This book brings together literary critics, political historians, historians of literature, cinema and theatre and cultural sociologists, to elucidate a fundamental area of enquiry into modern Italian history: the nature and scope of relations between the state and the cultural sphere.

Recent work on the cultural history of modern Italy has radically challenged received opinion about the relationship of state and culture during the twentieth century. In this rich interdisciplinary book the complex interactions and negotiations of control arising from this state-culture connection are elucidated by way of case studies of major authors, filmmakers and artists and their encounters with censorship, patronage and other forms of direct state intervention; analytical surveys of different periods, media and culture industries; and through an examination of such key issues as Fascist censorship, the Resistance and its imprint in the collective memory, the introduction of television in the 1950s, and 1970's terrorism.

Italy is one of the most recent immigratory destinations in Europe, having long been one of the continent's most important sources of emigration. Due to its strategic position in the Mediterranean, the Italian peninsula is a crossroads of complex transnational movements and represents a unique and dynamic context for the study of contemporary migration and its representation through the diverse channels of media, literature and film. The product of a two-year interdisciplinary research project into representations of migration to Italy, this volume brings together scholarly contributions from the fields of migration studies, linguistics, media, literature and film studies as well as essays by practitioners and activists. It provides both a multi-faceted snapshot of how diverse representations of immigration capture experiences and affect decision-making dynamics and an in-depth study of how media, literature and cinema contribute to the public perception of migrants within the destination culture.

The history of totalitarian states bears witness to the fact that literature and print media can be manipulated and made into vehicles of mass deception. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy is the first comprehensive account of how the Fascists attempted to control Italy's literary production.Guido Bonsaver looks at how the country's major publishing houses and individual authors responded to the new cultural directives imposed by the Fascists. Throughout his study, Bonsaver uses rare and previously unexamined materials to shed light on important episodes in Italy's literary history, such as relationships between the regime and particular publishers, as well as individual cases involving renowned writers like Moravia, Da Verona, and Vittorini. Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy charts the development of Fascist censorship laws and practices, including the creation of the Ministry of Popular Culture and the anti-Semitic crack-down of the late 1930s.Examining the breadth and scope of censorship in Fascist Italy, from Mussolini's role as 'prime censor' to the specific experiences of female writers, this is a fascinating look at the vulnerability of culture under a dictatorship.