ABSTRACT During the 1970s, the Italian prison system was shaken by a wave of protests that undermined the established ‘order and discipline’ of penal institutions. Prisoners’ mobilizations progressively weakened traditional repressive tools such as solitary confinement, disciplinary transfers, and harsh-regime facilities. Faced with difficulties in controlling penal institutions, the prison administration developed an innovative response: the Camosci circuit, a maximum-security circuit that became operative in May 1977. It represented the practical implementation of the logic of differentiation applied to the penitentiary space, aiming to isolate dangerous inmates and disrupt their social and political ties. Drawing on previously unexplored archival sources, this article reconstructs the origins, development, and functioning of the circuit. It highlights spatiality as a key component of the new repressive strategies, showing how the circuit reshaped disciplinary mechanisms and revealed the flexibility of the Italian penal system in its transition from emergency responses to more structured forms of control.

ABSTRACT This introduction presents the special issue as an invitation to reconceptualize the historiography of punishment. It starts with the perception of a double shortcoming in the field. On the one hand, I observe the growing mismatch between the theoretical frameworks that we have received from the 1970s and the findings of the burgeoning literature that has been published on the topic during the last decades. On the other hand, I acknowledge that the new scholarship has most often confined itself to the empirical realm and has fallen short of providing comprehensive alternative conceptualizations. In this context, this special issue proposes some concepts as a starting point for a new analytical lexicon for our field: punitive sources, targets, legitimations, settings, institutions, regimes, circuits, circulations and configurations. The final section presents the six essays included in this special issue, highlights their contribution to the larger theoretical debate, and considers the relevance of a focus on “Italy” in this endeavour.

ABSTRACT This article explores the contours of national belonging and the acquisition of Italian citizenship with particular focus on Italy’s new Adriatic borderlands after the First World War. Through the lens of two families’ experiences, it explores the mechanisms of defining Italian national belonging revealed in the process of opting for citizenship under the provisions of the Paris Peace and examines the effects of exclusionary policies of nationalization on individuals whose identities and affiliations eluded ethno-nationalist categorization. It demonstrates that hierarchies of privilege that survived the collapse of the Monarchy skewed Italian authorities’ interpretations of ethno-nationalist affiliation, reinforced social divisions, and reinscribed them to justify legal discrimination and support exclusionary ethno-nationalist practices.

ABSTRACT This Special Issue on the Decade of Decadence focuses on the northern Adriatic transnational borderland from the beginning of the First World War in July 1914 to the Treaty of Rome in January 1924 when the city of Rijeka/Fiume was annexed by Italy and the Adriatic question was temporarily settled. As several recent studies have shown this decade is of fundamental importance at the global level and the northern Adriatic in these years represents a unique laboratory for studying the transformations of Europe in the twentieth century. Seen in these perspectives, these articles show how concepts of loyalty, sovereignty, nationality and citizenship did not conform to a linear process of nation-building but instead open new perspectives on Italian and Euro-Mediterranean politics, culture and societies before and after the First World War.

ABSTRACT In this brief introduction, the two editors of the special issue ‘Italy’s Democratic Turn, 1943–1963’ emphasize the centrality of the theme of democracy in Europe after 1945 and argue for the use of the expression ‘democratic turn’ to categorize Italy’s first two postwar decades.

ABSTRACT In the 1920s and 1930s, the Italian poet Gabriele D’Annunzio sparked significant interest in China, engaging intellectuals across the political spectrum, whether progressive or conservative. While some lauded his patriotism and artistic achievements, others criticized his dissolute personal life. Of particular interest was his ambiguous relationship with Fascism, which generated widespread debate and divergent opinions. However, following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, D’Annunzio faded from public discourse, reappearing only in the late 1980s. Through a thorough analysis of historical documents, this article seeks to reconstruct the reception of D’Annunzio in China and to explore the factors that contributed to the transformation of his reputation within the country.

ABSTRACT This article explores the role of pharmacy in Ippolito Nievo’s literary work, with particular attention to his journalistic writings as well as his debut novel Anti-afrodisiaco per l’amor platonico. Nievo frequently turns to pharmaceutical metaphors as a means of reflecting on the ambivalent power of the written word. As I demonstrate, the figure of the counter-poison in particular constitutes for Nievo an important model for thinking about how writers might reconcile an ethical and political vision with the exigencies of the market – in other words, how the potentially ‘poisonous’ aspects of popular literature could be harnessed for good. By situating Nievo within the context of contemporary Italian print culture, this article sheds light on how his works engage with and respond to widespread anxieties about popular fiction.

ABSTRACT Based on extensive fieldwork in southwest Sardinia focused on the memories of former miners, this article explores the dialectic of temporalities within post-mining communities. Through the perspectives of former miners and individuals involved in heritage-making, the article examines different pathways emerging from the decline of the mining industry and the resulting material and social remnants. This framework relates to the material and social aspects of ruins and ruination, as Ann Stoler discusses. I analyse the closure of mines through De Martino’s concepts of cultural apocalypse and crisis of presence. The article explores how the crisis, triggered by mine closures, leads to various forms of engaging with the mining past. Different subjects interpret and use ruins and ruinations, revitalizing mining history differently. While heritage-makers view ruins as monuments to be promoted for tourism, they also perceive environmental degradation as active ruination requiring remediation. Conversely, former miners see remnants of mining as ongoing ruination, symbolizing decay and the risk of a crisis of presence. The social relations forged within the mining community are seen as a form of mythical ruin that can be employed to revive social relations, primarily those of class, which have faded over time.