Staging Italianità between “Race”, Science, and the Arts. Museum, Exhibitions, Festivals and the Making of Identities in Italy 1910s-1960s

This edited volume explores how cultural practices and objects such as museum exhibitions, world fairs, but also scientific knowledge, contributed in shaping both models of national Italian identity and those of “the others” (non-European peoples, colonial subjects, but also human remains). In addition, it demonstrates how Italian communities living abroad contributed to the construction of national identity. In so doing, it covers an unprecedented chronology, which from the liberal age includes and goes beyond fascism into the Republican era, highlighting the long development of a certain discourse on italianità and the longevity of the exhibition media as a means to narrate it.

Overall, this volume in particular investigates exhibitions as sites where visions of Italy were stored, establishing the very (racial) borders of the Italian identity, and the gazes on that identity were catalogued, using, within the display, a variety of other media, such as film, photography, collage, painting, diorama, and so on. Museums display, expos, trade shows and fairs will be therefore considered as a place where belonging, inclusion and othering were staged, and nationality was built.

Key words: #Italianness, #world fairs, #(colonial) exhibitions, #trade shows, #national identity, #alterity, #race, #racism, #history of science

Researchers:
Dr. Maria Bonaria Urban (KNIR)
Dr. Beatrice Falcucci (KNIR Fellow 2022-2023)