CHILDREN’S UTOPIA / FASCIST UTOPIA: IDEOLOGY AND RECEPTION OF TEXTBOOKS UNDER ITALIAN FASCISM A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Sylvia Tamara Hakopian August 2017 Copyright © 2017 Sylvia Tamara Hakopian All Rights Reserved CHILDREN’S UTOPIA / FASCIST UTOPIA: IDEOLOGY AND RECEPTION OF TEXTBOOKS UNDER ITALIAN FASCISM Sylvia Tamara Hakopian, Ph.D. Cornell University 2017 ABSTRACT Capitalizing on children’s “extraordinary ability to learn,” Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini decreed an order to issue five elementary school textbooks, known as the Libro unico dello Stato in 1926. Reaching across Italy’s geographic and multicultural barriers, the purpose of this state-issued textbook was to standardize Italian schooling and create a unified body of Fascist subjects. Yet, Fascist Italy’s new curricula proved anything but uniform, as the regime issued two distinct rural and urban editions of the Libro unico between 1929 and 1944 following Mussolini’s decree. Exploring tensions within the regime’s ideas on nationalism in a study that combines literary, theoretical, and historical analyses, my dissertation, Children’s Utopia / Fascist Utopia: Ideology and Reception of Textbooks under Italian Fascism, argues that the Libro unico served purposefully to stratify and not unify Italy’s student body at the primary school. Approaching my study of the regime’s education reforms, pedagogic manuals, and scholastic reading material through an Althusserian framework, my work diverges from the issues which current scholarship has tended to focus on (i.e. militarism, Aryanism, questione meridionale) and in this way offers a new perspective on Fascist cultural history. Examining the rationale behind Fascist policies on elementary school education, I show how Mussolini established an apparatus of textbooks that would shape children into hard-working Fascist devotees. The purpose, as I see it, was one of economic exploitation. Placing students into lower- working classes, these textbooks, in addition to the vocational school system stemming from pedagogue Giovanni Gentile’s 1923 school reforms, did not encourage students to pursue their studies beyond the elementary school level. Rather, they served to mold students into manual workers—farmers and industrialists—who would produce the products and services necessary to maintain the regime’s autarchic policies at a time when Italy was experiencing an economic crisis. But what I uncover through my reading of the textbooks’ stories, poems, and illustrations is the broader implications which this schooling had on class division as well as modern notions of italianità, democracy, and civic duty. Despite its failures, Fascist schooling established a system of stratification that contributes to class division and social inequality to this very day. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Sylvia Tamara Hakopian received her Ph.D. in Italian Studies from Cornell University’s Department of Romance Studies in 2017 under the direction of Professors Timothy Campbell, Enzo Traverso, and Medina Lasansky. Her research interests embrace both the history of schooling in Fascist Italy, 20th century Italian literature, and Marxist critical theory. Drawing on archival work conducted in Italy and in the U.S., Dr. Hakopian’s dissertation titled, Children’s Utopia / Fascist Utopia: Ideology and Reception of Textbooks under Italian Fascism, studies the Fascist subjection of Italian elementary school children by means of the government-issued schoolbook known as the Libro unico dello Stato between 1929 and 1944. An active member in the field of Italian Studies and the History of Education, she has received a number of competitive research awards, including the prestigious Luigi Einaudi Dissertation Research Fellowship, and has published an excerpt of her work on Education Minister Giovanni Gentile’s 1923 curricular and textbook reforms in the volume Utopia, the Avant-Garde, Modernism, and (Im)possible Life, edited by David Ayers, et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015). Dr. Hakopian has taught a range of courses in language and literature with students from a variety of disciplines both in Italy and in the U.S. and has most recently become the recipient of Cornell’s Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines Teaching Portfolio Award for her original first-year undergraduate writing seminar, “Imagining Pinocchio: Education in Italy and Modern Europe.” Dr. Hakopian also holds a Post-baccalaureate certificate in Classics with an emphasis in Latin, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in English with an emphasis in British literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is fluent in Italian, Armenian, and English and has advanced knowledge of French. iii I dedicate this work to my parents, Amalia and Hakop, in gratitude for their love and persistence to see their children succeed. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In my eight years as a graduate student in Italian at the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell University never did I expect to love writing a dissertation manuscript. This work has become the object of a passion, no less obsession—a relentless and persistent drive to discover new ideas, new sources, new ways of expressing myself, and thinking about how I myself have been educated since I was a little girl. This is my life’s work and no less represents an almost Dantesque type of journey. I’ve had moments of doubt, lack of confidence, as I’ve met dead- ends in my research. Then gratifying moments of catharsis and joy when I successfully found lost copies of remaining Fascist textbooks, government documents, and books of pedagogy. I have had the great fortune to meet and work with so many people on this journey, forging an academic family, friendships, even a marriage along the way, all while doing what my advisor, Timothy Campbell, always encouraged me to do: “Follow your nose.” I want to wholeheartedly acknowledge and thank each and every one of these people in helping me become the researcher and writer I am today. For all their constructive feedback, guidance, and encouragement, I am forever grateful and indebted. First and foremost, I’d like to thank my advisor, Tim, and dissertation committee, Medina Lasansky and Enzo Traverso. Tim has always pushed me to think outside of the box, whether I was searching for new archival documents, analyzing primary materials, or writing the manuscript. The simple question he always asked me, “So what?,” drove me each time to think about new avenues, new approaches to my research. I am humbled by the amount of time that he has put in to reading drafts of my work with such diligence. His suggestions on not only the content but also the structure and style of my work helped me develop into a stronger scholar and writer. I thank him sincerely for his care and dedication to my work as a graduate student. I am forever indebted to Medina Lasansky. Medina not only saw and encouraged my enthusiasm for studying this primary material; she was also integral in providing me with comments that helped me tremendously in developing my research into a dissertation. I am at a loss for words at my sense of gratitude for Enzo Traverso. Enzo has tirelessly supported with me constructive feedback on my writing and research, always provided me with theoretical reading relevant to my work, and pointed out new critical literature on Fascist education. The amount of confidence Enzo has in my work and my ability to do research is likewise humbling, and I thank him immensely for his encouragement throughout the course of this project. I would also like to acknowledge the amazing amount of help that I received while doing archival work at Cornell and at various institutions across the U.S. and Italy. I would like to thank Karen Pinkus for her suggestions at the very beginning of this project. I am extremely thankful to Roberto Dainotto, who not only took the time to discuss my work with me on several occasions but also brought such valuable archival resources as Duke University’s Guido Mazzoni Pamphlet Collection on Fascist pedagogy to my attention. It has been wonderful working with Paula Mangiafico at Duke’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, as well as Carol Leadenham, Paul Thomas, and the staff at Stanford’s Hoover archives. I would also like to thank Pompeo Vagliani and Camilla Court at the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo; Diego Guzzi, who introduced me to the very friendly staff at the Biblioteca Nazionale; and the wonderful Raffaella Bellucci-Sessa at the Fondazione Alberto Colonnetti in Turin. I will never forget the way Raffaella welcomed me with warmth and kindness as I pursued research at the Fondazione. Dare I not forget how generously she worked to help me find remaining copies of Alessandro Marcucci’s first and second grade Libro unico. I would also like to thank Aldo v Cecconi at the Archivio Bemporad in Florence, Italy. In addition to the assistance he offered me during my stay, my discussions with Dr. Cecconi allowed me to establish contact with Lucia Cappelli. Dr. Cappelli’s exchanges with me proved exceptionally useful in brainstorming ideas for broadening the research scope of this project for the future. I would like to thank Francesca Gagliardo at the Museo Storico della Didattica Mauro Laeng at the Università di Roma III and the delightful Giuseppe Perna, who took his time to go through some of the archival material with me at Rome’s Archivio Centrale dello Stato. I would especially like to thank everyone at the Centro di documentazione e ricerca sulla storia del libro e della letteratura per l’infanzia at the Università degli Studi in Macerata, Italy. It was an absolute honor to work with Professors Anna Ascenzi and Roberto Sani, who proved so amazingly kind and helpful. They enlightened me on their profound knowledge on the history of education in Fascist Italy, provided me with so much material, and continued to support my research even after my stay in Macerata was over.