The path of most Resistance: the intimate geographies of landscape for World War II Partisans in Northern Italy

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The anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist partisan struggles of 1943-45 became iconic in the post-war construction of the Italian Republic. As the world came to terms with Nazi atrocities, the resistance positioned Italians as fighting this oppression. As Italians negotiated their fascist pasts, resistance stories offered a distraction and a new start. Consequently, the resistance was celebrated through all kinds of 'official' media and became central to Italy's post-war identity. 'Partigiani' were lauded by commentators and politicians (especially on the left). They were celebrated in historical writing, and by physical memorials, civic ceremonies and street-naming. In turn, these histories became embedded in school histories, especially in the North where the bulk of partisan activity occurred.These histories were re-cast in the aftermath of 1989 and the fall of Italy's second republic in 1992. The right began critiquing the patriotism of Partisans' leftist politics, while more mainstream historical rethinking uncovered the fractured, politicized and often brutal and compromised nature of partisan life.Yet the geographies of the resistance remain little-studied. While scholars frequently talk of the partisans' recourse to mountains or forests, they seldom consider the nature of these places. While historians documented the sites of resistance actions and refuges, they rarely considered how the fighters experienced these landscapes. Geographical understandings of the production and nature of these fleeting worlds are lacking.We propose to use interviews with surviving partisans to explore the personal, emotional business of 'being there': of the partisans' understandings of, and engagements with, their landscapes of invisibility and refuge where they hid, sheltered, watched and waited. While starting with orthodox archives about their histories, this project will move beyond these to recover the intimate, sensual, embodied business of being and dwelling in these environments. What places inspired fear, attachment, remorse or hope? What characterised the micro-geographies of a resistance landscape?Further, we will explore how the practice of resistance itself -and its modes of using, engaging and re-shaping landscapes- constituted both the resistance fighter and the Partisans across a series of case-study sites. These phenomenological approaches to the co-production of landscape and subject have developed apace in geography and archaeology of late (transcending more traditional attempts to apprehend landscapes). The engagement between the team's geographical and archaeological sensibilities allows us to explore the synergies of these approaches through a project of interest to many disciplines, and via a topic that is pivotal to modern Italian identity. The case studies will be drawn from the Veneto, North-East Italy: a key partisan region that is central to traditional Resistance histories. These 'Official' accounts are enshrined in print and local museums, and in folk traditions of tales, poems and songs. We will examine these sources for and their evidence of furtive partisan lives amidst forests and mountains. However, we will then consider the partisans' production of these landscapes through in-depth interviews and, age permitting, site visits.Finally, we will consider the afterlives of these sites and their histories. Remembering the resistance and visiting its iconic sites remains important for many in the Veneto, not least children who visit partisan sites on school fieldtrips. How are these places used to remember the resistance? How might embodied histories enliven these sites? We will also interview teachers and local historical advisors about how these sites are used in memory work, and how they translate the experiences of these sites to wider histories of resistance landscapes.In sum, we promise a fuller picture of Resistance lives and landscapes before the last veterans slip away.