Turning points and transformations in contemporary Italy: a century of big changes through ‘small histories’

Abstract This special issue stems from the 2022 Association for the Study of Modern Italy conference, reflecting on key turning points in modern Italian history through the lens of ‘small histories’. Drawing on contemporary international historiography and the contributions in the present volume, this introduction discusses how microhistorical, biographical and related approaches may challenge or refine dominant interpretations in that they abstract from ‘grand narratives’ to instead highlight dynamics and actors that may appear to be on the margins of major historical processes. The studies in this special issue engage in particular with the intersections of identity, space and memory. Themes such as Fascism, the reshaping of Italian identity through cultural policies and the creation of a collective memory, colonialism and postcolonialism, migration and evolving gender roles are explored in diverse contexts from interwar South Tyrol through to contemporary Palermo. Together, these ‘small histories’ demonstrate the methodological and interpretative richness of focused studies in tracing Italy’s transformation across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They challenge binaries such as centre–periphery and local–global, while shedding new light on the relation between individual experiences and the creation of shared spaces, memories and identities.