Barbara Spadaro
Barbara Spadaro
University of Liverpool
Email: b.spadaro@liverpool.ac.uk
Abstract
Language, Religion and Transculturation. Jewish trajectories in Italian Libya at the Edge of the Empires.
Focusing on the memories and historical trajectories of a Jewish family ‘repatriated’ to Italy from independent Libya in 1967, this paper engages with the transnational processes of identification with Italian culture performed by men and women of Jewish background across the Mediterranean. The trajectories of these people have manifested a series of shifts in ideas of Italian, European, Jewish and Arab belonging from the mid-19th century to the present. Through a series of transcultural every-day practices, the subjects of my research consolidated the Italian élite of Tripoli since the 1860s, eventually becoming celebrated pioneers of Italian culture and modernity in North Africa. The paper examines three key moments in the processes of redefinition of ideas of Italian belonging: the eve of Italian occupation of Libya, the implementation of anti-Semitic laws in 1938, and the political upheavals of 1967-70, which led to the expulsion of most of the Jewish and Italian population from independent Libya. My work builds on scholarship on transnational spaces and subjects on the move long marginalized from national, imperial and anti-colonial narratives of History (Clancy-Smith, 2011; Spadaro and Rossetto, 2015; Midgley, Twells and Carlier, 2016). The trajectories of these Jewish families challenge mainstream accounts of Italian history, colonialism and migration, opening up to multiple forms of narration of the history of Italian citizenship. While tracing the historical trajectories of the families of my interviewees, the paper aims to read these histories citizenship, migration and religious belonging as histories of subjectivities.
– References –
Carlier, J., Midgley, C. & Twells, A. (eds). 2016. Women in Transnational History. Connecting the Local and the Global, London, Routledge, 2016
Clancy-Smith, J. 2011. Mediterraneans. North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c.1800-1900, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rossetto, P. & Spadaro, B. 2014. “Across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. Exploring Jewish Memories from Libya,” in Annali Di Ca’ Foscari, 50(1), doi:10.14277/ISSN/ID.
Profile
Barbara Spadaro is currently AHRC Postdoc for the Translating Cultures initiative at the University of Liverpool. Her research on cultural mobility,memory practices and the history of subjectivity investigates ideas of Italian, Jewish and Arab belonging (19th century to the present). She is the author of Una colonia Italiana. Incontri, memorie e rappresentazioni tra Italia e Libia, Mondadori, Milan, 2013. Since 2014 she has been working for the Research Project Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Mobility, Identity and Translation in Modern Italian Cultures, contributing to the Exhibition Beyond Borders: Transnational Italies (Rome, London and NY, 2016-2017) and co-editing with Charles Burdett and Loredana Polezzi the volume Transnational Italies: Memory, Mobility and Translation (LUP, forthcoming, 2018). Among her latest publication: “The Italian Empire ‘at Home’: Fascist Girls, Colonial Propaganda, and the Racialized Memory of Italy, 1936-2007”, in Clare Midgley, Alison Twells and Julie Carlier (eds), Women in Transnational History: Connecting the Local and the Global, Rutledge 2016; and the blogpost Italian Waves in Mediterranean Memory, Centre for Postcolonial Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, 31/3/2016, http://cps.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2016/03/31/italian-waves- in-mediterranean-memory/
List of most recent publications
– Spadaro, B. 2016. ‘The Italian Empire ‘at home’. Fascist girls, imperial propaganda and the racialised memory of Italy (1937-2007)’. in: Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global. Routledge
– Spadaro, B. 2015. ‘Taking the ‘Invisible border’ further: The Alliance Israelite Universelle in Libya. First Insights on a History of Encounters and Representations’. in: Il genere nella ricerca storica: Atti del VI Congresso della Societa Italiana delle Storiche. Il Poligrafo, Padova, pp. 269
– Spadaro, B. 2015. ‘Gender and Religion in Imperial Relations: Negotiating Identities and Strategies of Rule: Introduzione’. in: Il genere nella ricerca storica: Atti del VI Congresso della Societa Italiana delle Storiche. Il Poligrafo, Padova, pp. 251
– Spadaro, B & Rossetto, P. 2014. ‘Across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. Exploring Jewish Memories from Libya’. Annali di Ca’ Foscari, vol 50., pp. 37-52
– Spadaro, B. 2013. ‘Una colonia Italiana. Incontri, memorie e rappresentazioni tra Italia e Libia’. Mondadori