Luisa Passerini

Combining the history of ideas and the history of emotions, this work explores the convergence between political and cultural ideas of Europe and the idea of love in the period between the two world wars. It investigates European unity from a political viewpoint, but also from cultural and symbolic ones, taking a critical stand towards Euro-centricism. Chapters focus on single texts, including bestselling novels, and artworks reviving the myth of Europa and the bull, set in the context of debates on marriage, sex and love in the western world. These alternate with chapters combining intellectual and cultural history with critical explorations of how historians, politicians and psychologists analyzed the crisis of European civilization.

This open access book discusses political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities in contemporary Europe. Ongoing debates on migration, on local, national, inter- and transnational levels, prove that it is a divisive issue with regards to understanding European integration and identity. At the same time, the European Union increasingly invests in projects related to European heritage, museums, and cultural memory networks, while having to take dissonant heritages into account. These processes in their combination offer an interesting dynamic and form the complex puzzle that poses challenging questions for anyone involved in academic research, heritage practices, and policy debates. With this puzzle at its core, this book explicitly focuses on slippery and transforming notions of Europe and critically discusses ongoing and transforming power structures of heritage and memory in today's Europe. The book combines theoretical and methodological contributions to the debates on European heritage and memory studies and in-depth analyses of empirical case studies. Its main aim is to bring research fields concerning memory and heritage into a closer dialogue and thus explore the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Europe. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This open access book discusses political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities in contemporary Europe. Ongoing debates on migration, on local, national, inter- and transnational levels, prove that it is a divisive issue with regards to understanding European integration and identity. At the same time, the European Union increasingly invests in projects related to European heritage, museums, and cultural memory networks, while having to take dissonant heritages into account. These processes in their combination offer an interesting dynamic and form the complex puzzle that poses challenging questions for anyone involved in academic research, heritage practices, and policy debates. With this puzzle at its core, this book explicitly focuses on slippery and transforming notions of Europe and critically discusses ongoing and transforming power structures of heritage and memory in today's Europe. The book combines theoretical and methodological contributions to the debates on European heritage and memory studies and in-depth analyses of empirical case studies. Its main aim is to bring research fields concerning memory and heritage into a closer dialogue and thus explore the cultural and political dynamics of contemporary Europe. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

It has often been assumed that Europeans invented and had the exclusive monopoly over courtly and romantic love, commonly considered to be the highest form of relations between men and women. This view was particularly prevalent between 1770 and the mid-twentieth century, but was challenged in the 1960s when romantic love came to be seen as a universal sentiment that can be found in all cultures in the world. However, there remains the historical problem that the Europeans used this concept of love as a fundamental part of their self-image over a long period (traces of it still remain) and it became very much caught up in the concept of marriage. This book challenges the underlying Eurocentrism of this notion while exploring in a more general sense the connection between identity and emotions.

This book is based on the oral life histories of about 70 men and women workers, born between the end of the last century and 1920, which are combined with sources such as police reports, documentary films and judicial documents. The interviewees recount their visions of life, of history, and of themselves; they call to memory the fascist period, and the ambivalent relationship between the Duce and the masses. A picture of resistance emerges, through such minor episodes as jokes and graffiti, wearing a red tie or whistling an old socialist tune, and through major issues such as abortions carried out in direct opposition to state propaganda. Acquiescence is also recalled, however, in the enrolment of children in fascist youth organisations or in the use of new state-controlled social services. The final chapter reconstructs an event that acquired great symbolic meaning: the eloquent and unexpected silence of the Fiat workers before Mussolini in 1939 at the inauguration of the Miraflori factory.

It has often been assumed that Europeans invented and had the exclusive monopoly over courtly and romantic love, commonly considered to be the highest form of relations between men and women. This view was particularly prevalent between 1770 and the mid-twentieth century, but was challenged in the 1960s when romantic love came to be seen as a universal sentiment that can be found in all cultures in the world. However, there remains the historical problem that the Europeans used this concept of love as a fundamental part of their self-image over a long period (traces of it still remain) and it became very much caught up in the concept of marriage. This book challenges the underlying Eurocentrism of this notion while exploring in a more general sense the connection between identity and emotions.

'Memory and Utopia' looks at the connection between memory and forgetfulness in Europe during the twentieth century. Drawing on oral history and feminist theory and practice, the book highlights how women struggled to be recognized as full subjects. The themes of utopia and desire in the 1968 movements of students, women and workers are explored. 'Memory and Utopia' examines the sense of belonging to Europe that has emerged in the last twenty years. The book analyses European identity as expressed through identities based on gender, age and culture to explore an inclusive and non-hierarchical subjectivity.

'Memory and Utopia' looks at the connection between memory and forgetfulness in Europe during the twentieth century. Drawing on oral history and feminist theory and practice, the book highlights how women struggled to be recognized as full subjects. The themes of utopia and desire in the 1968 movements of students, women and workers are explored. 'Memory and Utopia' examines the sense of belonging to Europe that has emerged in the last twenty years. The book analyses European identity as expressed through identities based on gender, age and culture to explore an inclusive and non-hierarchical subjectivity.

This book is the result of an experiment in advanced teaching and learning which took place as a joint effort of the Departments of History at the European University Institute, Florence, and at New York University in the years 1996-1999. The experiment brought together fifteen graduate students and six professors from the two institutions, and included two workshops and a conference, in which also other scholars participated. Junior and senior scholars explored how and to what extent reciprocal exchanges between Europe and the USA in the period from the end of the XVIIIth century to the present were connected with and meaningful for their researches. The papers that have emerged from this approach also discuss the methodology of history: issues such as the relations between representations, identities, material production and consumption are challenged. The reciprocity of European representations of America and of American visions of Europe comes out clearly as does the impossibility of studying the symbolic considering the material and vice versa.

Before World War II an intimate connection between the ideas of Europe and romantic love was widely accepted and virtually unchallenged. Only after Europe was ravaged by war and fractured by superpower conflict was this connection called into question. Today, with the success of the European Union, such themes are reemerging in art, literature, music, and everyday conversation. In Europe in Love, Love in Europe we revisit Europe between world wars to explore the lost connections between love, culture, and ideology. Passerini investigates different ways in which historians, politicians, psychoanalysts, and psychologists analyzed the crisis of European civilization, providing a history of ideas and emotions. Her focus on specific texts ranges from best-selling novels to artworks set in the context of debates on marriage, sex, and friendship. Europe in Love, Love in Europe concludes with the story of a correspondence between spouses, an English woman and a German man during World War II, a powerful example of what it could mean to live the European dimension of a love relationship in that historical moment. Passerini offers a compelling original perspective on the modern anxiety over national identity and European unity-and a powerful rejoinder to political and cultural Eurocentrism.