Franco Baldasso

2017 CIVITELLA FELLOW

Franco Baldasso is the recipient of the 2019 Rome Price in Modern Italian Studies from the American Academy in Rome. He is Director of the Italian Program at Bard College, NY, where he is 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 finally the idea of the Mediterranean in modern and contemporary aesthetics. He authored two books in Italian: one on Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, Il cerchio di gesso. Primo Levi narratore e testimone (Bologna, 2007), as well as Cristo senza redenzione. Curzio Malaparte e la modernità (1940-1951) (Roma, Carocci 2019, forthcoming). 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, and of the Archivio della Memoria of the Centro Studi sulla Grande Guerra “P. Pieri” in Vittorio Veneto, Italy. Franco is currently revising a book manuscript titled: “Against Redemption: Literary Dissent during the Transition from Fascism to Democracy in Italy.”

Franco also participated in the Alberto Savinio season, leading two programs exploring Savinio’s literature and contributing a paper during the Savinio Study Days.