Events

«Non credere che solo tu sei prigioniero, lo sono anche io, prigioniera racconto a te, nel tuo rancio, nella tua branda, tutto divido con te, insomma sono prigioniera dell'anima mia
che ti segue attimo per attimo...»
From Vera Campanino's letter to her husband Mario Gazzini, 12 March 1943

The conference will explore Italian captivity by presenting new research on Italian prisoners of war and civilian internees held by the Western Allies between 1940 and 1947. It will place particular emphasis on two underexamined areas. First, it will investigate women’s experiences—both as detainees in foreign lands and as witnesses to Italian captivity. Second, it will examine the memory and memorialization of World War II captivity through the material and cultural production of Italian internees. This body of work, now preserved in diverse formats and repositories across the world, offers important insights into how captivity has been recorded, remembered, and interpreted over time.

The conference is part of a week of events devoted to new research on Italian Prisoners of War in Western Allied hands that will start in Venice on Friday, 19 June 2026, and will end with another international conference on “I prigionieri di guerra italiani in mano alleata: Nuovi studi e prospettive / Italian Prisoners of War in Allied Hands: New Research and Approaches” on Friday, 26 June 2026, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, at the Lombardy Region Council, Palazzo Pirelli, Milan.

Day One

Friday, 19 June 2026

Warwick Venice Center, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin

5:15PM Welcoming Remarks by the Conference Organizers
Bryan Brazeau, University of Warwick, Director of the Warwick Venice Center
Giorgia Alù, University of Sydney
Elena Bellina, New York University
Beatrice Mazzi, Columbia University, Casa Muraro 

5:30PM-6:30PM Keynote Address

Guido Bonsaver, University of Oxford
“The Great Proletarian is Moving: Italian POWs within Italy’s Post-Unification Cultural History”

Followed by a Q&A session

Moderator: Bryan Brazeau, University of Warwick

Guido Bonsaver is Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Pembroke College. Amongst his publications are the monographs: America in Italian Culture: The Rise of a New Model of Modernity (1861-1943) (2023), Mussolini censore (2013); Vita e omicidio di Gaetano Pilati (2010), Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy (2007); Elio Vittorini (2000); and the co-edited books: with A. Carlucci and M. Reza, Italy and the USA: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative (2019), with B. Richardson and G. Stellardi, Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy: Essays in Honour of Martin McLaughlin (2017), and with E. Bond and F. Faloppa, Destination Italy: Representing Migration in Contemporary Media and Narrative (2015).

6:30PM-7:00PM Book Launch

Captivity and Creativity: The Cultural and Material Production of Italian Prisoners in Allied Hands (1940-1947), Fordham University Press, 2026,
with the volume editors, Giorgia Alù and Elena Bellina, in conversation with Guido Bonsaver, Antonio Brescianini (Founder of the Association for the Memory of the Italian Prisoners of Letterkenny, A.M.P.I.L.), and Elisa Longarato (Representative of the Zonderwater Ex-POW Association).

Day Two 

Saturday, 20 June 2026

Columbia University, Casa Muraro Center for Venetian Studies

10:15AM Welcoming Remarks
Beatrice Mazzi, Columbia University, Casa Muraro
Giorgia Alù, University of Sydney
Elena Bellina, New York University
Bryan Brazeau, University of Warwick

10:30AM–12:30PM Roundtable One
“Women and Italian Captivity in Allied Hands”
- Natalia Cangi, The Italian National Diary Archive
- Tiziana Gazzini, Journalist and Writer
- Alan Perry, Gettysburg College
- Catherine Dewhrist, University of Queensland (via Zoom)
- Alice Loda, University of Technology Sydney
Moderator: Elena Bellina, New York University

12:30PM-2:30PM Lunch Break

2:30PM-4:30PM Roundtable Two
“Material and Cultural Production by Italian POWs in Western Allied
Hands: New Perspectives and Approaches”
- Erika Lorenzon, Independent Scholar
- Laura Moure Cecchini, University of Padua
- Giorgia Alù, University of Sydney
- Elena Bellina, New York University
- Flavia Marcello, Swinburne University of Technology
- Anthony White, University of Melbourne (via Zoom)
Moderator: Beatrice Mazzi, Columbia University, Casa Muraro 

06:00 PM “La Prigioniera. Vera a Mario, Lettere per l’Africa 1943-47”

Written by Tiziana Gazzini and performed by Claudio De Pasqualis.

In this performance Tiziana Gazzini tells the story of her antifascist mother, Vera Campanino, and her account of World War II captivity through her diary and the over 1,000 letters that Vera wrote to her husband, who was detained as a Prisoner of War in East Africa and South Africa from 1941 to 1947.
The event is part of the 2026 Art Night Venice, the special event night organized by Ca’ Foscari University.

Tiziana Gazzini is a writer and journalist who has worked with major Italian newspapers, magazines, and institutions such as RAI (the Italian State TV), and the Rome Quadriennale on cultural topics related to the visual arts, cinema and history. She is the author of Kokocinski, vita straordinaria di un’artista (2017), Visionari. Simbolisti dandies e altri sognatori (2019, 2022 2nd ed), and Ventiseiesimo piano (2022). She is currently working on her family archives, especially on her mother’s WWII letters and writing.

Claudio De Pasqualis is a theatre, cinema, radio, and TV actor who studied with Gigi Proietti. He is one of the authors and hosts of RAI Radio 3 program “Hollywood Party”.
 

Organizers: Elena Bellina, New York University; Giorgia Alù, University of Sydney; Beatrice Mazzi, Executive Director, Columbia University Casa Muraro Research Center for Venetian Studies; Bryan Brazeau, Academic Director of The University of Warwick Venice Center

Sponsors: Columbia University Casa Muraro Research Center for Venetian Studies; The University of Warwick Venice Center; The Ragusa Foundation for the Humanities; New York University Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò; The University of Sydney, School of Languages and Cultures; The Australian Research Council.

Speakers

Giorgia Alù is Associate Professor in Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. Her publications include the monograph Journeys Exposed: Women’s Writing, Mobility and Photography (2019) and the co-edited volume Enlightening Encounters: Italian Literature and Photography (2015). She is the Principal Investigator of the Australian Research Council (ARC) project on “Mapping Creativity in Captivity during WWII” and Co-Principal Investigator in the ARC Discovery Project “Opening Australia’s Multilingual Archive.” She is the co-editor of Captivity and Creativity:The Cultural and Material Production of Italian Prisoners in Allied Hands (1940-1947) (2026).

Elena Bellina is Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor of Italian at New York University. Her research and publications focus on war and captivity studies.
She is currently working on a book “Creativity on Stage behind Barbed Wire: Italian Prisoners of War in Africa.” She is the co-editor of Captivity and Creativity: The
Cultural and Material Production of Italian Prisoners in Allied Hands (1940-1947) (2026) and Co-Principal Investigator of the ARC project on “Mapping
Creativity in Captivity during WWII.” She has co-edited two books on violence and the performing arts. In 2019 she was a Lauro De Bosis Fellow in the History of Modern Italy at Harvard University.

Bryan Brazeau is Academic Director of the Warwick Venice Centre and Associate Professor (Reader) in Liberal Arts at the University of Warwick (UK). His work
focuses on early modern Italian and Neo-Latin epic and poetics. He has published on Dante, Torquato Tasso, Jacopo Sannazaro, Lucrezia Marinella, the first English
translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the early modern reception of Aristotle’s concept of hamartia, and the Italian surrealist artist Giorgio de Chirico in edited collections and in journals such as The Italianist, MLN, History of European Ideas and Renaissance and Reformation. He has edited a volume on new perspectives in the study of early modern poetics: The Reception of Aristotle’s Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and Beyond (2020). He is currently working on a monograph on the epic corpus of Lucrezia Marinella and a translation of Torquato Tasso’s Lettere poetiche.

Natalia Cangi is the Director of the Italian National Diary Archive Foundation. She is a member of the editorial board of Primapersona, and one of the founders of the DiMMi (Diari MultiMediali Migranti) project. Since 1992, she has been a member and the President of the selecting committee of Premio Pieve Saverio Tutino. She is the editor of many books that reconstruct modern Italian history through the archive’s manuscripts, including Lontana Terra: Diari di toscani in viaggio; In bicicletta: Memorie sull’Italia a due route; Parole oltre le frontiere; Giornale del tempo di guerra: 12 giugno 1940-7 maggio 1945; Parole trasparenti: Diari e lettere 1939-1945; In nome del popolo Italiano; and Quando la mia mente iniziò a ricordare.

Laura Moure Cecchini is Associate Professor of History of Contemporary Art at the University of Padua. She was Lauro De Bosis Fellow at Harvard University and Associate Professor of Art History at Colgate University. Her research focuses on the transnational legacies of fascist visual and material culture in Europe and Latin America. Her first book Baroquemania: Italian Visual Culture and the Construction of National Identity, 1898-1945 (2022) interrogated the recovery of the Baroque in post-Unification Italy. Her new book, 1933: Arte e propaganda tra Italia e Germania (2026), studies the uses of contemporary art as a tool of cultural diplomacy between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. She also studies the role of material culture in the construction of colonial consensus.
 
Catherine Dewhirst is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia. Her research focuses on the Italian-migrant press and family histories from the age of imperialism to World War II, as well as French women’s autobiographical histories. She has co-edited two books, Transnational Voices of Australia’s Migrant and Minority Press (2020) and Voices of Challenge in Australia’s Migrant and Minority Press (2021). Her current research focuses on experiences and memories of second- and third- generation Italian Australians whose parents were interned in 1940-1945, and the relationship between liberal Italy and editors of the Italian migrant press from the 1880s to the 1920s.
 
Erika Lorenzon's research work centers on autobiographical writing, the popular memory and memorialization of World War II, and imprisonment experiences. Her publications include her groundbreaking book Lo sguardo lontano. L’Italia della seconda guerra mondiale nella memoria dei prigionieri di guerra (2018), the edited volume Cronistorie di guerra. Le relazioni dei parroci della diocesi di Treviso (1939–1945) (2015), and many essays on Italian military prisoners and internees. Since the early 2000s, she has collaborated with Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea della Marca Trevigiana.
 
Flavia Marcello is a writer, and an Adjunct Professor and Affiliate of the University of Sydney. She is an expert on the architecture and cultural production of the Italian Fascist period, her areas of research include exhibitions of Fascist and anti-Fascist ideology in monuments and public space. She is the author of two books: Giuseppe Pagano. Design for Social Change in Fascist Italy (2020) and After the Fall: The Legacy of Fascism in Rome’s Architectural and Urban History (2024). She is Co-Principal Investigator of the ARC project on “Mapping Creativity in Captivity during WWII” and is currently working on a work of historical fiction about an Italian prisoner of war.
 
Beatrice Mazzi is the Executive Director of Casa Muraro, the Research Center for Venetian Studies of Columbia University and Director of the Columbia Summer Program in Venice. Her research centers on contemporary Italian literature and cinema, with particular interests in memory studies, nonfiction and documentary practices, oral history, gender studies, and cultural theory. She taught at American and Canadian institutions in Italy, including the University of Oklahoma, McGill University, ISI Florence, and Franklin University Switzerland. She has published articles in journals devoted to contemporary Italian studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript on contemporary testimonial literature in Italy.
 
Alan Perry is Professor of Italian at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His scholarly interests focus upon Italy in World War II, the dopoguerra, and the Cold War. He is the author of Il santo partigiano martire: La retorica del sacrificio nelle biografie commemorative (2001), and has published extensively on Giovannino Guareschi with The Don Camillo Stories of Giovannino Guareschi: A Humorist Portrays the Sacred(2008).He has written three co-authored book-length studies on the Italian POW experience in Pennsylvania, including Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania: Allies on the Home Front, 1944–45 (2016) and World War II Italian Prisoners of War in Chambersburg (2017).
 
Anthony White is Associate Professor in History of Art at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary art. His current research project, Decentring Australian Art,investigates artists who have been overlooked by mainstream art history. He is the author of Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism (2020); with Grace McQuilten, of Art as Enterprise: Social and Economic Engagement in Contemporary Art (2016); and Lucio Fontana: Between Utopia and Kitsch (2011). He has curated several exhibitions and received research awards from the ARC, the Ian Potter Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is Co-Principal Investigator of the ARC project on “Mapping Creativity in Captivity during WWII.

Seats are limited. Please RSVP at [email protected]