The Living Archive

Carried out by the Italian fascist regime, the creation of the town of Sabaudia occurred during the draining of the Pontine Marshes in an intervention that was central to efforts in the organization of rural territory. This paper explores the “reinvention” of Sabaudia through an analysis of its town plan and buildings from the 1970s. Recent practices of conservation, preservation and restoration of this modern inheritance were studied. A lack of knowledge led to the modification or the demolition of some buildings. I review how these attempts to consider the legacies of Italian history were met with refusal in the 1970s and 1980s compared to the 2000s when a heritage-making policy was enacted to promote the town. The political question resurfaces here: does “patrimonialization” permit giving this architecture, resulting from a totalitarian regime, a recognition that is incompatible with their political origin? That is to say, can we think about Sabaudia without thinking about fascism? The presentation of some projects of renovation and restoration will highlight several questions regarding modern aesthetics, the relation to landscape, as well as uses and techniques.

In this case study I would like to explore the ambiguous and certainly contradictory relation between jazz and the Italian fascist regime. Appreciated by many Italians (including fascist authorities and even members of Mussolini’s family), jazz was however ostracized, due to its connections with Afro-American “black” culture, particularly after the enactment of the “racial laws”. In such conditions, jazz musicians attempted various strategies to survive as citizens and artists: the most effective, and institutionally-tolerated, of such strategies turned out to be a strong stylistic mediation between American jazz and Italian melodic tradition, which produced some of the most famous acts of the period. One of these, Alberto Rabagliati , shall be the main focus of this case study, as one of his songs—I shall argue here—carried a subtle yet clear statement of protest against the regime’s restrictions.

Based on the hypothesis that reading of fiction followed by aesthetic reflection might be a useful tool towards the development of children's literacy competence in the first years of school, this article constitutes a theoretical basis for such an educational approach. The article is based on a cultural-historical understanding of the work of L.S. Vygotsky and is also inspired by Jerome Bruner's social constructivism. Children's literature, their drawings and play are seen as cultural tools which, when related to Vygotsky’s work (1978a, 1981) allow for the mastery of psychological processes. However, referring to Stetsenko (1999) it is of importance to see the interrelation of three cornerstones in Vygotsky's theoretical universe: social interaction, cultural tools and zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978a, 1978d). These cornerstones and new constructions are a basis for the introduction of an educational approach using literature, dialogue and aesthetic means and processes such as children's storytelling, drawing and play.

يمثل التراث الذاكرة الحية للفرد والمجتمع ، وهو الهوية الثقافية التي يتعرف بها الناس على خصوصية شعب ما ، أي أنه السجل الكامل للنشاط الإنساني في مجتمع ما ، وهو مظهراً من مظاهر الإبداع الفردي والجماعي للأمة خلال تاريخها الطويل ، أما الهوية الوطنية فتمثل شرطاً وماخاً في التراث الثقافي ، فهي سند الإبداع وشرط الإحساس بالذات والانتماء ، إنها ترتكز على شعور غريزي بالانتماء والمحلية ، وتظهر ملازمة للثقافة الخاصة في حدود ملامحها الأصلية التي تشكل حاملا للهوية الوطنية .
 إن الحديث عن التراث العماري في مدينة النجف ، الذي يعد أحد الركائز الاساسية لتراث المدينة عبر العصور ، يعني الحديث عن المتغيرات في الزمان المتحرك ، والمكان الثابت . والنجف في خططها وعمارتها كواحدة من المدن التاريخية ذات النشأة الدينية كان عليها أن تستجيب في تخطيطها العماري إلى مجموعة من الحاجات والعوامل التي اثرت في نمط التخطيط وشكل المدينة وطرز عمارة المباني فيها .
 ولغرض التعمق في الموضوع تم اختيارنا للبيت النجفي القديم كنموذج للعمارة المحلية ، وتم اختيار بيت (السيد علي الدامرجي) الواقع في محلة الحويش كنموذج لها ، لما يمتاز به من التكامل في العناصر التخطيطية والعمارية والإنشائية ، فضلا عن سعة مساحتها البالغة (380 م2) وحالته الجيدة ، إذ صنفته لجنة المسح التراثي لمدينة النجف بدرجة (أ) من حيث الحالة التراثية وحالة البناء .
 توصلت الدراسة إلى أن عمارة المباني التراثية في النجف والبيت النجفي منها على وجه الخصوص ، امتازت ببعض الخصائص التي تكاد أن تكون منفردة بها ، إلا أن هذه الخصوصية لا تعني الانفراد بهوية مستقلة ، بل هي الخصوصية المحلية التي تتكامل في صورتها الكلية ضمن الهوية الوطنية للتراث العراقي ، فعلى الرغم من وجود تأثيرات مشرقية مختلفة ، فان البيت النجفي ظل محافظاً في تخطيطه الأساسي على طابعه التقليدي ، الذي يحاكي الطراز الحيري والعراقي القديم ، وهذا بحد ذاته يرسم صورة للتواصل الحضاري العراقي واصالته عبر العصور .

This article is devoted to memory routes, which open up new opportunities for the tourism industry by transforming ordinary routes into educational and cultural tools. Integrating them into the tourist space enriches visitors' perception of history and culture, while also emphasizing the importance of an ethical approach to presenting historical events. Such routes not only enhance cultural tourism but also contribute to the formation of national identity and the preservation of historical memory. The article explores the role of memory routes in modern tourism. It identifies the content and place of memory routes in tourism from the perspective of various concepts such as cultural tourism, route tourism, cultural routes, and heritage routes. Memory routes are considered as a type of heritage route, specific tourist paths based on landmarks associated with historical events, significant locations, or figures that played a crucial role in shaping national or cultural identity. The integration of such routes into the tourism space and their impact on visitors' perception of history and cultural heritage are analyzed. Special attention is given to the concept of historical memory and the ethical aspects of presenting events as the basis for route formation. The importance of memory routes for shaping national identity and historical memory is emphasized.

We investigate how material poverty functions as a cultural space, specifically addressing when it becomes a strategy, that is, when an individual with cultural and social capital adopts a life of low income in order to form other social identities. We examine two groups that use low income to further other goals but differ in their temporal lens: (1) “transitional bourgeoisie,” graduate students and artists who frame their economic deprivation as a temporary means to prospective identities, such as a professorship or success in art; (2) “embedded activists,” committed adults rooted in political and religious organizations who see low income as a permanent strategy to bolster their anti-consumerist desires. Relying on 37 in-depth interviews with informants we ask, how do people in strategic poverty construct satisfying lives? What cultural tools and skill-sets do informants draw upon to negotiate their economic circumstances and middle-class backgrounds?

The Eurasian grapevine (Vitis vinifera) has long been important for wine production as well as being a food source. Despite being clonally propagated, modern cultivars exhibit great morphological and genetic diversity, with thousands of varieties described in historic and contemporaneous records. Through historical accounts, some varieties can be traced to the Middle Ages, but the genetic relationships between ancient and modern vines remain unknown. We present target-enriched genome-wide sequencing data from 28 archaeological grape seeds dating to the Iron Age, Roman era and medieval period. When compared with domesticated and wild accessions, we found that the archaeological samples were closely related to western European cultivars used for winemaking today. We identified seeds with identical genetic signatures present at different Roman sites, as well as seeds sharing parent-offspring relationships with varieties grown today. Furthermore, we discovered that one seed dated to ~1100 CE was a genetic match to 'Savagnin Blanc', providing evidence for 900 years of uninterrupted vegetative propagation.

This article considers Beckett’s faces in the light of Giorgio Agamben’s account of the face as a disputed biopolitical marker. Agamben refers to the face both in terms of social and juridical identity in ancient Rome and as an icon of contemporary biopolitics, as social identity gives way to biometric recognition. Beckett’s own face figures prominently in the series of machine-generated Eigenface portraits created by artist Trevor Paglen in 2017, and whose use of the Eigenface method invokes modern facial recognition technologies. The Eigenface is examined here in relation to a gallery of ghostly progenitors: the faces of Beckett’s late plays.

For tourists visiting excavated ancient Greek or Roman sites, the extraordinary speech intelligibility experienced in an (unroofed) amphitheatre – no matter how little is preserved of its original structure and outfit – is always a highlight. The article argues that the Greeks and Romans did indeed know more about acoustics without the theoretical background we have today. This knowledge has obviously been lost over the centuries, despite the powerful computer simulation tools now available to any ambitious acoustician. It is suggested that acoustic textbooks and standards be revised as far as recommended reverberation times and spectra are concerned.

This is the first part of a general historiographical review of recent studies on the formation of the modern Italian nation and national identities. The review is organized chronologically and the first part covers literature on the development of the Italian state and society to the end of the nineteenth century.

This book represents a welcome addition to studies of fascism and migration. The history of both southern Italian immigration to Argentina and the Italian fascists’ attempts to dominate this immigrant community have been approached by Italian historians such as Emilio Gentile, Loris Zanatta, and Eugenia Scarzanella, among many others, as well as by Argentine historians such as Fernando Devoto and María Victoria Grillo. In this context, David Aliano’s book provides a refreshing look at old sources while also bringing new primary sources to the equation, from propaganda materials to school textbooks. His questions are also different from those of his Italian predecessors. Aliano is not so much interested in the history of fascism but rather in how studying its impact on Argentina’s Italian community helps us understand the complex history of Italian ideas and projects for the nation both inside and outside Italy.Aliano is well versed in migration studies and Italian history, and he aptly combines both in examining the Argentine context, where most Italian immigrants eventually became and thought of themselves as Argentines. This was, to be sure, the most frustrating dimension of the problem for Benito Mussolini and his propaganda team. But Aliano is not that concerned with the history of this transnational failure of fascism and what it says about that political movement’s geopolitical conceptions and practices. Rather, the book’s emphasis on national conceptions among the different actors in Italy and abroad allows the author to cogently highlight limits and continuities in the broader history of Italy’s state policies of emigration. For Aliano, important traditions of national identity were continued by the fascists, who added to these their specific political identity. He argues that national projects such as Mussolini’s attempts to convert Argentina’s Italian community to fascism were substantially transformed by their contexts of reception, which posed important limitations on a “national project outside of the nation-state” (p. 2). The book presents a fine history of the Italian community in Argentina and the failed attempts by fascists to proselytize it from the 1920s to the 1940s. It explores a diversity of topics, from propaganda aimed at the immigrants and the schooling of Italian children in Argentina to fascist-antifascist debates within the Italian immigrant community. The author stresses how the Italians of Argentina formed an Italian identity different from the more authoritarian one in vogue on the peninsula. Another element in the development of this more liberal national conception that Aliano cogently highlights is the significant role of Italian antifascism in Argentina. He explains how this identitarian diversity limited the expansion of fascism within the community. Without much elaboration, he also emphasizes how Argentine democratic traditions had an impact in this regard.But how can one explain this persistent liberalism in the context of an ever-increasing consolidation of militarism, authoritarianism, and even clerico-fascism in Argentina during the 1930s and 1940s, from José Félix Uriburu’s dictatorship in 1930 to the so-called Década Infame and the military dictatorship of 1943? To be sure, Aliano criticizes an emphasis on Argentine authoritarianism that downplays the centrality of Argentina’s liberal traditions. But he does not engage as much with the intricacies of the ways in which Argentina’s liberal civil society turned its back on an increasingly authoritarian state hegemonized by the church and the military. While Aliano is very engaged with migration studies on both sides of the Atlantic, his book could have benefited from a similar engagement with Argentine historiographical discussions of nation building and the politics of immigration, from the earlier ideas of an “alluvial” society to the debates in the 1980s and 1990s over the idea of the melting pot as well as the more recent pathbreaking works by Hilda Sabato on political participation. The important scholarship of Lilia Ana Bertoni is also absent from Aliano’s discussion. The book is at its best when analyzing the Italian community in Argentina. If Argentine historians will note these absences and, more generally, the book’s schematic view of their country’s history, they will also benefit from learning about the European, American, and more specifically Italian discussions of emigration that drive the questions and answers of this subtle, challenging book.This book raises important questions for the field of migration studies in Latin America and Europe. It is highly recommended for specialists in Latin American and European migration and ethnic studies as well as historians of Italian fascism. By focusing on what Mussolini’s national project for the Italian community of Argentina reveals about the changing nature of the idea of the Italian nation, the book critically complements current historiography. Aliano provides a new conceptual look at the history of European migration in Argentina.

Statement of the problem. The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the diptych "Prelude and Fugue" No. 4 in E minor from the cycle "24 Preludes and Fugues" by Vsevolod Petrovich Zaderatsky, which is a unique phenomenon of Ukrainian musical culture of the 20th century and at the same time a mystical and psychological diary of the composer’s concentration camp experience. The choice of the theme is posed by the value of the diptych as a means of conveying the mental and psychological experience of those imprisoned in existential and borderline situations of camp reality, and the need of revealing the symbolic formulas of the musical text, which are cultural codes of national identity and traumatic memory of the Ukrainian people. The reconstruction of such works from the positions of art history, cultural studies, psychology and theology allows us not only to understand the logic of musical presentation, but also the encrypted deep psychological reality that could not be expressed in words. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. For the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the diptych “Prelude and Fugue” in E minor No 4 as the page of the psychological “diary” “24 Preludes and Fugues”by Zaderatskyi from the point of view of musicology, philosophy, cultural studies, theology and psychology, identifying ways to reproduce the traumatic transformation of the “I” of the repressed generation has been carried out. This approach allowed us to discover symbols in the musical text that tell about the personal experience of the composer, as well as the experience of the split “I” of the prisoners. Research results. The following tasks resolved in the study: to analyze the structural and thematic features of the diptych; to explore the symbolism of the bell in the context of individual and collective cultural memory; to reveal the traumatic experience of the hero’s “I” through the psychological dimension of the diptych; to combine musicological, philosophical, cultural, theological and psychological approaches for a holistic understanding of the “Prelude and Fugue” in E minor No. 4. It is emphasized that the cycle “24 Preludes and Fugues” became “a place of memory”, where the encrypted images of the native home and the traditional values create a psychologically safe space for meeting one’s own pain and fearthanks to which the composer managed to maintain psychological health in the terrible conditions of the camp reality. The bell is considered as a symbolic figure of time and memory that preserves and transmits the cultural and spiritual traditions of the Ukrainian people. As the tragic composer, Vsevolod Zaderatskyi skillfully recreates the suffering of broken "I" through musical language, allowing the modern listeners, thanks to sound formulas, to feel the composer’s existential experiences, comparing them with their own ideas about life, death and moral choice in crisis situations. Conclusion. The diptych No. 4 in E minor is one of the darkest and most mystical works in V. Zaderatskyi’s cycle “24 Preludes and Fugues”, which combines classical polyphonic mastery with deep psychological and spiritual expression. A comprehensive approach to its study allows not only to comprehend the artistic logic, but also to reconstruct the spiritual world of the composer, which serves as evidence of the life and cultural experience of the generation that survived repression. Musical images of the diptych, in particular, the symbolism of the bell, are carriers of cultural memory and national identity, making this work extremely valuable both for musicology and for interdisciplinary research in the fields of psychology, cultural studies and theology. The diptych “Prelude and Fugue” in E minor No. 4 is extremely relevant for the modern study of Ukrainian music, cultural identity and the history of psychical traumatism in the 20th century.

This article explores the foot-washing tradition (locally known as hobo kadan) as a form of cultural communication within the indigenous community of Leksula Village, Eastern Indonesia. The main objective of this study is to understand the symbolic meanings, social functions, and political relevance of the ritual as it relates to women preparing for marriage, and to assess its role in preserving local wisdom amid the socio-political dynamics of indigenous society. Employing a qualitative ethnographic approach, the research involved participant observation, in-depth interviews with traditional elders, community leaders, and ritual participants, as well as narrative analysis of the cultural practice. The findings reveal that hobo kadan is not merely a ceremonial ritual, but a symbolic act of social and spiritual transition—marking a woman’s passage from her former life into the ideals of married life. The tradition also reflects social legitimacy through the mutual agreement of two families, functioning as a form of public communication to signal that the marriage process will soon take place lawfully and transparently. In the political context of the indigenous community, this practice reinforces social cohesion, affirms traditional authority structures, and symbolizes resistance to the homogenization of external cultures. The novelty of this study lies in its articulation of hobo kadan as a cultural communication tool that actively contributes to the socio-political stability of indigenous communities. This study recommends formal recognition and protection of local cultural practices in development policy, and advocates for the integration of indigenous knowledge systems into the advancement of social and political sciences—particularly in the study of identity politics, symbolic culture, and political communication in indigenous contexts.

The article explores acoustic narratives as an instrument of soft power in the contemporary world. Sound is examined not only as an aesthetic phenomenon but also as a factor of social and political communication. The theoretical framework draws on R. Murray Schafer’s concept of the “soundscape” and acoustic ecology, Steven Feld’s acoustemology, media studies of auditory culture (Michael Bull, Jonathan Sterne), and Joseph Nye’s theory of soft power, further developed in the context of cultural diplomacy. Acoustic narratives are defined as structured sonic practices—music, speech, podcasts, and sound design—that carry symbolic meanings and shape perceptions of community, state, or culture. Their specificity lies in their immediate emotional impact and capacity to generate trust and solidarity. An interdisciplinary approach combining cultural studies, media theory, musicology, and the sociology of sound makes it possible to interpret acoustic narratives as mediators of cultural dialogue and tools for shaping a state’s international image. The article analyzes examples of their use in cultural diplomacy: the Jazz Ambassadors program in the United States during the Cold War, as well as contemporary Ukrainian festivals, diaspora radio, and podcast projects. Special attention is given to the role of song as a bearer of identity and a medium for promoting cultural values abroad. In wartime Ukraine, acoustic narratives—songs, concerts of solidarity, and diaspora media—have become both a means of mobilization and a symbol of resilience. The study concludes that acoustic narratives represent a strategic resource of soft power, capable of shaping cultural image, strengthening social cohesion, and influencing global discourses.

Saudade is a cultural concept expressing a profound sense of longing, nostalgia, or melancholy associated with absence, loss, or unattainable experiences. Emerging in medieval Portugal and shaped by historical, social, and literary developments, it has evolved from an individual emotion into a collective cultural construct reflecting the identity, history, and aesthetic sensibilities of Lusophone communities. Drawing on peer-reviewed scholarship and interdisciplinary research in cultural studies, this entry examines how saudade is expressed in the literature, music, and philosophical discourse, and its role in national memory, emigration, and cultural imagination. While sometimes described as untranslatable, its uniqueness reflects deep historical and cultural embedding rather than a linguistic limitation. Saudade, therefore, functions as a multilayered symbolic category, revealing the interplay between emotion, language, and cultural identity in Lusophone contexts.