HIST-B300 – JSTU-J304 Violence and Landscape in Alpine Borderlands Bicentennial rand Expedition syllabus

Roberta Pergher – Mark Roseman

Course description This 10-day study course takes students across some of the most striking landscapes of Europe in the northern territories of Italy – territories that belonged to contested lands in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later lay on the border between Italy and Hitler’s Greater German Reich. The course examines the way the landscape shaped the forms of conflict in the First World War, producing some of the most dramatic and testing battlegrounds in the three-year conflict between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It will also explore the way these border regions acted as zones of persecution under Fascist rule, in which natural features, notably the caves of the Foibe in Istria, proved to be lethal sites of execution for both Fascists and partisans. Finally, it will look at the South Tyrol as route of escape for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s, and later for Nazis using the so-called ratlines to escape prosecution. These themes are pursued in the sensational landscapes of the Italian-Austrian borderlands, in South Tyrol and Friuli and the city of Trieste.

This trip evokes many of the features of the original Grand expedition. It takes the participants across European borders and reflects on the impact of changing borders. It has a strong emphasis on landscape – not only in the outdoor elements of the trip, but also in reflecting on the role of very distinctive terrain in shaping the experience of war, persecution, and flight. In short, it takes full advantage of place and landscape.

2

Course Format Three preparatory lectures and one preparatory orientation session will take place before the trip in Bloomington. These will be held on three consecutive Fridays in April and one on May 1, 2020. The main component of the course is a trip to Austria and Italy from July 3 to July 13, 2020 involving lectures as well as visits to museums, battlefields, monuments, and sites of Fascist violence. It features a strong connection with nature and landscapes.

The outdoors hiking includes two robust exercises: 1) hiking across the border between Austria and Italy following the route of Jewish refugees (2 hour hike one day; 6-8 hours the next day); 2) Climbing Monte Piano up a mountain path to see the sites and remnants of the WW1 battles there (a 4-5 hour hike up narrow mountain paths.). These are required for all participants of the trip. Participants will thus need to be fit enough to walk for 6-8 hours and to climb and descend 3,000 feet in one day. They will need ankle-high, water-resistant, worn-in hiking boots and appropriate walking clothes and backpack. (The hike across the main chain of the Alps involves an overnight stay where participants will need to carry hiking clothing, toiletries, and a sleeping bag liner. The other hikes are day hikes. A bus will transport luggage between stops.)

Students will be expected to purchase the course reading pack and bring it with them on the trip. (They do not need to carry it across the Alps.)

Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, a successful student will demonstrate:

• knowledge about key events and ideas in 20th-century history – Nationalism, World War I, Fascism, World War II and the Holocaust.

• the ability to reflect on the relationship between politics, culture, landscape and violence – on the demands landscape places on technologies of war, on the way it shapes the experience of conflict, and the opportunities it provides for evasion and resistance.

• the capacity to think critically and creatively by answering historical questions about the relations between empire, nation, and culture through experiencing the impact of border movements and contests in the 20th century.

Learning Assessment The final grade will be based on four components

1) Active participation; 30% 2) Reaction pieces to readings for the Bloomington sessions; 15% 3) Five entries on experience and learning content that will be attached to the course geo-map.

Students will enter one substantive content-related entry on the geo map (10%), and four smaller entries that reflect on their experience in situ (5% each); 30%

4) Final essay on landscape and violence to be submitted after the trip. 25%

3

Reading List Each of the 12 Class Sessions has articles or book chapters associated with it. The readings will be assembled in a course pack. Because internet may not be available at some of the study locations, participants will be required to purchase the course pack in advance and bring it on the trip.

Monte Piano, Italy – World War I site

Prior to Expedition: Meetings in Bloomington

Week 1 Class Session 1: Nationalism and WWI Friday April 10 2020, Time to be determined

Readings: • Select chapters from Mark Thompson, The White War • Tait Keller, “The mountains roar: The Alps during the Great War Environmental History 14, 2 (2009),

253-274

4

Week 2 Class Session 2: Fascism and WWII Friday April 17, 2020, Time to be determined

Week 3 Class Session 3: Landscape, violence and memory in the Italian Alps between WWI and the end of WWII Friday April 24, 2020, Time to be determined

Week 4 Class Session 4: Logistics and preparations Friday May 1, 2020, Time to be determined

Jewish exodus from Austria to Italy on the Krimmler Tauernweg, 1947

Readings: • Richard Bosworth, “Everyday Mussolinism: Friends, Family, Locality and Violence in Fascist Italy”

Contemporary European History 14, 1 (2005), 23-43 • Davide Rodogno, “Fascism and War”, Oxford Handbook of Fascism ed. Richard Bosworth (2009)

Readings: • Glenda Sluga, “Introduction,” in The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference,

Identity, and Sovereignty in Twentieth-Century Europe. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001.

• Pamela Ballinger, “Who defines and remembers genocide after the Cold War? Contested memories of partisan massacre in Venezia Giulia in 1943-1945,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, 1 (Mar 2000): 11-30.

• Steinacher, Gerald, “Fascist Legacies: The Controversy over Mussolini’s Monuments in South Tyrol” (2013). Faculty Publications, Department of History. 144. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historyfacpub/144

5

Trip Calendar

Meeting Day: Meet in Innsbruck at AC Hotel Innsbruck Friday July 3, 2020, 5 pm

• Dinner and overnight at AC Hotel Innsbruck

Class Session 5: Orientation Meeting, 6-7pm

Day 1: Into the mountains Saturday July 4 Itinerary:

• Drive and hike to the Krimmler Tauernhaus • 2 ½ hour hike • Class Session • Dinner and overnight at the Krimmler Tauernhaus

Class Session 6: Refugees and ratlines

Day 2: Escape through the mountains Sunday July 5 Itinerary:

• Hiking across the mountains following the trail of Jewish refugees 8 hours • Class Session • Dinner and overnight in Ahrntal

Class Session 7: Jews under Nazism and Fascism

Day 3: Jews in Meran Monday July 6 Itinerary:

• Drive to Meran • Visit to the Jewish Museum • Dinner and overnight in Meran, Hotel Kolping • Class Session

Readings: • Zimmerman, Joshua D. The Jews of Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2005 (selected chapters, esp. Cinzia Villani) • Sabine Mayr, The annihilation of the Jewish Community of Meran in A Land on the threshold. South

Tyrolean transformations, 1915-2015 ed. Georg Grote (Peter Lang; 2017), 53-76

Readings: • Susanna Schrafstetter, “Jewish flight to Italy”, Holocaust and genocide studies (forthcoming) • Gerald Steinacher, Nazis on the Run (select chapters)

6

Class Session 8: A day trip into deep history: Ötzi, the victim in the high mountains

Day 4: Museum of Archeology, Bozen; Toblach lecture Tuesday July 7 Itinerary:

• Drive to Bozen • Museum of Archeology (Ötzi) • Fascist monument to Victory • Drive to Toblach • Class Session • Dinner and overnight in Toblach, Kulturzentrum Toblach Grand Hotel

Class Session 9: Italy in WWI

Mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner inspect “Oetzi” upon his discovery in 1991.

Readings: • Juan Gabriel Bridaa, Marta Meleddub, Manuela Pulinac, “Understanding Urban Tourism

Attractiveness: The Case of the Archaeological Ötzi Museum in Bolzano,” Journal of Travel Research 51, 6 (Nov 2012): 730-741.

• M. Vidale, L. Bondioli, D. Frayer, M. Gallinaro, A. Vanzetti, “Ötzi the Iceman,” Expedition 58, 2 (Fall 2016): 13-17.

Reading: • Roberta Pergher, “An Italian War? War and Nation in the Italian Historiography of the First World

War The Journal of Modern History 90 (December 2018) • Laurence Cole, “Divided land, diverging narratives: Memory Cultures of the Great War in the

Successor Regions of Tyrol,” in Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the Last Habsburg War, edited by Mark Cornwall and John Paul Newman (New York, 2016).

7

Day 5: Monte Piano Wednesday July 8 Itinerary:

• Hike up Monte Piano to WWI sites 4-5 hours • Visit to the Nasswand military cemetery • Dinner and overnight in Toblach, Kulturzentrum Toblach Grand Hotel

Day 6: WWI museums in Austria Thursday July 9 Itinerary:

• Drive from Toblach to Udine. Sites en route: • Museum 1915-1918 Kötschach • WWI Open air site on border • Dinner and overnight in Udine, Hotel Ramandolo

Day 7: Isonzo Friday July 10 Itinerary:

• Class Session • Isonzo Battlefield/Caporetto museum 4 hours • Dinner and overnight in Udine, Hotel Ramandolo

Class Session 10: Caporetto as transformative moment in Italian history

Day 8 Redipulia and Trieste Saturday July 11 Itinerary:

• Drive to Trieste • En route Redipulia cemetery • Class Session • Dinner and overnight in Trieste, Hotel Continentale

Class Session 11: Jewish persecution under Fascism

Readings: • Vanda Wilcox, Morale and the Italian Army during the First World War (Cambridge, 2016)

(introduction) • Giovanna Procacci, “The Disaster of Caporetto,” in Disastro! Disasters in Italy Since 1860: Culture,

Politics, Society, edited by John Dickie, John Foot, and Frank M. Snowden (New York, 2002), 141–61.

Readings • Maura Hametz, “Foreigners in their Own City: Italian Fascism and the Dispersal of Trieste’s Port

Jews,” Jewish Culture and History 9, no. 2–3 (2007): 16–32. • Peter Staudenmaier, “Preparation for Genocide: The 'Center for the Study of the Jewish Problem'

in Trieste, 1942-1944,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 31, 1 (Spr 2017): 1-23.

8

Redipuglia war memorial, Italy

Day 9: Violence and persecution in Trieste Sunday July 12 Itinerary:

• Risiera San Sabba Camp • Foibe caves • Class Session • Dinner and overnight in Trieste, Hotel Continentale

Class Session 12: Violence, landscape, and memory

Day 10: Jewish experience in Trieste Monday July 13 Itinerary:

• Jewish quarter and museum

Readings: • Pamela Ballinger, “Exhumed histories: Trieste and the politics of (exclusive) victimhood,” Journal of

Southern Europe & the Balkans 6, 2 (Aug 2004): 145-159. • Chiara da Paoli, “Redefining Categories: Construction, reproduction and transformation of ethnic

identity in South Tyrol,” in A Land on the threshold. South Tyrolean transformations, 1915-2015 ed. Georg Grote (Peter Lang; 2017), 395-408