History Programme Seminar: ““If you (still) don't know who they are...” Revisiting Fausto Amodei's political song for the 21st century”

Fausto Amodei’s song Se non li conoscete – part of the eponymous 1972 album – is a less-well known text in the context of the vibrant political soundtrack of Italy’s turbulent 1970s, perhaps too folksy and satirical to represent its rage. This paper offers a new critical translation and contemporary adaptation of Se non li conoscete. We aim to consider critically the original song and invite new forms of engagement with Amodei’s original political point about the legacies of the Italian right, crafting a creative reinvention of Amodei’s poetics. If exposing the dangers of neo-fascism in 1972 meant unmasking nostalgic veterans concealed under the thin veneer of new party names and bourgeois uniforms, what new formulae might the same task require in the 21st century?

Seminar details

Sally Hill is Professor of Global Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on transdisciplinary understandings of visual and narrative representations of marginalised identities and on historical memory in visual and material culture.

Giacomo Lichtner is Professor of History at Victoria University of Wellington. He specialises in the history, memory and representation of the Holocaust, Fascism and World War Two. Together, they co-lead of the ACIS-funded Research Project "Reframing, Revisiting or Removing: Making Fascism Visible in Contemporary Italy.

When:

4.00 pm on 17 September 2026

Where:

OK406, Kelburn Campus and Online via Zoom