Aus dem Gutachten der Jury: The Society for Italian Historical Studies is also happy to award a second Honorable Mention to Markus Wurzer for his article “The Social Lives of Mass-Produced Images of the 1935-41 Italo-Ethiopian War” published in Modern Italy (2022). In this beautifully written essay Wurzer provides an original reading of ordinary soldiers’ uses of mass-produced images of Ethiopia in the context of the Italian fascist war and occupation. Conceptually rich and methodologically astute, Wurzer’s article advances significantly our understanding of the private uses of the public images that the regime produced to build consensus among its population. Focusing on the postcard collections of a number of so-called allogeni (in this case the German-speaking inhabitants of the province of Bozen/Bolzano), the article enriches the important historiography that makes use of visual sources and helps us to understand the soldiers’ attitudes towards the fascist colonial war in an Italian region of recent annexation.
The social LIves of Mass-Produced Images of the 1935-41 Italo Ethiopian War
Article Prize for Modern Italian History