Navigating ‘difficult’ heritage from local to global—Rethinking fascist Italy’s monuments and memory

Professor Sally Hill, from the School of Languages and Cultures, presents her inaugural lecture.

Monuments, place names, images and plaques that recall painful or shameful events of the past are controversial all around the world. Arguments about these kinds of objects often swing between the two poles of calls to destroy them completely or preserve them untouched. But what other choices are there, and what might they entail?

Looking at a range of international examples, this lecture focuses in particular on approaches to dealing with the many visual and material remnants of Italy’s twenty-year fascist dictatorship. Professor Hill argues that looking at the ways local communities, artists, activists and institutions in other parts of the world have dealt with so-called ‘difficult’ heritage can suggest insights to help navigate our own troubled histories and their complex contemporary meanings.

This is Professor Hill's inaugural lecture as Professor of Global Studies at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

With Associate Professor Giacomo Lichtner (History), Sally is co-lead of a 2-year international ACIS-funded History and Social Science research project entitled ‘Reframing, Revisiting or Removing—Making Fascism Visible in Contemporary Italy’.

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