Per una storia incrociata tra l’Italia e la Libia: Il percorso dell’etnologa e arabista Ester Panetta (1894-1983)

Abstract

This paper is a contribution to the entangled history between Italy and Libya through the trajectory life of Ester Panetta (1894-1983), a leading scholar who devoted her life to develop the knowledge of the language, history and cultures of Libya. After her Arabic and colonial studies at the Oriental Institutes in Naples and in Paris, she lived in Libya until the outbreak of the Second World War when she definitively came back to Italy. Her experience as single woman in colonial lands is not isolated at all, as the stories of single women crossing the territory of the Empire as travellers, teachers and missionaries testify.

The Birth and Development of Anthropology in Arab Countries: A still Controversial and Marginalised Knowledge?

“…Italian anthropological studies on Libya are rare because the populations that inhabited the country did not correspond to the category of "primitive peoples" in which the discipline was interested in the first decades of the 20th century (Grottanelli et al, 1977). However, some studies dedicated to the popular and linguistic traditions and to the history of the Berber populations were published (Bruzzi, 2020;Cresti, 2016;Dore, 1980). Some expeditions were organised to collect objects and artefacts from Libyan populations to enrich the collections of museums in Italy and Libya.…”