Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
60 Years: Fascism Seminar Revisited
mosseprogram.wisc.edu/rome
9 January 2025
Session II: Sixty Years Since Stanford: What’s New in Fascist Studies?
Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci
Aristotle Kallis
Brian J. Griffith
Moderated by Aliza Wong
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
American Academy in Rome
Sapienza Università di Roma
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism
Leo Baeck Institute
Aliza Wong is director of the American Academy in Rome and professor of History and Honors at Texas Tech University. She studied at Amherst College before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a specialist in modern Italian history with a concentration on southern question discourse, race, nationalism, and identity. Her book, Race and Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meriodionalism, Empire, and Diaspora was published in 2006.
Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris 8. A specialist in contemporary Italy, her research has focused on fascism, antisemitism, and various aspects of political violence. She is also involved in the fight against racism and antisemitism through the Association ALARMER, which she chairs, and RevueAlarmer, (https://revue.alarmer.org) the only French social science journal to cover all forms of racism. She is currently in charge of the Assises Nationales de lutte contre l’antisémitisme. She runs the Diplôme Universitaire de Formation à lutte contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme at Paris 8 University. Her publications include: Storia della Shoah in Italia: vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni (edited with Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Levis-Sullam, Enzo Traverso, 2010); Totalitarisme fasciste (2018); Democrazia insicura. Violenze, repressioni e Stato di diritto nella storia della Repubblica (1945-1995), (with P. Dogliani, 2017); L’Italie fasciste et la persécution des Juifs (2012), (L’Italia fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei, 2013).
Aristotle Kallis is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the School of Humanities, Keele University, UK. A graduate of the University of Athens, Greece, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1999. He has taught at the Universities of Lancaster (2003-2016), Bristol (2002-2003), and Edinburgh (2000-2002); he has also been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Padova, Stanford, and Şehir. His main research interests lie in the study of comparative/transnational/generic fascism; and architecture and urbanism in the interwar period, with particular focus on Italy and Rome but also within a comparative historical context. His recent book publications include The Third Rome: The Making of the Fascist Capital (2014); Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship (2014; co-edited with António Costa Pinto); and The Minimum Dwelling Revisited: CIAM’s Practical Utopia (2023). He is currently working on two monographs: “Fascism and Iconoclasm” and “Fascist Assemblages.”
Brian J Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at California State University, Fresno. He writes and teaches courses on the political and cultural history of Italian Fascism, food and beverage history, the history of (trans)nationalism, and Digital and Public History. Griffith’s current research focuses on the history of industrial-scale winemaking and national identity in Mussolini’s Italy (1922-1945), the history of transnational volunteerism during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the history of neo-fascism in Italy between the 1950s and the 2010s.
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In 1963, historian George L. Mosse led a landmark seminar at Stanford University, bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and countries to analyze the history of Nazism and Italian Fascism, just eighteen years after World War II. Their discussions defined the early parameters of European fascism amidst the post-war era’s intellectual landscape.
Sixty years later, the George L. Mosse Program in History organized a multi-day conference from January 9 to January 12, 2025, to reassess fascism in the context of contemporary European movements. More than thirty scholars from the US, Europe, the UK, and Israel gathered to critically examine and redefine “fascism” in light of present-day populist, anti-democratic, illiberal, and authoritarian ideologies.
The 2025 seminar revisited earlier scholarly interpretations of far-right movements, initiated by figures like Mosse a generation earlier, while also reinterpreting fascism through the lens of current geopolitical and cultural realities. This approach expanded upon and revised existing understandings of the concept, while fostering new insights and historiographical directions. Following the seminar, the Mosse Program plans to publish two companion volumes: Fascism Then, featuring annotated proceedings from the original 1963 seminar, and Fascism Now, based on the 2025 seminar.
60 Years: Fascism Seminar Revisited
mosseprogram.wisc.edu/rome
9 January 2025
Session II: Sixty Years Since Stanford: What’s New in Fascist Studies?
Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci
Aristotle Kallis
Brian J. Griffith
Moderated by Aliza Wong
Sponsored by:
George L. Mosse Program in History
American Academy in Rome
Sapienza Università di Roma
Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism
Leo Baeck Institute
Aliza Wong is director of the American Academy in Rome and professor of History and Honors at Texas Tech University. She studied at Amherst College before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a specialist in modern Italian history with a concentration on southern question discourse, race, nationalism, and identity. Her book, Race and Nation in Liberal Italy, 1861-1911: Meriodionalism, Empire, and Diaspora was published in 2006.
Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris 8. A specialist in contemporary Italy, her research has focused on fascism, antisemitism, and various aspects of political violence. She is also involved in the fight against racism and antisemitism through the Association ALARMER, which she chairs, and RevueAlarmer, (https://revue.alarmer.org) the only French social science journal to cover all forms of racism. She is currently in charge of the Assises Nationales de lutte contre l’antisémitisme. She runs the Diplôme Universitaire de Formation à lutte contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme at Paris 8 University. Her publications include: Storia della Shoah in Italia: vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni (edited with Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Levis-Sullam, Enzo Traverso, 2010); Totalitarisme fasciste (2018); Democrazia insicura. Violenze, repressioni e Stato di diritto nella storia della Repubblica (1945-1995), (with P. Dogliani, 2017); L’Italie fasciste et la persécution des Juifs (2012), (L’Italia fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei, 2013).
Aristotle Kallis is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the School of Humanities, Keele University, UK. A graduate of the University of Athens, Greece, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh in 1999. He has taught at the Universities of Lancaster (2003-2016), Bristol (2002-2003), and Edinburgh (2000-2002); he has also been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Padova, Stanford, and Şehir. His main research interests lie in the study of comparative/transnational/generic fascism; and architecture and urbanism in the interwar period, with particular focus on Italy and Rome but also within a comparative historical context. His recent book publications include The Third Rome: The Making of the Fascist Capital (2014); Rethinking Fascism and Dictatorship (2014; co-edited with António Costa Pinto); and The Minimum Dwelling Revisited: CIAM’s Practical Utopia (2023). He is currently working on two monographs: “Fascism and Iconoclasm” and “Fascist Assemblages.”
Brian J Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at California State University, Fresno. He writes and teaches courses on the political and cultural history of Italian Fascism, food and beverage history, the history of (trans)nationalism, and Digital and Public History. Griffith’s current research focuses on the history of industrial-scale winemaking and national identity in Mussolini’s Italy (1922-1945), the history of transnational volunteerism during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the history of neo-fascism in Italy between the 1950s and the 2010s.
+
In 1963, historian George L. Mosse led a landmark seminar at Stanford University, bringing together scholars from diverse disciplines and countries to analyze the history of Nazism and Italian Fascism, just eighteen years after World War II. Their discussions defined the early parameters of European fascism amidst the post-war era’s intellectual landscape.
Sixty years later, the George L. Mosse Program in History organized a multi-day conference from January 9 to January 12, 2025, to reassess fascism in the context of contemporary European movements. More than thirty scholars from the US, Europe, the UK, and Israel gathered to critically examine and redefine “fascism” in light of present-day populist, anti-democratic, illiberal, and authoritarian ideologies.
The 2025 seminar revisited earlier scholarly interpretations of far-right movements, initiated by figures like Mosse a generation earlier, while also reinterpreting fascism through the lens of current geopolitical and cultural realities. This approach expanded upon and revised existing understandings of the concept, while fostering new insights and historiographical directions. Following the seminar, the Mosse Program plans to publish two companion volumes: Fascism Then, featuring annotated proceedings from the original 1963 seminar, and Fascism Now, based on the 2025 seminar.
