American Academy in Rome - Summer Programs

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Overview
Introduction | Why in Rome? | Topics and Themes

The seminar on New Perspectives on Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento will be held this coming summer at the American Academy in Rome.

The seminar is designed to provide college and university teachers with an intensive introduction to new, more comparative approaches to nineteenth-century Italian history that have emerged in recent years. A product of collaborative work of Italian and non-Italian historians, these enable us to set Italy's nineteenth century more firmly in a comparative European and global context, at the same time placing new emphasis on cultural and social dimensions that were previously neglected.

The seminar is designed for a wide spectrum of teachers in the humanities and social sciences, with special emphasis on the political, social and cultural history of Europe in the contemporary era. As well as appealing to those whose interests lie primarily in Italian history, the seminar will also be attractive for those humanities scholars seeking to link Italian developments with other fields of European or North American social, cultural, political, religious or intellectual history in this period.

Participants will be chosen on the basis of their ability to contribute to an intellectually stimulating program that requires active participation and the exchange of ideas. It is not necessary that they should have a specialist's knowledge of Italian history in this period, but it is expected that participants will have some scholarly engagement with modern or contemporary European history. Knowledge of Italian is highly desirable, although knowledge of other European languages may compensate for lack of proficiency in Italian. Beginner and intermediary level Italian language instruction will be available free of charge.

Why in Rome?
The residential setting provided by the American Academy in Rome provides a unique opportunity to weave together both informal and more formal academic meetings and to utilize the time available to maximum effect. The location also provides easy access to the city of Rome, which the seminar will use as one of its principal 'texts'. As well as providing the opportunity to explore one of the great European capital cities, Rome offers an extraordinarily rich living historical environment of monuments, buildings and 'sites of memory' which are indispensable for an understanding of the historical events of this period and the topics studied. The seminar will draw fully on these resources with a program of field-study sessions in Rome and one outside Rome.

The American Academy in Rome enthusiastically supports this program and is an ideal host for the seminar. The Academy is committed to integrating the participants in summer seminars into its wider activities, and as well as hosting special events, the Academy will invite participants to share fully in ongoing activities. Participants in summer seminars will have the status of NEH Summer Seminar Scholars at the American Academy in Rome and meeting spaces/conference rooms in the new building in Via Masina 5b will be dedicated to NEH seminar needs. Participants will enjoy full access to the Academy's new and greatly enhanced computer center, where assistance from specialist information technology staff and unrestricted high speed Internet access will be available.

The American Academy in Rome offers excellent library facilities including the most complete holdings of English-language titles on contemporary Italian history in Rome. Program participants will have full library privileges, including after-hours access. In addition, books, photocopies and other materials for the NEH seminar will be made available in the seminar room at Via Masina 5b. The Academy's staff will provide administrative assistance during, as well as prior to and after the seminar.

What topics and themes will the seminar cover?
The seminar will be organized around the following themes:

How Unique was the Risorgimento?
Constructing the Italian Nation: Myths, Memories and Identities
Liberalism and the Limits of Secularism: Religion, Church and Society
Political Change and Social Continuities: Family, Social Welfare, Gender and Sexuality
Italy's Twin Identities: The South and the Construction of an Italian Nation

Although most American students who have studied modern European history will be familiar with the major names and events associated with the struggle for Italian political unification in the mid-19th century (the Risorgimento), Italy's nineteenth century has long been something of a Cinderella. The heroic tones in which an earlier historiography depicted the struggles for political emancipation were discredited when Italy's nineteenth-century parliamentary monarchy collapsed after the First World War. When Italy became the theater for the first experiment in totalitarian dictatorship in western Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, historians' view of the Risorgimento became increasingly narrow, seeking the fatal flaws and weaknesses of the liberal democracy that emerged from it. The Risorgimento was dubbed the work of a small elite who failed to engage the enthusiasm of the masses; the institutional structures put in place by the Risorgimento were dismissed as weak; the leaders of the new state were castigated for their short-sightedness and venality. Moreover, the fact that the Risorgimento had as its chief antagonist the Roman Catholic Church was widely held to have poisoned the new state's origins and deprived it of legitimacy.

Viewed from the start of the 21st century, however, fascism and Mussolini's regime can no longer be seen as the inevitable culmination of all previous Italian history. As in the case of Germany, historians have questioned the well-established assumption that Italy followed a distinctive but flawed path to the 20th century. This has also led them to challenge both the Marxist notion that Italy's unification resulted in a 'failed capitalist revolution', as well as liberal mirror-image of this interpretation in which Liberal Italy is portrayed as a case of unsuccessful modernization.

Rather than a deviant path to the twentieth century, Italy's nineteenth century can now be studied more simply as one more variant in the context of the broader and often contradictory changes that configured the modern world both within and outside Europe. This makes it possible to set Italy's Risorgimento in the global contexts of state-building and modernity which are currently major concerns of research in the humanities. Italy's 'difficult modernization' provides an alternative perspective for re-examining political, social and cultural change in terms that are less judgmental and hence for explaining in what ways and why the responses of Italian society and its institutions to the challenges of modernity have been distinctive without being exceptional. It is often claimed that within advanced western societies Italians were distinctive in never developing a strong sense of allegiance to the 'nation', and that Italian identities continued to be shaped primarily by region and family. This has encouraged new work on the ways in which both national identity and the nation were constructed in the nineteenth century, on the nature and role of family, on gender relations, on the social, cultural and political role of religion and religiosity. It has also focused new attention on the complex roles played by the 'Southern Problem' - both the realities and the perception of the disparities between the North and the South - in the construction of new 'national' identities.

Overview
Introduction, why in Rome, topics and themes

The Directors
Background of Professors John Davis, RAAR'01, and David Kertzer, RAAR'00

Organization
General operation of seminar, schedule outline

Logistics
Housing and accommodations, stipends and expenses

How to Apply
Required materials, downloadable application form, contact information