In 1961 the peace activist and anti-mafia campaigner Danilo Dolci spoke at a protest event at the Italian centennial of unification celebrations hosted by the City of Philadelphia. The reactions to the talk he gave on development initiatives in Western Sicily provide some insight into the transnational discussion that was developing around the mafia, governance and leadership in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dolci and his supporters made the suggestion that the problems encountered by the post-war governments in Italy, Sicily and Philadelphia were a result of leaderships which presented or made the appearance of change but did not fix the underlying problems. This article maps how the conversation developed, why the idea of the mafia as a ‘thing’, an operating criminal organisation with Sicilian origins, was such an important narrative, and what it meant for those trying to make a claim to leadership positions.

This article analyses three fantasy sequences in contemporary Italian cinema about political terrorism in the period known as the anni di piombo (‘years of lead’). It argues that, faced with divided memories, ideologically-charged narratives of the past, political interference and the so-called Italian anomalies, film-makers have reacted by making the absence of resolution a question in its own right. The article identifies and analyses three specific approaches, each linked to a sequence from each film.  The first sequence, ‘uno sfondo di verità’, focuses on Marco Tullio Giordana’s Romanzo di una strage, which navigates the absence of resolution, lamenting it but also exploiting it to force a particular version of events. The second sequence, ‘vado a dormire’, focuses on Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte, which uses a dream sequence to fabricate a different resolution, but simultaneously underscore reality. The third sequence, ‘mea culpa’, analyses the invented confession scene in Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, arguing that it employs ambiguity to find closure in imagination itself, rather than in an imagined truth. Through the micro-analyses of these texts, this article seeks to highlight a broader question about cinema’s relationship with ambiguity and mystery in modern Italian history.

This article explores the meaning of photographic portraits of First World War Italian migrants, in terms of the tensions that emerge from their visual codes and the extent to which the subject’s interior reality and individuality might emerge from the reassuring surface imagery of photography and war. By analysing photographs of Italian migrants who either joined Italy’s army or enrolled in their adopted country’s army, we can see how the ‘otherness’ of the war – its artificial face of idealised glory, honour, and ordinariness, as presented through the portrait’s aesthetic codes – supplants the ‘otherness’ of the migrant individual, that is, their ambivalent life in between different cultures, traditions and identities. Yet, beyond the physical and psychological annihilation of the modern war, the photographic portrait, with its fabricated order and ‘otherness’, becomes, for the migrant soldier, a means of giving coherence to his dislocated existence. The nostalgic visual codes of the photograph, however, evoke an order that is now denied by the destructive mobility and mobilisation of both migration and war.

Through a discussion of Susanna Nichiarelli’s La scoperta dell’alba (The Discovery of Dawn, 2012), the article contends that historical films that do not centre their narratives around the homosocial and heterosexual male-quest, even if employing a conventional cinematic style, allow us to rethink national histories, trauma and contested memories, as they shift the focus to female subjectivities that are often marginalised in Italian historical films. Specifically, the discussion of Nichiarelli’s La scoperta dell’alba focuses on the complex role of victims in interpreting the legacy of the anni di piombo and on the processes through which the interplay between mourning and melancholia fosters the emotional agency that is necessary for dealing constructively with the experience of loss.

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the result of the referendum on constitutional reform held in Italy on 4 December 2016. The votes against (59.1%) won by a significant margin, with an unexpectedly high turnout at the polls and more than 33 million citizens voting. Using as a point of departure the polls carried out prior to and following the referendum, in which Italians said they were essentially in favour of the reform proposed by the prime minister, the essay focuses on the mistakes made by Matteo Renzi that discouraged Italians from voting Yes. These touch on all aspects of the referendum: 1) the parliamentary process, 2) its combination with electoral law, 3) institutional communication, and 4) his political analysis and strategic approach. The final section evaluates the effects of the referendum result on the Italian political system, emphasising the setback to reformism and the strengthening of the anti-system parties that support leaving the Euro (in particular the Movimento 5 Stelle).

The article examines certain of the more recent perspectives on twentieth- century dictatorship, looking in particular at the complex relationship between the dictator and the people. Extending its range beyond that of the ‘classic’ totalitarianisms, the paper argues for a more nuanced approach to the question of popular support for or resistance to regimes and suggests that many of the old binaries concerning popular attitudes need to be revised, with a consequent readjustment of the roles often attributed to violence, to ideology and other cultural factors, and to the varied seductive attractions of mass mobilisation. While pointing to the difficulties of reaching any very definite conclusions in an area characterised by ambivalence and ambiguity, the paper attempts to suggest certain variables related to popular behaviour that may have determined the degree to which regimes were able to impose domination.

This article examines how Italy has dealt with the physical remains of the Fascist regime, as a window onto Italian attitudes to the past. The ventennio left indelible marks on Italy’s cities in the form of urban projects, individual buildings, monuments, plaques and street names. In effect, the survival of physical traces contrasts with the hazy memories of Fascism that exist within the Italian collective consciousness. Conspicuous, yet mostly ignored, Italy’s Fascist heritage is hidden in plain sight. However, from the 1990s, buildings associated with the regime have sparked a number of debates regarding the public memory of Fascism. Although these debates present an opportunity to re-examine history, they may also be symptomatic of a crisis in the Italian polity and of attempts to rehabilitate Fascism through historical revisionism.

Alessandro Ferrari claims that Catholicism was the only cement binding the newly unified Italy together, a country without a common language or a widespread culture capable of founding civic engagement. Taking a post-secular perspective on religion, which recognizes that religion is not simply a ‘residue’ soon to be extinguished (as Raymond Williams once stated), this article will explore Italian cinema’s contemporary constructions of this national ‘religious cement’ as a putative foundation for identity in 21st century Italy. The article sets out too to show the cracks in the cement: collective identity can only be created by ignoring religious diversity and removing thorny issues from the history of the Catholic church.

This is a full bibliography of the works of Christopher Duggan, including his D.Phil thesis, books, contributions to edited collections, articles in journals, newspapers and other periodicals, book reviews and review articles. It illustrates both the range of his own scholarship and his engagement with the fields of modern Italian history, politics, society and culture.