Autore: Gori, AnnaRita
Titolo: Colombo nel «mondo di domani». Italia e Portogallo all’Esposizione Universale di New York (1939-1940)
Periodico: Memoria e ricerca
Anno: 2026 - Volume: 81 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 83 - Pagina finale: 104

This article examines the New York World’s Fair of 1939 as a site of symbolic negotiation and cultural diplomacy, focusing on the strategies of national representation developed by Italy and Portugal on the eve of the Second World War. While existing scholarship has largely approached World’s Fairs either as arenas of ideological confrontation or as instruments of American soft power, this study adopts a reversed perspective, analyzing how Italian Fascism and Portuguese Estado Novo sought to construct, negotiate, and project their national images within the U.S. cultural and political landscape. The article centers on the public use of Christopher Columbus as a shared transatlantic historical figure, deeply embedded in both European historiography and American imaginary. By treating Columbus not only as an object of representation but as an analytical lens, the study highlights the tensions of cultural diplomacy between the United States and the two regimes, the growing divergence between Italian and Portuguese narratives, and the early articulation of representational strategies that would later characterize Salazarist propaganda during the Cold War.




SICI: 1127-0195(2026)81:1<83:CN«DDI>2.0.ZU;2-X
Testo completo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.14647/120215
Testo completo alternativo: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.14647/120215

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