Franco Baldasso is the recipient of the 2019 Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies from the American Academy in Rome. He is the Director of the Italian Program at Bard College, NY, where he is an Assistant Professor of Italian Studies. In his research, he examines the complex relations between Fascism and Modernism, the legacy of political violence in Italy, and the idea of the Mediterranean in modern and contemporary aesthetics. He has authored two books in Italian: Il cerchio di gesso. Primo Levi narratore e testimone (Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon, 2007), as well as Curzio Malaparte, la letteratura crudele. Kaputt, La pelle e la caduta della civiltà europea (Rome: Carocci, 2019). He also co-edited an issue of Nemla-Italian Studies titled “Italy in WWII and the Transition to Democracy: Memory, Fiction, Histories.” He contributes to publicbooks.org, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the journal Allegoria, as well as the Archivio della Memoria of the Centro Studi sulla Grande Guerra “P. Pieri” in Vittorio Veneto, Italy. Baldasso is currently revising the manuscript for a book titled: “Against Redemption: Literary Dissent during the Transition from Fascism to Democracy in Italy.”
