This article chronicles the roundtable held at LUISS University in Rome on 23 May 2025, marking the eightieth anniversary of the Italian Resistance. Organised alongside the launch of the special issue of Modern Italy titled ‘The Italian Resistance: Historical Junctures and New Perspectives’, the event gathered prominent scholars to revisit the legacy of the Resistance in contemporary historical, cultural and political discourse. Contributions highlighted emerging research on marginal actors, transnational perspectives, gendered memory and the symbolic dimensions of antifascism. Discussions revealed a shared concern with pluralising memory and resisting reductive narratives. This reflection emphasises the enduring relevance of the Resistance as a site of democratic imagination and critical historical inquiry, as well as the journal’s continued commitment to fostering innovative and inclusive scholarship on modern Italy.

This article argues that the image of the ‘bad German’ and the animus that accompanied it was tempered by that of the defeated German and the pity Italians in liberal and Catholic circles expressed for German misery. Such sympathetic expressions were not confined to the ruling elite but circulated broadly in media representations and in accounts given by Italians who travelled north in the early postwar years. To view Germans as objects of pity was an empowering act and a humanising one. As an emotion and a practice, pity provided a blueprint for how to think and feel about the former enemy – and oneself – that, in Italy, reinforced Catholic and liberal frameworks for political and social reconstruction. Important to constructions of East–West difference and to the Christian democratic groundings of Western Europe, pity continues to shape debates on European identity, immigration and humanitarian aid.

This article analyses the activities conducted by the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) in Spain between 1936 to 1943 to understand Italian policy towards the Francoist regime during that period. In doing so, this piece argues that it is important to adopt a political economy approach that looks at production, trade and industrial investments, always in relation to politics, diplomacy, law, culture and government. In fact, this article establishes that, for the main actors in Rome at the time, all these considerations were inseparable when it came to the Italian policy towards Franco’s Spain. Furthermore, I argue that the BNL initiatives are better understood when situated within the larger history of the Fascist regime in Italy and its imperialistic policies in the Mediterranean area.

This article analyses the agony column ‘Voi e il cinema’, launched in November 1938 in Cine illustrato, one of the most popular film magazines of the time. ‘Voi e il cinema’ invited readers to share their acting aspirations, but also to send in photographs of themselves that might contain the defining feature of a diva: photogenicity. The magazine was flooded with images of ‘ordinary young Italian women’ that created an intermediate visual grammar. Focusing on both the photographs and the editors’ responses, the article reveals how shared consumption practices redefined the relationship between public and private space. It also highlights the distance of the readers’ self-representations from Fascist models and sheds light on the role of American star culture in creating the ‘modern’ subject. Although they were not politically opposed to Fascist models, the photographs reveal a strong desire for social change and the perception of such change, particularly in relation to traditional female roles.

During the Fascist period, the extractive industry played an important role in Italy’s economic and political landscape, and sulphur was considered the autarkic mineral par excellence. This article reveals how the rhetoric surrounding the vigorous extraction of sulphur in Sicily was part of a larger project of reconstruction and reorganisation, which involved the division of land, reclamation efforts, military operations and colonisation. Drawing on examples of visual and written narratives from public reports, essays, illustrated magazines and exhibitions of the time, the article demonstrates that extraction was both the actual site of resource extraction and the Fascist extractive logic of consensus. The use of specific discourses and definitions enabled and justified the portrayal of humans and lands as extractable resources, creating images and imaginaries that normalised exploitation and transformation, and the regime’s extractive force.

Public art is fundamental in the shaping of a city’s identity: in the city of Bologna’s case, this identity is inextricably tied to the Resistance. The presence or absence of women in monumental commemorations, then, becomes a way to either include or exclude them from this shared identity. By centring its analysis on the monuments dedicated to the Resistance’s fallen erected since 1945, this article will utilise the case study of Irma Bandiera to analyse women’s presence within the commemorative topography of the city. Through the study of two monuments, the Monumento Ossario ai Caduti Partigiani and the Memoriale alle 128 partigiane cadute, this article will also highlight the role of the local community in the creation of a shared and representative identity.

Following the French example, the Meloni government has introduced the phrase ‘sovranità alimentare’ (sovereignty in food) into the title of the ministry of agriculture, and makes clear that it is engaging in a very determined effort to defend and promote the cultural heritage of Italian cuisine on all fronts, at home and abroad. But the origins of this impulse go back to the 1980s and the arrival of the McDonald’s hamburger chain, which gave birth to the Slow Food movement, now a global phenomenon. All this conceals several paradoxes: Italian cuisine has always been open to hybridised versions invented elsewhere (especially in America); production in key sectors, including wine, depends on large numbers of immigrant workers at a time when the government is trying to discourage immigration; and the ‘sovereignty in food’ concept unwittingly unites the government and some of its most radical opponents. But the very basis of this concept is challenged by the hyper-protectionist trade policy of the Trump administration.

This article analyses the relationship between Italian feminism and mental health in the 1970s, focusing on Turin. It explores the main theoretical debates that dominated feminist magazines and meetings during those years. In feminist groups and collectives, discussions about women’s wellness and illness began with the broader theme of health and knowledge of one’s body. However, they subsequently expanded to include personal, theoretical, clinical and political issues related to mental health. New experiences such as autocoscienza (consciousness-raising) and the practice of the unconscious allowed feminists to examine the effects of gender roles and models, existential contradictions, distress and intolerance, discomfort with doctors, psychiatric hospitalisation and the shortcomings of territorial services. The case of Turin shows that these experiences paved the way for subsequent interactions between feminism and the psychiatric reform movement.

Through the analysis of a series of different documents preserved in the Fondo Tremaglia, I reconstruct the genesis and development of the National Day of Italian Labour Sacrifices in the World (Giornata nazionale del sacrificio del lavoro italiano nel mondo). The holiday was conceived by Minister for Italians in the World Mirko Tremaglia and designated by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the end of 2001. The analysis focuses on the recovery and exaltation of the memory of the Italian miners who died in the Marcinelle mining disaster in 1956, on the political and cultural dynamics of Italy at the time, and on Tremaglia’s saloino (he voluntarily joined the Italian Social Republic and was enlisted in the National Republican Guard) and missino (term used to refer to the members of the Movimento Sociale Italiano) past. The result is a multifaceted scenario for a commemoration that still exists today, but is largely unknown in the country where it was created.

The aim of this article is to analyse the Italian Nuova Destra. The first part examines the birth of the Nuova Destra within the current of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), referring particularly to Pino Rauti, a founder and leader. Following the experience of the magazine La Voce della Fogna and the Hobbit Camps, the first publishing initiatives of the Nuova Destra – Diorama letterario and Elementi, influenced by Alain de Benoist and the French Nouvelle Droite – were established. The second part analyses the path of the Nuova Destra as an autonomous cultural current. After Marco Tarchi’s expulsion from the MSI in 1981, the Nuova Destra launched an aggressive publishing strategy that failed to make the necessary organisational leap and came to an end around 1994. Nevertheless, the Nuova Destra has created a recognisable current, culturally eclectic and capable of ranging over different fields of knowledge with ‘metapolitics’ and ‘right-wing Gramscism’.