Back to Previous Page

Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Teaching and Research Interests

Research Interests:

My research is centered on the relations between culture and politics in twentieth century Europe with a particular focus onItaly. My first book, Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-45 (Berkeley, 2001, 2004) examines the relationship of Italian intellectuals with the regime and the development of fascist models of modernity that answered interwar anxieties about the erosion of social and national identities.  I have also written many book chapters and articles about Italian film in the fascist and postwar periods. Another research interest is Italian colonialism, and I have edited a book with Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism (New York, 2005) that brings together the best international scholarship on the subject. I am committed to interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Italian politics and culture and my work on this subject has received support from the Getty Institute for Research in the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Mellon Foundation, and from the American Philosophical Society.

My second book, Italian Prisoners of War and the Transition from Dictatorship, looks at the experiences and memories of Italian military captives of the Nazis during World War Two and after their return from the Lagers. Through them, I probe issues of masculinity in the transition from fascism, the traumatic effects of combat and confinement, and Italians’ short and long-term memories about the Nazi alliance, the defeat of fascism, and Italy’s role in the last world war.  The book will be published by Princeton University Press and I have received fellowships for this project from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 

An interdisciplinary approach informs all of my teaching. I expose students to different historical and historiographical traditions and to the kind of research that has emerged from the blurring of the boundaries between history, anthropology, area studies (including Italian Studies), film and literary theory, and critical thought. My undergraduate courses include Twentieth-Century Europe,Europe since 1945, Modern Italy, Italian Fascism, Italian Colonialism, Comparative Dictatorships, and Italian Films, Italian Histories. Graduate courses include Italian Fascism,Italy in World War Two, Cold War Europe, Neo-realism, Italian Colonialism, and Language and Politics.

Back to Top