The editors of a new volume in the MLA’s Options for Teaching series seek essays that describe innovative approaches to teaching about fascist cultures and the resistance to fascism.
Teaching Cultures of Fascism and Resistance
The continuities and dislocations of fascism present a challenge for teaching the literature and culture produced by and in fascist regimes. Because fascist movements are strongly nationalistic, they are often studied within restrictive national and historical paradigms. This volume will explore how educators compare “then” and “there” with “here” and “now.” How do we frame histories of fascist cinemas, exile literature, or art under occupation in a way that honors their specific past while recognizing their present resonances? While there has been a trend toward studying the common elements of varying fascist regimes through comparative frameworks, scholarship on fascism has remained largely centered in the fields of history and political science. The study of fascism, however, requires cross-cultural comparison across the humanities. The anthology thus aims to be relevant to scholars of fascism across geographical contexts and to provide a resource for instructors who teach modern and contemporary literature, film, and cultural studies.
Prompted by current concerns, this volume aims to share new strategies for thinking about, teaching, and critiquing fascism in the light of democratic backsliding and rising authoritarianism around the globe. At the same time, we seek to assemble a collection of essays that will prove useful independently of any specific political conjuncture.
Aligned with the goals of the Options for Teaching series, this collection seeks essays that focus on pedagogy. We seek contributions that identify new approaches to the analysis of literary texts, filmic representations, art, media, and propaganda, enabling students to recognize and critique recurring patterns of fascist mythmaking across geographical and historical contexts. Teaching students to decode the rhetoric of authority is a fundamentally anti-fascist act. In addition, this volume recognizes the role of organized resistance movements in combating fascist regimes and devotes attention to studying the pressures that have been successfully exerted against fascism and authoritarianism.
Contributors should explore how to help students think about difficult materials and how to frame course units, scaffold student learning, and navigate the ethical dimensions of teaching the cultures of fascism, as well as provide expert framing of these topics for specialists and nonspecialists, adaptable to a range of teaching environments. Essays should introduce educators to interesting and effective teaching methods informed by the latest research on the historical, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions of fascism and resistance. The main focus will be on college-level courses in departments of languages, literatures, culture, and media. Contributions are welcome from a variety of career stages, identities, and perspectives.
Essays might range from synoptic overviews to new modes of pursuing primary source analyses and of teaching cultural histories, all the way to digital humanities methods or AI-proof assignments and assessments. The editors share an investment in connecting the teaching of fascism and resistance to the public humanities and would also welcome proposals that discuss pedagogical settings beyond the walls of the classroom.
The planned scope of the collection includes roughly twenty contributions, with the word limit for final individual essays set at 5,000 words. In addition to the parameters above, some (not exhaustive) potential topics for essays might include
the f-word: definitions
comparative fascist cultures
cultures of resistance
gender and sexuality
race and ethnicity
propaganda
modernism/modernity
technology
film, photography, television
radio, music, and sound studies
literature and language
art and visual culture
discourse
religion
education
militarism, war, and violence
engaging the archive
protest movements
affect
comparison, translation, and adaptation
Abstract proposals (300–500 words) and CVs should be emailed by 1 August 2026 to the editors, Jacqueline Sheean, Lisa DiGiovanni, and Johannes von Moltke, at MLAvolume@umich.edu. Following peer review of the table of contents, completed essays will be due by the end of July 2027. Any use of AI by contributors to MLA publications must be disclosed. Please consult the MLA policy on AI before submitting a proposal.