Professor Charles Burdett 

Transnational Italian Culture and the Ghosts of Empire 

British Academy (London)

Tuesday 7th May, 18:30-19.45

In this lecture, Charles Burdett argues that our understanding of modern Italian culture needs always to take account of the traces left by past instances of mobility. More specifically he will consider the course of Italian expansionism both immediately before and during the twenty years (1922-43) in which the Fascist regime was in power in Italy, and the legacy of this period in works of literary and visual culture, in examples of the built environment and within enduring attitudes towards other cultures and people. He suggests how we can become aware of the proximity of the colonial world and how the spectre of the past can infiltrate and disturb the present.

Charles Burdett is Professor of Italian at Durham University. His publications include Journeys through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars (2007) and Italy, Islam and the Islamic World: Representations and Reflections from 9/11 to the Arab Uprisings(2016). He was Principal Investigator of the AHRC large grant, ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures’ (2014-2017).

 For details, see:

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/transnational-italian-culture-and-ghosts-empire