Brian J Griffith, “Bacchus among the Blackshirts: Wine Making, Consumerism and Identity in Fascist Italy, 1919-1937,” Contemporary European History 29:4 (November 2020), pp. 394-415.
The committee unanimously and enthusiastically awards the SIHS prize for Modern Italian History to Brian J Griffith for his article ‘Bacchus among the Blackshirts: Wine Making, Consumerism and Identity in Fascist Italy, 1919–1937’ (Contemporary European History, 2020). Densely sourced and fostering dialogue between studies in fascism, history of food, consumption studies, and commodity biographies, Griffith’s essay shows how wine came to be seen as Italy’s ‘national beverage’. By uncovering the Industrial Wine Lobby’s intensive efforts during the 1920s and 1930s to disassociate wine’s consumption from the lower classes and to associate it with the ‘refined taste’ of the new bourgeois and wealthy classes, the analysis reveals the unknown history of an invented tradition and national heritage. Griffith convincingly shows how Italian regionalism was both affirmed and nationalized at the same time. In doing so, his article urges us to reconceptualize political agency during fascism in ways that go beyond the binaries of state and society, public and private.
In the below-provided video, Dr. Amanda Madden and Dr. Griffith discuss the research behind “Bacchus among the Blackshirts,” among other topics.