The GCLR is pleased to announce our co-sponsorship of the UCSB Italian Studies Program inaugural Charles R. Ross Distinguished Lecture in Italian Studies—“Race, Gender, and Population in Italy from Mussolini’s ‘Battle of Babies’ to Meloni’s ‘Ethnic Substitution’”—to be given by historian Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU) on February 6, 2025 at 5pm in the Annenberg Room (4315 SSMS).

We anticipate that the lecture will be of great interest to faculty and students who are interested in race, gender, and politics, both past and present and we hope to see many of you there! An abstract for the lecture can be found below.

Abstract: Great Replacement Theory—the idea that White Christians are being outperformed demographically by non-Whites, threatening the race and civilization—is now central to the platforms of far-right parties and governments from Hungary to Russia to Brazil and the U.S. This talk traces an Italian trajectory for such ideas, starting with Mussolini, who spoke of a crisis of White civilization years before Hitler came to power, and continuing through Berlusconi and looking at Meloni and neofascist thinking in Italy today. I look at the effects on gender relations and argue that Italy has been a laboratory for far-right politics and policies that aimed to “save” White civilization by excluding immigrants, imposing apartheid-style colonial race laws, launching campaigns of national purity, and making motherhood central to female identity.