CRYTC is pleased to present a talk by visiting scholar Fabiana Loparco on July 28 from 12:30PM to 1:30PM in Room 2C16.
This presentation aims to explore the warring education of children in Italy during WWI on the pages of the most important Italian children’s magazine, the Corriere dei Piccoli. Analysing stories and comics published from 1914 to 1918, Dr. Loparco will examine the magazine’s educational messages, which instructed children about the values of sacrifice, duty, and homeland in order to build a “militarized childhood.” The patriotic representations in the Corriere dei Piccoli altered the ethical nature of the war. By ignoring the reality of battlefields, comics, on one hand, described WWI as a harmless, funny game, while tales, on the other hand, described the war as a “training of courage” and a “birthplace of heroes.” Dr. Loparco will also demonstrate that the particular interpretation of the conflict proposed by the Corriere had the intent of unifying the nation around common ideals that would have shaped and reinforced a national identity for the children of the young Italian kingdom.
Fabiana Loparco obtained her Ph.D. in History of Education at the University of Macerata (Italy) in 2015. Currently, she is a teaching assistant in the Italian Department of Dalarna University (Sweden). Her research focuses on the history of Italian and English children’s literature and children’s magazines in the 19th and 20th centuries, war propaganda in children’s magazines during WWI, the first Italian socialist magazines for children, primary school education under fascism, and the history of Italian teachers’ associations. She is the author of The Corriere dei Piccoli and World War I.