctoral thesis will be published shortly by Ashgate under the title: Nationhood and the Architecture of Death: The Monumental Cemeteries of Nineteenth-Century Italy.