Feb. 18, 2016
LIBRARY RESEARCH FELLOW PRESENTATION
“Behind Paradise: A Provincial History of Italy’s Mediterranean Empire”
The Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection invites you to join us for a lecture by 2015-2016
Library Research Fellow
Dr. Valerie McGuire, New York University and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for the
Mediterranean Region, Council of American Overseas Research Centers.
Summary:
"Today, Rhodes, Kos and other Dodecanese islands draw thousands of travelers annually
by offering the iconic Greek island experience. Between 1912 and 1943, in contrast, the
Dodecanese were under Italian occupation. As an increasingly important colony within
Fascist Italy’s eastward expansion in the Mediterranean – what Mussolini ambitiously
referred to as the conquest of Mare nostrum -- the population became subject to different
state-building projects by the local administration. From education in the Italian
language, to the adoption of imperial citizenship, to new job opportunities in the Fascist
corporatist state, the local population faced a prolonged cycle of betrayal and
reconciliation with their Italian rulers. This process culminated in the Second World War
occupation of Greece by the Axis powers but it is arguably still active in the current
construction of the European Union. While scholarship has typically dismissed Italian
colonialism as ‘ragamuffin’ (the term is Lenin’s), the Dodecanese occupation bears witness
to the breadth of Italian empire as well as its afterlife in identity, culture and
memory."
Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016
Senator Nicholas Petris Room, Library 3023 (3rd floor)
Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection, University Library
Schedule of Events:
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. presentation and discussion
The presentation is free and open to the public. Funding for the Library Research
Fellowship Program has been made possible by a generous grant from the Elios Charitable
Foundation.
Print out a parking
permit<http://library.csus.edu/tsakopoulos/images/McGuireParkingPermit.p… (PDF
document) to use for the evening.
For further information, contact George I. Paganelis at (916) 278-4361 or
paganelis@csus.edu<mailto:paganelis@csus.edu>.
Best,
George
-----------------------
George I. Paganelis
Curator, Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection
University Library #3025
California State University, Sacramento
2000 State University Drive
Sacramento, CA 95819-6039
Ph: (916) 278-4361 * Fax: (916) 278-5917
paganelis@csus.edu<mailto:paganelis@csus.edu>
http://www.library.csus.edu/tsakopoulos