Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago
60 Years: Fascism Seminar Revisited
mosseprogram.wisc.edu/rome
9 January 2025
Session I: Fascism and Totalitarianism
Alessandra Tarquini, "Fascism and Totalitarianism"
Moderated by Mark Roseman
Comments by Olivier Forlin, Anson Rabinbach
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
Mark Roseman is a historian of modern Europe, with particular interests in the History of the Holocaust and modern German history. His publications have covered a wide range of topics in German, European, and Jewish history, including life-reform and protest in 1920s and 1930s Germany, Holocaust survival and memory, Nazi policy and perpetrators, the social impact of total war, post-1945 German and European reconstruction, generation conflict and youth rebellion, and Jewish and other minorities in modern German history. He also has an interest in the comparative history of genocide. Roseman is currently the general editor of the four-volume Cambridge History of the Holocaust and is working on a new synthesis of scholarship about Nazi perpetrators.
Alessandra Tarquini is professor of contemporary history at Sapienza University of Rome. She is the author of several essays and books on the Fascist regime, intellectual history, and antisemitism, including: Storia della cultura fascista (2016); Italian Intellectuals and International Politics (eds. with Andrea Guiso, 2019); Sinistra italiana e gli ebrei. Socialismo, sionismo e antisemitismo dal 1892 al 1992 (2019); and A History of Italian Fascist Culture (2022). She is the scientific coordinator of the permanent seminar on contemporary history at the department of social and economic sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2021 she edited The European Left and the Jewish Question: between Zionism and Antisemitism.
Anson Rabinbach was Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University and was a founding editor of New German Critique. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. He has been a fellow at the American Academy, Berlin (2005) a Fulbright, Senior Scholar at Smolny College, St. Petersburg (2004), a fellow at the Institute for Twentieth Century History in Jena (2009), and a fellow at the Simon-Dubnow Institut (Leipzig, 2014) at the IFK in Vienna (2013). His research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of modern Europe. Among his books were: The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War 1927-1934 (1981), The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (1991), In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (1996). He has published a documentary history of Nazi Germany, The Third Reich Sourcebook, co-edited with Sander Gilman (2013). His most recent book was Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History (2020).
Olivier Forlin is an associate professor of history, doctor in contemporary history, and lecturer at the Pierre Mendès France Grenoble-II University. He is a member of the Center for Research in the History of Italy and the Alpine Countries (CRHIPA). His research focuses on the historiography of fascism, the history of intellectuals and Franco-Italian relations in the 20th century. He is the author of Le fascism Historiographie et enjeux mémoriels (2013).
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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 I: Fascism and Totalitarianism
Alessandra Tarquini, "Fascism and Totalitarianism"
Moderated by Mark Roseman
Comments by Olivier Forlin, Anson Rabinbach
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
Mark Roseman is a historian of modern Europe, with particular interests in the History of the Holocaust and modern German history. His publications have covered a wide range of topics in German, European, and Jewish history, including life-reform and protest in 1920s and 1930s Germany, Holocaust survival and memory, Nazi policy and perpetrators, the social impact of total war, post-1945 German and European reconstruction, generation conflict and youth rebellion, and Jewish and other minorities in modern German history. He also has an interest in the comparative history of genocide. Roseman is currently the general editor of the four-volume Cambridge History of the Holocaust and is working on a new synthesis of scholarship about Nazi perpetrators.
Alessandra Tarquini is professor of contemporary history at Sapienza University of Rome. She is the author of several essays and books on the Fascist regime, intellectual history, and antisemitism, including: Storia della cultura fascista (2016); Italian Intellectuals and International Politics (eds. with Andrea Guiso, 2019); Sinistra italiana e gli ebrei. Socialismo, sionismo e antisemitismo dal 1892 al 1992 (2019); and A History of Italian Fascist Culture (2022). She is the scientific coordinator of the permanent seminar on contemporary history at the department of social and economic sciences at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2021 she edited The European Left and the Jewish Question: between Zionism and Antisemitism.
Anson Rabinbach was Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University and was a founding editor of New German Critique. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. He has been a fellow at the American Academy, Berlin (2005) a Fulbright, Senior Scholar at Smolny College, St. Petersburg (2004), a fellow at the Institute for Twentieth Century History in Jena (2009), and a fellow at the Simon-Dubnow Institut (Leipzig, 2014) at the IFK in Vienna (2013). His research focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of modern Europe. Among his books were: The Crisis of Austrian Socialism: From Red Vienna to Civil War 1927-1934 (1981), The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (1991), In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (1996). He has published a documentary history of Nazi Germany, The Third Reich Sourcebook, co-edited with Sander Gilman (2013). His most recent book was Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History (2020).
Olivier Forlin is an associate professor of history, doctor in contemporary history, and lecturer at the Pierre Mendès France Grenoble-II University. He is a member of the Center for Research in the History of Italy and the Alpine Countries (CRHIPA). His research focuses on the historiography of fascism, the history of intellectuals and Franco-Italian relations in the 20th century. He is the author of Le fascism Historiographie et enjeux mémoriels (2013).
+
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.
