The essay traces the genesis of Memorie Coloniali Document Center and the main projects carried out in Modena since 2007, when the the international cooperation association Moxa-Modena per gli altri, together with the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, began collecting documents and photographs from the colonial period coming from private archives. The reconstruction draws on the words of Paolo Bertella Farnetti, scientific supervisor of the project and professor of contemporary history, gathered by the author of the article during an interview.

The experience of Italo Balbo in governing Libya is the most well-known and significant among the Italian colonial governors. While much has been studied about the impact of the fascist leader on the territory, little has been written about the influence this role had on him. Thanks to Italo Balbo’s private archive acquisition by the Istituto di storia contemporanea di Ferrara, this article aims to analyze the collected material – especially bibliographic and photographic – to identify the persistence of colonial memory in the material gathered by the quadrumvir.

The essay analyzes how the local newspapers of Modena narrated the Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912) . Four newspapers – that represented the most important political trends at that time – are examined: «Il Panaro», «La Bandiera del Popolo», «Il Domani», «La Gazzetta dell’Emilia». This work suggests that even newspapers considered to be moderate adopted a violent nationalist propaganda. The war led to increased political and social polarization.

The contribution revisits the guided tour organized at the Civic Museum of Modena, dedicated to the formation of the ethnological collection through the presentation of objects, works of art, and craftsmanship related to the early phase of Italian colonial expansion in East Africa. The establishment in 1875 of the ethnological section of the recently founded Civic Museum fits into an evolutionary view of history, not aimed at promoting the contemporary Italian colonial policy. This would instead be the case for materials related to the Italo-Turkish and Ethiopian wars, which arrived between the 1910s and 1930s, not at the Civic Museum, but at the Museum of the Risorgimento.

In 1929, an equestrian statue of Mussolini – made with the bronze of cannons stolen from the Austrian troops on August 8th, 1848 – was placed at the base of the Maratona tower, in the Littoriale stadium of Bologna. Torn down by the citizens after July 25th, 1943, its fragments had different destinies. After the war, the part representing the horse was melted and gave shape to two different statues by sculptor Luciano Minguzzi, depicting a boy and a girl, both partisans active in the Italian Resistance movement.

The Catholic Church in the first years after World War 2 acquired a preponderant role in the organisation of holiday camps, taking over a large part of the former fascist structures. This contribution presents the main historical, pedagogical and organisational coordinates that characterised the initiatives of the pontifical institutions in the period 1945-1960; in the last part of the paper there is an introduction to the Colonia pontificia bresciana Leone XIII in Cesenatico (1952).

This paper presents the project of valorization of two archives of the Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea in Provincia di Modena. The project consisted of the digital reproduction and description of the Partisan Brigades’ Archive and in the valorization of the Cronaca dell’occupazione nazi-fascista di Modena (MCMXLIII-MCMXLV) by Adamo Pedrazzi, with the creation of two collections on the digital library Lodovico. Moreover, the paper presents a short excursus on the adopted tools and on digital libraries’ potentialities and weaknesses.

The study day Schermi neri – il cinema fascista tra eredità e rimozione has been held on May 27, 2023 at Palazzo del Governatore in Parma by Centro studi movimenti. The conference was attended by many scholars from different realities to investigate how much the methods of cinematographic creation and production of the Fascist period generated reactions of correlation or removal with respect to subsequent cinema. Between narration and self-narration, the so-called “cinema di regime” can be investigated according to a plurality of aspects that go beyond its own definition.

Moving from the renewed debate on outdoor education, this dossier focuses on children's holiday camps in Italy after WW2. Holiday camps were at one time an educational, recreational and socialization experience; a form of child welfare in the context of reconstruction and economic recovery; a ground for political confrontation between public and private actors involved in the organization and management of holiday stays. Emilia-Romagna Region, very rich in diversified experiences in this field, presents itself as a case study open to reflections in several directions.

In post-war Italy, the requests for renewal of childhood educational practices and the search for architectural identity converge and a change emerges in the conception of the architecture of holiday camps. The essay provides an overview of the diffusion of the colonies in the Italian context, and, through the analysis of two architecture competitions, focuses on the relationship between socialization dynamics, educational practices and the articulation of the architectural spaces of buildings, in the light of the dual individual and collective existential dimension that the child experiences during the stay in the colony.