Dr. Joshua Arthurs recently produced an edited volume that explores the complexities of lived experience under Mussolini and promotes a framework for considering Fascist Italy in relation to other totalitarian dictatorships like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
The Politics of Everyday Life in Fascist Italy: Outside the State? was created in collaboration with his co-editors Michael Ebner of Syracuse University and Kate Ferris of the University of St. Andrews. They recruited a number of leading and up-and-coming scholars to write chapters on topics ranging from consumption, reproduction, and education to violence, colonialism and memory.
Dr. Arthurs wrote the introduction and an essay on memory of the Mussolini regime.
This book explores the complex ways in which people lived and worked within the confines of Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy, variously embracing, appropriating, accommodating and avoiding the regime’s incursions into everyday life. The contributions highlight the experiences of ordinary Italians – midwives and schoolchildren, colonists and soldiers – over the course of the Fascist era, in settings ranging from the street to the farm, and from the kitchen to the police station.
For more information on the book, visit the publisher’s website: http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137594181