The History of Italy through its Scandals

The aim of this course is to present the political history of postwar Italy through the dynamic of the scandals that in many ways anticipated and, like a barometer, provoked the seasonal changes in the country’s cultural climate.
In a conservative and Roman Catholic society such as the Italy’s, sexual scandals are the accepted substitution for revolutions to which Italians are genetically and historically allergic. The course will analyze how Italian morals changed from the atrocious murder and hanging of Mussolini and his lover Carla Petacci to the election of transgender Vladimir Luxuria, born Vladimiro Guadagno, with Rifondazione Comunista, the heir to the Italian Communist Party, which after the war elected Proletariat Puritanism as a symbol of its moral superiority. The course will also study the major scandals of the other decades and will conclude with a close look at the effects of Berlusconi’s free channel programs on the current Italian cultural transformation.
The course will consist of lectures and students’ presentations on one of the books purchased and not discussed in class, a final oral report and a written paper. Four films will also be screened in the evening during the three weeks.

Required texts: Sergio Turone, Corrotti e corruttori dall’Unità d’Italia alla P2, Bari: Laterza, 1984. Giorgio Galli, Affari di Stato: l’Italia sotterranea, Ed. Kaos, 1991.
David Lane, “L’ombra del potere, Bari: Laterza, 2004. Ettore Bernabei, L’uomo di fiducia, Milano: Mondatori, 1999.