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Last Letters from the World Wars: Forming Italian Language, Identity and Memory in Texts of Conflict

Objective

What are the final wishes of those who are about to die, in a period of war? Can we identify patterns in wartime letter writing in the context of the two World Wars? The proposed research project consists of a thematic and linguistic analysis of the last letters of Italians sentenced to death during the two world wars. These letters are an invaluable testimony of the changes that occurred in Italian society when the Italian Republic was born, after the fall of Totalitarianism. These missives are the most illuminating tokens of a turning point in Italian language, politics, gender perception and culture. Indeed, they describe the advent of Italian as a national language, born of a mixture of several registers and regional traits. Furthermore, anti-war ideas, laying the foundations of the Italian constitution, are clearly expressed in the last words of most writers, who wanted to leave their political convictions as a legacy for the future of the country. Moreover, these letters demonstrate a deep change in traditional gender distinctions, as they expose new conceptions of the family during wartime – considering that the majority of these letters was sent to the writers’ next of kin.
The purpose of the study is to interpret these last letters through the lens of new gender, identity, and conflict theories, categorising and arranging the searchability of these texts via digital technologies to make them available to the wider public. The research is supported by Europeana14-18 and the Italian Institute for the History of the Resistance, and is hosted by University College Cork. It is supervised by Dr Silvia Ross, Senior Lecturer in Italian, with an international research record in contemporary Italian literature and particular interests in gender, identity, alterity and conflict. The Researcher has also secured targeted international secondments with two other partners (U of Reading and the Italian Central Archive) and one external partnership (NYU).

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MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

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(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2017

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 175 866,00
Address
WESTERN ROAD
T12 YN60 Cork
Ireland

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Region
Ireland Southern Mid-West
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 175 866,00
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