Lecture: Italian Colonialism and Resistances to Empire, 1930-1970

A lecture by Neelam Srivastava, Newcastle University:

In this book, I provide a cultural history of Italian colonialism and its impact on twentieth-century ideas of empire and anti-colonialism. I explore the widespread political and literary responses to Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, highlighting how Pan-Africanism grew from opposition to Italy’s late empire-building, and reading the work of George Padmore, Claude McKay, and CLR James alongside that of the feminist anti-colonial campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst. Extending into the postwar, I trace the connections between anti-colonialism and anti-fascism in Italy, outlining a Fanonian “resistance aesthetics” in The Battle of Algiers and Giovanni Pirelli’s harrowing books of testimony about Algeria’s war of independence.

Co-hosted by NYU Department of English.

Reserve a seat here.

Photo: Fiat Tagliero Building, Asmara, Eritrea (Giuseppe Pettazzi, 1938). Photo: Marco Barbon.