Gregory D. Milano, “The Class Without Consciousness: Fascism’s ‘New’ Workers and the 1942 World’s Fair in Rome,” Contemporary European History 30:3 (2021), pp. 366-382.
The Society for Italian Historical Studies is delighted to choose Gregory Milano for his article “The Class Without Consciousness: Fascism’s ‘New’ Workers and the 1942 World’s Fair in Rome,” published in Contemporary European History in August 2021 as co-winner for this year’s Article Prize in Modern Italian History. Here Milano takes a fresh look at the preparations for the 1942 World’s Fair (EUR), a well-known episode in the construction of the regime’s self-image, by focusing on labor, understood both as an ideological category and a set of concrete practices. The article deftly combines cultural analysis and social history, exploring the subjectivities of labor first in examples of propaganda film and then in the everyday lives of the construction workers employed in the project and subjected to increasingly invasive surveillance. In Milano’s interpretation, the making of EUR becomes a showcase for the regime’s construction of the ideal laboring subject, self-sacrificing and compliant, and a site where the limitations and contradictions of this ideological project can be fully appreciated. The article is broadly conceived, beautifully written, and meticulously researched. We commend Milano for his innovative research and wish him a long and productive career.
In the below-provided video, Dr. Amanda Madden and Dr. Milano discuss the research behind “The Class Without Conciousness,” among other topics.