I am a social and cultural historian of 19th and 20th centuries. My approach is transdisciplinary drawing on such subdisciplines as political history, the history of mentalities, oral history, gender history, history of ideas, and micro-history. My fields of expertise are: history of modern Western Europe; the history of Italy and of its Jewry; memory studies and Shoah studies; the history of antisemitism and racism; the history of fascist and neo-fascist thought; the methodology and philosophy of history.
Within the field of socio-cultural history, I consider myself a scholar positioned at the crossroads of studies on ideology, phenomenology and hermeneutics, their convergence, and their dialectical relation to and influence on issues such as: complex system of secular and religious beliefs (popular and elites), power relations, public narratives and collective practices, social and political violence and justice, and question of time and space. My trajectories lead me to engage in investigations into history and myth, on the discourse of politics and religion, and on the reproduction of mythopoetic structures, at the core of which I place the question of the sacred as a cornerstone of understanding majority/minorities relations.
My methodology has developed along the lines established by the Italian school of historiography derived from Federico Chabod, Delio Cantimori and Carlo Ginzburg. It also draws insights from the work of the anthropologist, ethnographer and historian of religion Ernesto De Martino, and his work on the stratification of popular and official forms of religious practices. Other sources of inspiration along my path have been the Annales School, as well as Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and its relations to the epistemology of history. Another influence has been Emile Benveniste’s linguistics, particularly the distinction he draws between meaning and what he terms designation guided my understanding of philology and anthropology.
I am completing in those days a short manuscript (120 pp.+ bibliography) on Primo Levi entitled Primo Levi as Job in Search of his Roots. On Evil, Suffering and Survival after the Camps. It has been accepted for publications by the CPL Editions New York, and it will appear in spring-summer 2023.
I am working on another book composed of articles on the topic Julius Evola as a Totalitarian, Racist and Antisemitic. A Study on Etiology of Hate. Julius Evola (1898–1974) has been one of the most misunderstood and controversial authors of the twentieth century. Evola a political organicist and an antisemite, in encountering the work of René Guénon, embraced his concept of the Tradition and his critique of the modern world, believing that Tradition was an idea which should encompass the social as well as the spiritual world.
Two individual books which have grown out of the work of Julius Evola:
The first project is titled: “The Evolians: Super-Fascists, Neo-Fascists, Ethno-Nationalists. A Comparative Study in the Very Political Impact of the Meta-Political Alt-Right.” I explore and retrace the influence exercised by Julius Evola’s ideology after WWII and its formative impact on the European and international radical right in its Conservative Revolutionary, neo-fascist, and New Right manifestations. The second project is titled “Amnesty and Amnesia. Palmiro Togliatti and the Communist Politics of Oblivion, 1946-1956”. Starting from the amnesty of Togliatti, Minister of Justice in the first government of the Republic after the fall of fascism, the research aims to analyze the seductive binomial Amnesty, and Amnesia as if they were two synonyms, inspired by the work of Nicole Loraux on the Greek polis.
I am part of two new international research group projects. One is “The Global Papacy of Pius XII: Catholicism in a Divided World, 1945-1958” is supported by a Max Weber Foundation Five Years Grant in conjunction with the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom & the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Warschau, the École Francaise de Rome and Oxford University.
The first: “The Global Papacy of Pius XII: Catholicism in a Divided World, 1945-1958” is supported by a Max Weber Foundation Five Years Grant in conjunction with the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom & the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Warschau, the École Francaise de Rome and Oxford University. The second: International Research Training Group "Belongings: Jewish Material Culture in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond" (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Leipzig University, Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture - Simon Dubnow) Proposal-Stage / Antragsphase (DFG)
In addition, in 2017, I initiated three new publications of books and e-journal series, in which I serve as editor in chief: 1) The Vidal Sassoon Studies in Antisemitism, Racism and Prejudice, a peer-reviewed book series published by De Gruyter, which offers a high-level platform within academia for understanding the historical and contemporary contexts of antisemitism and racism. 2) Analysis of Current Trends in Antisemitism – Acta. A peer-reviewed, open access e-Journal for De Gruyter Publisher that allows for a prompt publication of contributions that analyze current phenomena of antisemitic and racist prejudices, occurrences, and mechanisms of broader discriminations against targeted social groups. (See the SICSA Website Publications Series). 3) The Gold Rimmed Glasses by Magnes University Press (since 2019). The series is named after the title of Giorgio Bassani’s 1958 novel Gli occhiali d’oro set in the North Italian city of Ferrara. It aims to introduce the Israeli public to carefully curated unpublished Hebrew translations of noteworthy Italian books from the 20th and 21st Century and to offer new, thought-provoking and original insights, shedding lights on literary, historical and cultural issues.