The Italian liberal era remains a relatively un-mapped phase of modern Italian history in Anglo-American historiography, as well as in the collective conscience even in Italy. Following the formal unification of 1870, this period saw the development of major political and cultural efforts to build a common Italian identity and culture: what was invoked as the “making of Italians”, after the “making of Italy” in the Risorgimento.

This conference will bring together major scholars from Italy, Great Britain, and the United States in order to explore the ways in which this process of nationalization was put in place, especially on the cultural level, through the construction of common political myths, through literary practices and new intellectual enterprises. Generational, cultural, political and social conflicts will be scrutinized as major dialectical forces in the process of nation-building. Early signs of cultural crisis will also be detected in growing tendencies towards irrationalism, ideological radicalization, fascination with violence.

October 27th 

• Morning Session, 9:30 am

Chair: Mia Fuller (University of California, Berkeley)

 CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN (University of Reading): "Francesco Crispi: Authoritarianism and Political Education" 

SIMON LEVIS-SULLAM (University of California, Berkeley): "The Aesthetics and the Ethics of the New Italy: Mazzini’s Legacy from Carducci to Oriani" 

LUCIA RE (University of California, Los Angeles): "The Poetics and Politics of Difference in the Struggle over Libya, 1911-1913"

• Afternoon Session, 2:30 pm

Chair: Alessia Ricciardi (University of California, Berkeley)

ROBERTO DAINOTTO (Duke University): "Making Communism Italian: Antonio Labriola and the Nationalization of Theoretical Marxism" 

SUZANNE STEWART-STEINBERG (Brown University): "The Representative Politics of Matilde Serao's ‘La conquista di Roma’" 

WALTER ADAMSON (Emory University), "The 'Riviste Fiorentine' and the Politics of A Third Italy"