Annual Conference 2017
The Culture and Politics of the Italian Family from the 19th to the 21st Century

PROGRAMME

1-2 December 2017

The Italian Cultural Institute
39 Belgrave Square
London
SW1X 8NX

Conference convenors:
Paul Ginsborg, Christian Goeschel,
Sofia Serenelli, Alessandra Antola Swan

Communication:
Alessandra Antola Swan
aleantolaswan@outlook.com
07771872881

Friday 1 December
Italian Cultural Institute (ICI)

9:30 – 10.30 Registration

10.30 – 11.30 Introduction to the conference (Lecture Hall)
Chair: Christian Goeschel
Paul Ginsborg (University of Florence) The Culture and Politics of the modern Italian family.
Enrica Asquer (Edith Saurer Fonds Fellow) Problems in the writing of Italian family history: issues, methods and debates.
11.30 – 11.45: Coffee break (Project Room)

11.45 – 1.15: Parallel Session I – II – III

I. Family and Political Change in Italy (Lecture Hall)
Chair: Carlotta Ferrara Degli Uberti

Glauco Schettini (Fordham University) “A Good Son, a Good Father, and a Good Husband”: The Politics of Family in Late Eighteenth-Century Italy.

Caterina Sindoni (University of Messina) Family, education, school and society in the pater familias’ correspondence.
Silvia Inaudi (University of Siena Fellow) Without family. Political and Cultural Debate on Adoptions in the Sixties and Seventies.
II. Family Foundations of Fascism (Room Library)
Chair: Christian Goeschel

Selena Daly (University College Dublin) The emigrant family in the Great War.
Emanuele Ertola (University of Florence) Empire and Family: settler colonialism, Fascism and the nuclear family in Ethiopia.

Eden Knudsen Mclean (Auburn University, Alabama) Family or Fatherland? The Vital Role of Family in (Not) Creating an Italian South Tyrol Under Fascism.

III. In and around the Catholic Church: of peasants and parties, families and schools
(Project Room)
Chair: Marzia Maccaferri

Emanuele Bernardi (La Sapienza, Rome) The Italian Confederation of small cultivators and family.
Elena Musiani (University of Bologna) The Italian “mezzadrile” family between conservatism and modernity (19th century).
Angelo Gaudio (University of Udine) Family discourse in laws about school and textbooks, 1944-1991.

1.15 - 2.15 Lunch break (please make your own arrangements)

2.15 – 3.45 Parallel Session IV - V

IV. The ancient institution of marriage contested (Lecture Hall)
Chair: Mark Seymour

Stefania Bernini (University of Venice) Marriage and divorce in Poland and in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s: the hegemony of the Catholic Church discussed.
Niamh Cullen (University of Southampton) How divorce redefined Italian marriage: An emotional history.
Gabriella Petti (University of Genoa) and Walter Baroni (University of Manchester) La separazione come prosecuzione della famiglia con altri mezzi. Associazionismo paterno, giustizia e governo neoliberale delle relazioni familiari.

V. Families and the Fascist regime (Room Library)
Chair: Stephen Gundle

Gabriella Romano (Birkbeck, University of London) The disintegration of family values in Fascist Italy: the Collegno mental health hospital files.

Lindsay Eufusia (Northwestern University) ‘Mussolini ha sempre ragione’: Demographic Policy as Family Policy and Fathers in Fascist Italy.
3.45 – 4.15 Tea break (Project Room)

4.15 – 5.45 Parallel Sessions VI - VII

VI. On the Mafia (Lecture Hall)
Chair: John Dickie

Francesco Chianese (University of Naples) Screening the Italian Family in Transformation: The Case of Gomorrah – The Series.
Claudio Mancuso (University of Urbino) Blood and honour. Family in Mafia culture.
Anna Di Giusto (Independent researcher) Women against Mafia fleeing family.

VII Social changes, family changes in the 1960s and 1970s (Room Library)
Chair: John Foot

Laura Casella (University of Udine) Gorizia, the 1960s: home movies, stories of families on Italy’s eastern border.

Alessandra Gissi (University of Naples "L'Orientale") Produce and reproduce. An historical perspective on families and unpaid domestic labour (Italy, 1929-1980).
Patrick McGauley (Independent Scholar) “An immoral intermingling of the sexes”: family, morality and housing in post-war Matera.

6.00 – 7.00 AGM (Lecture Hall)
8.00 Conference dinner TAS Restaurant 22 Bloomsbury Street London WC1B 3QJ
Saturday 2 December
Italian Cultural Institute (ICI)

9.30 – 10.00 – Registration

10.00 – 11.30 Parallel Session VIII – IX

VIII. Film and familism through diverse lenses (Lecture Hall)
Chair: Gianluca Fantoni

Giacomo Lichtner (Victoria University of Wellington) Family, familism and fascism in the films of Luigi Zampa.
Sally Hill (Victoria University of Wellington) Flawed Fathers: Masculinity, Disability and the Image of the Family in Italian Film.
Danielle Hipkins (University of Exeter) Daughters of Naples: Girls’ coming-of-age narratives on the Italian screen.

IX. Between representation and normativity: family lives in Italian literature, culture, and the law (Room Library)
Chair: Lucy Riall
Alessio Baldini (University of Leeds) Family sagas in modern Italian literature (1881-2014): reimagining the nation in times of crisis.
Angela Condello (University Roma 3) Narrating contested rights at the intersection of law and literature: family as a paradigm.
Carlotta Ferrara Degli Uberti (University College London) Religious minorities redefine the Italian family: religion, culture and the law in Liberal Italy.
11.30 – 12.00 Tea break (Project Room)

12.00 – 1.30 Parallel sessions X – XI

X. Session. Radical challenges to conventional family life: the micro and the macro
(Lecture Hall)
Chair: Ilaria Favretto

Mark Seymour (University of Otago) Nomadic, Non-Normative, and Naughty: An ‘Alternative’ Italian Family of a Different Seventies.
John Foot (University of Bristol) The public and the private. Political commitment and the Family in the Radical psychiatry movement in the 1960s and 1970s in Italy.
Paola Bernasconi (La Sapienza, Rome) La famiglia Italiana nel Sessantotto. Memoria, silenzi, conflitto generazionale.

XI. Revolution and continuities. The long struggle for gay and lesbian families in Italy
(First Floor Hall)
Chair: Charlotte Ross

Federica de Cordova, Giulia Selmi, Chiara Sità, Cristina Lonardi (University of Verona) Making the good parent for the good child. The case of adoption in special cases in Italian LGB couples.
Marina Franchi (London School of Economics) Redefining the Italian Family? The mediatisation of the debates on the legal recognition of de facto unions.

1.30 – 2.45 Lunch (Please make your own arrangements)

2.45 – 4.00 Chiara Saraceno (Collegio Carlo Alberto di Moncalieri) The children of austerity.

4.00 – 5.00 Final round table: Italian families in a comparative European dimension.
Sally Alexander (Goldsmith’s, University of London), Paul Ginsborg, Christian Goeschel (coordinator), Laura Lee Downs (European University Institute), Lucy Riall (European University Institute), Chiara Saraceno (Collegio Carlo Alberto di Moncalieri), Grazia Sciacchitano (European University Institute).