L’INVENZIONE DEI PAESAGGI AGRARI ALLA METÀ DEL NOVECENTO: LA GEOSTORIA DI EMILIO SERENI

This dissertation deals with the rather famous, but still little-studied, historian of Italian agricultural landscape, Emilio Sereni (1907-1977) and is mainly based on a work of exploration of Sereni’s mammoth archives, which are deposed in the Gattatico’s (Reggio Emilia) Istituto Cervi, and partially in the Rome’s Istituto Gramsci, made in partnership with the staff of Gattatico archives. Reading the most celebrated work of Sereni, the History of Italian Agricultural Landscape (1961) my first problem was to understand his relationship with geography, as on the one hand it is clear that he dealt with key concepts of Human and Rural geographies of his time, but the explicit references to geographers were rather rare, and the current literature traditionally stressed much more his link with the works of the French historian Marc Bloch. The second problem was to evaluate the role of politics, namely Sereni’s orthodox Marxism, in his scientific production, considering that several authors stated that Sereni in his scientific production felt himself freer than in his political activity, as he was a deputy and member of the Italian Communist Party in the zenith of the Stalinist period. However, commentators are not unanimous on this point. I conclude that he was aware that Marxist intellectual tools were not sufficient for his research, and for that he used French Human Geography to integrate them; however, I argue that this does not imply a ‘schizophrenia’ but rather a changing in the communication registers, which are different in Sereni’s political writings. Evoking recent studies, both on the interdisciplinary relationship between history and geography on the dialectics between science and political engagement, I interrogate primary sources of the Sereni’s archives, as well as his works, on the above questioning, focusing on his dialogue with the tradition of French Human Geography which, as the archives demonstrate, Sereni knew very well, contributing to the process of crossbreeding and fertilisation between history and geography which interests growingly researchers in the last years. The work for my dissertation was accompanied by a direct participation, in collaboration with the Reggio Emilia Istituto Cervi and Archivio Sereni and with the Italian Geographical Society, in the initiatives which were undertaken in 2011 for the anniversary of the History of Italian Agricultural Landscape, namely an exposition and an international conference.