The consumption of popular culture and policies aimed at influencing popular culture became increasingly salient in 20th century Western societies. Also Italian political parties and governments became aware of the importance of controlling and manipulating popular culture, and started developing sophisticated and effective forms of propaganda. Concurrently, popular culture itself became politically engaged, as militancy started to be conveyed in various forms of popular art, as writings, drawings, songs, radio and TV broadcasts and movies. The relationship between propaganda from above and popular cultures from below must not be interpreted in terms of a rigid opposition, but rather of a conflictual relationship capable of influencing each other.
The course aims at providing a general overview of the main trends in the history of italian popular culture from the early to the late 20th century, as well as at introducing students to key arguments in historical scientific research on the topic. In this way, students will develop skills to critically read, think, discuss and write about a set of historiographical arguments and a multiplicity of historical evidence.
In this sense, the course will detect how mass communication, literature and the visual arts determined the attitudes, moods and mentality of Italian society during the twentieth century.
The first part of the course will focus on the analysis of the concepts of "Popular Culture", "Propaganda", “Consensus Building” and "Political Religion”, with special references to the so-said “cultural turn”, which changed many perspectives in Contemporary History.
The second part of the course will deal with the role of Italian media as, at one hand, a pillar of ideological consensus and social stability and, to the other, as antidote to social conformism and State power. The connection between Italian Media, Popular Culture and Political History will be stressed through main periods of Italian history, observing continuity and fractures from Liberal Italy to Fascist regime and from the Cold War to the Second Italian Republic.
The course aims at providing a general overview of the main trends in the history of italian popular culture from the early to the late 20th century, as well as at introducing students to key arguments in historical scientific research on the topic. In this way, students will develop skills to critically read, think, discuss and write about a set of historiographical arguments and a multiplicity of historical evidence.
In this sense, the course will detect how mass communication, literature and the visual arts determined the attitudes, moods and mentality of Italian society during the twentieth century.
The first part of the course will focus on the analysis of the concepts of "Popular Culture", "Propaganda", “Consensus Building” and "Political Religion”, with special references to the so-said “cultural turn”, which changed many perspectives in Contemporary History.
The second part of the course will deal with the role of Italian media as, at one hand, a pillar of ideological consensus and social stability and, to the other, as antidote to social conformism and State power. The connection between Italian Media, Popular Culture and Political History will be stressed through main periods of Italian history, observing continuity and fractures from Liberal Italy to Fascist regime and from the Cold War to the Second Italian Republic.
- Docente: ENRICO SERVENTI LONGHI