Overview
Enzo Traverso is a historian of modern and contemporary Europe. His research focuses on the intellectual history and the political ideas of the twentieth century. War, fascism, genocide, revolution, and collective memory are the landmarks of his numerous books. He was born in Italy, studied history at the University of Genoa and received his PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 1989. Before coming to Cornell in 2013, he taught political science for twenty years in France. He has been a visiting professor in several European and Latin American universities. His authored books are translated into more than fifteen languages, and he has contributed to many collected works and. Beyond his books, Traverso’s articles and reviews have been published in History & Theory, Constellations, Historical Materialism, South Atlantic Quarterly, October, Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions, Revue française de science politique, Raisons politiques, Storia e storiografia, Contemporanea, Pasajes, Acta Poetica. He has received several awards for his historical essays, including the Premio Pozzale, Empoli, Florence (2014); the Premio Lo Straniero/Gli Asini, Lecce (2018); and the Premio Napoli (2022). His political commentaries have appeared in journals and magazines such as Jacobin, Salvage, La Quinzaine littéraire, Contretemps, Lignes, L’Espill, Nueva Sociedad, and the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto.
Research Focus
- Intellectual History
- Historiography
- Jewish History
- Memory Studies
- Critical Theory
- Marxism
RECENT COURSES
- The European Civil War 1914-1945
- Left-Wing Melancholia
- The Holocaust in Postwar Culture (1945-1961)
- The Holocaust and History Writing
- Vogliamo Tutto! The Italian 1970s
- French Memories
- Intellectuals: A French History
- Totalitarianism: Between History and Theory
- Revolution: An Intellectual History
- The Invention of Italy
Publications
· Singular Pasts: The “I” in Historiography (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022)
· Revolution: An Intellectual History (London-New York: Verso, 2021)
· The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018; Chicago: Haymarket, 2019)
· The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right (London-New York: Verso, 2019)
· Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)
· The European Civil War 1914-1945 (London-New York: Verso, 2016)
· The End of Jewish Modernity (London: Pluto Books, 2016)
· The Origins of Nazi Violence (New York: The New Press, 2003)
· The Jews and Germany: From the “Judeo-German Symbiosis” to the Memory of Auschwitz (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 1995)
In the news
- Traverso honored by Autonomous University of Barcelona
- When there’s an “I” in history
- Traverso wins Italian literature award for nonfiction
HIST Courses - Fall 2024
- HIST 4655 : Revolution: An Intellectual History
- HIST 6655 : Revolution: An Intellectual History
- HIST 8004 : Supervised Reading