- Charles Leavitt
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Notre Dame
343 O'Shaughnessy Hall
Notre Dame, IN, USA 46556-5639 - 1-574-631-6886
Charles Leavitt
University of Notre Dame, Romance Languages and Literatures, Faculty Member
- University of Reading, Modern Languages and European Studies, Faculty Memberadd
- Postwar Italian Culture, Modern Italian Literature, Italian neorealist cinema, Italian Literature, Italian (European History), 20th Century Italian Literature, and 36 moreElio Vittorini, Elsa Morante, Cesare Pavese, Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Neo-realist film, Italian Antifascist Culture, Italian Cultural Studies, Modern Italian History, Corrado Alvaro, Romano Bilenchi, Italian Cinema, Alberto Moravia, Vasco Pratolini, Italian Film, Italian cinema (Film Studies), Italo Calvino, Italian Resistance Literature, Benedetto Croce, Emilio Cecchi, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Italianistica, Alfonso Gatto, Impegno, Italian intellectuals, Francesco Jovine, Ignazio Silone, Carlo Lizzani, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini, Renato Serra, Italian Neorealism, (Italian) Colonialism and Postcolonialism, Ennio Flaiano, and Allied occupation of Italyedit
- I am Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of... moreI am Assistant Professor of Italian at the University of Notre Dame and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Reading (UK), where I served for six years as Lecturer in Italian Studies. My research interests include modern and contemporary Italian literature and cinema, post-war Italian history, and the intersections between the Italian and African-American experience. I am currently completing a monograph on Italian neorealism. A fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, I have received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Reading and a Kaneb Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Notre Dame.edit
Among the most iconic images in world cinema, the final shot of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) (1945) has inspired an effusion of critical commentary but little critical consensus, instead giving rise to opposing... more
Among the most iconic images in world cinema, the final shot of Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (Rome, Open City) (1945) has inspired an effusion of critical commentary but little critical consensus, instead giving rise to opposing interpretations. I argue that the shot, in which the camera pans to follow a band of children as they march on a hillside overlooking the city of Rome, was shaped by a post-war dispute over the fate of Italian children after Fascism. Re-educating and re-claiming these children was felt to be one of the most pressing tasks facing Italy after the war, and I argue that it was this task that Rossellini and his collaborators sought to represent and even to undertake in their film. Thanks to their efforts, the final shot of Rome, Open City facilitated both a compelling confrontation with Italy’s Fascist past and a convincing – if far from straightforward – vision of its post-war future.
Research Interests: Film Studies, Film Analysis, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Italian Cinema, Film History, and 15 moreChildren and War, Italian cinema (Film Studies), Italian neorealist cinema, Italian Resistance to Fascism & its interpretation, Italian fascism, Postwar reconstruction, Postwar Italy, Roberto Rossellini, Resistenza italiana, Storia Del Cinema Italiano, Antifascism, Antifascismo, Postwar Europe, Federico Fellini, and Italian Neorealism
This article reconsiders the post-war reaction against Benedetto Croce, focusing on the critical reappraisal of Crocean historicism that followed the defeat of Italian Fascism. Motivated by a growing sense of historical uncertainty,... more
This article reconsiders the post-war reaction against Benedetto Croce, focusing on the critical reappraisal of Crocean historicism that followed the defeat of Italian Fascism. Motivated by a growing sense of historical uncertainty, Italians increasingly dissented from Croce, but they remained more wedded to Crocean thought – and in particular to Crocean historicism – than has often been argued. Like their predecessors in previous generations, post-war Italian intellectuals positioned themselves dialogically, in constant conversation with Croce’s hegemonic philosophy. The antecedents of their reaction against Crocean historicism can therefore be identified in earlier responses to Croce’s thought, and in this essay I examine two such responses: those of Antonio Gramsci and Renato Serra. I also examine the contemporary resonances of the (partial) anti-Crocean turn, exemplified by a consequential 1992 debate over Holocaust historiography pitting Carlo Ginzburg against Hayden White. Comparing these various assaults on the ‘Crocean citadel of historicist idealism’, I argue that the challenge to Croce has been posed most cogently by those whose dissent from his dominant intellectual paradigm was inspired not by outright opposition but rather by doubt and scepticism. In the essay’s conclusion, I explore the significance of such scepticism, exemplified by the post-war critique of Crocean historicism, for the ongoing debates over ‘probing the limits of representation’.
Research Interests: Idealism, Historicism, Fascism, Second World War, Holocaust Studies, and 37 moreMicrohistory, Antonio Gramsci, Second World War (History), Leo Tolstoy, Hayden White, Norberto Bobbio, Holocaust, Giovanni Papini, Italian fascism, Positivismo, Benedetto Croce, Positivism, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Postwar Italian Culture, Italo-Turkish war (1911-12), Idealismo, Postwar Italy, Franco Fortini, Carlo Ginzburg, Giacomo Debenedetti, Gianfranco Contini, Renato Serra, Fabrizio Onofri, Shoah in Italy, Storicismo, Postwar Europe, Gaetano Salvemini, Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Luigi Russo, Saul Friedländer, Guerra Di Libia 1911 2011, Sapegno Natalino, Seconda Guerra Mondiale, Massimo Mila, Italian Postwar History, Cesare Luporini, and Gabriele Pepe
Scholarship has for decades emphasized the significant continuities in Italian culture and society after Fascism, calling into question the rhetoric of post-war renewal. This article proposes a reassessment of that rhetoric through the... more
Scholarship has for decades emphasized the significant continuities in Italian culture and society after Fascism, calling into question the rhetoric of post-war renewal. This article proposes a reassessment of that rhetoric through the analysis of five key metaphors with which Italian intellectuals represented national recovery after 1945: parenthesis, disease, flood, childhood and discovery. While the current critical consensus would lead us to expect a cultural conversation characterized by repression and evasion, an analysis of these five post-war metaphors instead reveals both a penetrating reassessment of Italian culture after Fascism and an earnest adherence to the cause of national revitalization. Foregrounding the interrelation of Italy’s prospects for change and its continuities with Fascism, these metaphors suggest that post-war Italian intellectuals conceived of their country’s hopes for renewal, as well as its connections to the recent past, in terms that transcend the binary division favoured in many historical accounts.
Research Interests: Italian (European History), Modern Italian History, Italian Studies, Italian Cultural Studies, Italian Literature, and 19 moreMetaphor, 20th Century Italian Literature, Cesare Pavese, Eugenio Montale, George Lakoff, Italian Political Thought, Italian fascism, Italian Antifascist Culture, Benedetto Croce, Umberto Saba, Postwar Italian Culture, Modern Italy, Carlo Levi, Postwar Italy, Roberto Rossellini, Elio Vittorini, Cesare Zavattini, Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture, and 20th Century Italian Cultural History
In this essay, I argue that the post-war critical re-interpretation of Boccaccio’s oeuvre was central to the theory and practice of Italian Neorealism. What is more, I maintain that Neorealism significantly influenced Boccaccio studies,... more
In this essay, I argue that the post-war critical re-interpretation of Boccaccio’s oeuvre was central to the theory and practice of Italian Neorealism. What is more, I maintain that Neorealism significantly influenced Boccaccio studies, shaping critical approaches to Boccaccio for decades after 1945. Reading scholarly and critical studies of Boccaccio alongside the Neorealist debates, I assert that throughout the second half of the twentieth century Boccaccio’s poetics were frequently discussed in a language borrowed from Neorealism, with his corpus evaluated by means of the standards endorsed by Neorealist critics. Just as Boccaccio’s poetics exerted an influence on the proponents of Neorealism, therefore, so too did Neorealism exert a lasting influence on Boccaccio scholarship, whose notions of Boccaccio’s ‘medieval realism’ should be seen as an outgrowth of the Neorealist poetics advocated by post-war Italian artists and intellectuals.
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In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. Drawing on the work of... more
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Italian intellectuals participated in Italy’s reconstruction with an ideological commitment inspired by the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. Drawing on the work of many of the leading figures in postwar Italian culture, including Italo Calvino, Giorgio Caproni, Cesare Pavese, and Elio Vittorini, this essay argues that Italian intellectual impegno—defined as the effort to remake Italian culture and to guide Italian social reform—was united with a significant investment in the African-American cause. The author terms this tendency impegno nero and traces its development in the critical reception of African-American writers including W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. Postwar impegno nero is then contrasted with the treatment of African-American themes under Fascism, when commentators had likewise condemned American racism, but had paradoxically linked their laments for the plight of African Americans with defenses of the racial policies of the Fascist regime. Indeed, Fascist colonialism and anti-Semitism were both justified through references to what Fascist intellectuals believed to be America’s greater injustices. After 1945, in contrast, Italian intellectuals advocated an international, interdependent campaign for justice, symbolizing national reforms by projecting them onto an emblematic America. In this way, impegno nero revived and revised the celebrated "myth of America" that had developed in Italy between the world wars. Advancing a new, postwar myth, Italian intellectuals adopted the African-American struggle in order to reinforce their own efforts in the ongoing struggle for justice in Italy.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, World Literatures, Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, Italian (European History), and 82 moreModern Italian History, Italian Studies, Translation and Ideology, Transnationalism, Postcolonial Studies, Race and Racism, Fascism, African American Literature, Italian Cultural Studies, Italian Literature, Italian Politics, Translation History, Italy (History), Racism, African American Culture, Second World War, Black Europe, African American History, Postcolonial Theory, African-American Literature, Civil Rights Movement, African American Studies, World Literature, Postcolonial Literature, World War II, 20th Century Italian Literature, Translation and literature, Translation and Interpretation, Italo Calvino, African-American History, Translation, Cesare Pavese, 20th Century African American Literature, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Anti-Racism, Anti-Fascism, Italian American Studies, Italy, Italian language and Literature, Literary translation, Italian Resistance to Fascism & its interpretation, Italian colonialism, Blackness, Cultural policy under Fascism, Italian fascism, Italian, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Italo Calvino as translator, History of Fascism, African-American Political Thought, Translation & Italian, Italian Litterature, Modern Italian Literature, Letteratura, Black Studies (in Europe), Emilio Cecchi, African-American Studies, African American Cultures, Razzismo, Letterature comparate, Elio Vittorini, Italiano, Letteratura italiana, Translating Italian to English, (Italian) Colonialism and Postcolonialism, W.E.B. Du Bois, Giorgio Caproni, Fascismo, Italian intellectuals, African American and African Studies/History, Impegno, Weltliteratur, Italian Colonialism, Italian Resistance Literature, W.E.B. DuBois, African American Literature and History, World and Comparative Literature, Black European Studies, and African-American Heritage and Culture
Research Interests: Film Studies, European Cinema, Italian Studies, Film Analysis, Italian Cinema, and 18 moreFilm History, Cinema, Italian cinema (Film Studies), Italian neorealist cinema, Film and Media Studies, Transnational Cinema, Cinema Studies, Italian, Stardom and Celebrity, Post-war Italian cinema, Neorealism, Roberto Rossellini, Storia Del Cinema Italiano, Italianistica, Italian Neorealism, Cinema Italiano, Ingrid Bergman, and Modern Italian Studies
The author contends that many of the conventions of Italian film studies derive from the conflicts and the critical vocabulary that shaped the Italian reception of neorealism in the first decade after the Second World War. Those... more
The author contends that many of the conventions of Italian film studies derive from the conflicts and the critical vocabulary that shaped the Italian reception of neorealism in the first decade after the Second World War. Those conflicts, and that critical vocabulary, which lie at the foundation of what has been called the ‘institution of neorealism,’ established an irreconcilable binary: Cronaca and Narrativa. For the neorealists and their critics, Cronaca stood for the effort to record data faithfully, while Narrativa represented the effort to employ the shaping force of human invention in the representation of information. This essay’s first section analyzes the earliest reviews of Rossellini’s Roma città aperta alongside the contemporaneous literary debates over Cronaca and Narrativa. The second section reconsiders the reception of Pratolini’s Metello and Visconti’s Senso, which similarly centered upon the conflict between Cronaca and Narrativa. The third section proposes that the concepts which have often been employed to unify neorealism are destabilized by the Cronaca/Narrativa binary. In search of a solution to neorealism’s conceptual instability, this essay proposes more critical and purposeful appropriations of the movement’s problematic genealogy.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Philosophy, Film Theory and Practice, Film Studies, Italian Studies, and 17 moreItalian Cultural Studies, Italian Cinema, Film History, 20th Century Italian Literature, Film Aesthetics, Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, Italian neorealist cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Neorealism, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Elio Vittorini, Film Style, Film Narrative, History of Film Theory and Criticism, and Italian Resistance Literature
Research Interests: World Literatures, Translation Studies, Globalization, Italian Studies, Italian Cultural Studies, and 26 moreItalian Literature, Literary Theory, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, World Literature, Italian philology, 20th Century Italian Literature, Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, Italian literature (Literature), Anti-Fascism, Italian language and Literature, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian fascism, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Italian Litterature, Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature, Poetry, Comparative Literature, Neorealism, Modern Italian Literature, Resistenza italiana, Elio Vittorini, Letteratura italiana, Filologia Italiana, Letteratura della Resistenza, .Literature and languages, Weltliteratur, and Italian Resistance Literature
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Research Interests: Italian Studies, Italian Literature, 20th Century Italian Literature, Daniel Defoe, Henry James, and 15 moreItalian language and Literature, Italian Resistance to Fascism & its interpretation, Italian fascism, Letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Italian Litterature, Lingua E Letteratura Italiana, Letteratura italiana, Alberto Moravia, Fascismo, Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture, Letteratura Italiana Del Novecento, Letteratura italiana contemporanea, History of Italian Fascism and Fascisms, Immagini Del Fascismo In Italia, and Guy De Maupassant
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This special issue of the Italianist collects ten essays that consider the multiple manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy from the Trecento to the present day. Notions of the ‘real Italy’ (and of ‘Italian realism’) remain... more
This special issue of the Italianist collects ten essays that consider the multiple manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy from the Trecento to the present day. Notions of the ‘real Italy’ (and of ‘Italian realism’) remain fundamental for scholars working in various disciplines, while the exploration of the ideal Italies constructed throughout history continues to inspire innovative work on virtually every period of Italian culture. Rather than accepting the many assertions of realism and the many projections of idealism that have characterized Italian culture from its beginnings, this volume aims for a critical and multi-focal assessment of manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy.
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This special issue of the Italianist collects ten essays that consider the multiple manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy from the Trecento to the present day. Notions of the ‘real Italy’ (and of ‘Italian realism’) remain... more
This special issue of the Italianist collects ten essays that consider the multiple manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy from the Trecento to the present day. Notions of the ‘real Italy’ (and of ‘Italian realism’) remain fundamental for scholars working in various disciplines, while the exploration of the ideal Italies constructed throughout history continues to inspire innovative work on virtually every period of Italian culture. Rather than accepting the many assertions of realism and the many projections of idealism that have characterized Italian culture from its beginnings, this volume aims for a critical and multi-focal assessment of manifestations of realism and idealism in Italy.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Comparative Politics, Political Philosophy, Theatre Studies, Film Studies, and 33 moreDante Studies, Dialectology, Italian Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, Narrative, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Idealism, Literature and cinema, Poetry, Fascism, Nationalism, Petrarch, Italian Literature, Literary Theory, Giambattista Vico, Realism (Political Science), National Identity, Feminism, Italian Cinema, Second World War, Cinema, Narrative Theory, Novel, Risorgimento, Machiavelli, Realism, Benedetto Croce, Machiavellianism, Neorealism, Ennio Flaiano, Giovanni Verga, and Paolo Sorrentino
The Italianist 37.2 (2017): 133-34.
