PHD THESIS

PhD Title : Problematic Narratives: The Legacy of Muslim Sicily in the Italian Socio-political Landscape

PhD Completion: Expected 2027

PhD Supervisor & Co-Supervisor:  Davide Rodogno

Thesis Short Description: My PhD project examines how references to the Muslim past of Sicily have been employed across Italian history to reinforce negative representations of the island. The key moments analysed – before and after Unification, the era of racial concerns, and Italy’s transition into an immigration country - represent points in Italian history when ideas about the South, race, religion, and national identity were being debated and reshaped. 

The research aims (a) to investigate how Muslim Sicily has been mobilised as a symbolic resource to reinforce claims of Sicily’s supposed ‘civilisational’ backwardness and inferiority vis-à-vis the North, based on a negatively connotated perception of its Muslim past as problematic - religiously, racially, and culturally.

It also (b) examines how internal and external ‘othering’ processes coexisted: how earlier depictions aligned Sicilians with colonial subjects and how contemporary anti-immigrant and Islamophobic narratives overlap with anti-Sicilian prejudice, grounded in a shared ‘non-European’, Muslim past.

In doing so, the project engages with broader discussions about national identity, religion, ethnicity, and the constructed geographies of the ‘West’ and the ‘Orient’.  Methodologically, the study analyses discourses in political and intellectual milieux, transforming fragmentary references into a cohesive, centuries-long reconstruction of the references to Muslim Sicily.

Research Interests
 

• migration, inclusion and racial and cultural discrimination in Europe
• Italian history, politics and society, with a focus on Southern Italy, and anti-Southern sentiments
• the politics of memory and historical narrative in political discourses
• identity, religion, national belonging and alterity
• Italian and Spanish politics and society
   

PROFILE

Giovanna Cuillo is a PhD researcher in International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. She completed an MPhil in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge with distinction in 2023. Her dissertation, titled: ‘The Reconquista in the Discourse of Vox’ explored the memory of Al-Andalus in contemporary Spanish politics. She achieved distinction in her graduation from King’s College London in 2022, with a dissertation titled ‘The Permeability of Sexual Relations Boundaries in Medieval Iberia’.
 

Fellowships, Grant and Awards
 

• The Martin Hall Prize in Eighteenth-Century French Studies, awarded by King's College London in 2022. Awarded to the student who achieves the highest mark for any piece of work related to eighteenth-century French literature.
• Henry Neville Gladstone Exhibition Prize, awarded by King's College London in 2019. Awarded to the student achieving the highest overall mark in the first year.