Fascism

This course aims to familiarise students with the extraordinarily rich historiography on fascism. Its goal is to enable a more critical approach to the subject, to parse its conceptual and historical ambiguities and to engage with theoretical framings of the subject through an immersion in the main case studies. Focusing on the emergence of fascist regimes in interwar Italy and Germany, it will range across countries and time, distinguishing fascism from other forms of the authoritarian Right, exploring the extent to which the Second World War marked a watershed in fascism’s fortunes, and asking to what extent the term remains a useful one in the early twenty-first century. Course readings will include contemporary documents, classic articles and major monographs on the subject. Students will be expected to read widely.