Guri Schwarz
Guri Schwarz is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Genova.
He obtained a Phd summa cum laude in Historical Disciplines at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2002. He has been post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bologna, research fellow of the Luigi Einaudi Foundation (Turin), research fellow at the Department of History of the University of Pisa, research fellow at the Deutsches Historiches Institute in Rome, visiting lecturer at the Primo Levi Center in NY and Viterbi Visiting Professor at the Department of History of UCLA.
He is member of the Interdepartmental Center for Jewish Studies of the University of Pisa as well as member fo the scientific boards of the Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (Milan) and of the Fondazione Fossoli (Carpi).
He is editor in chief of the open-access ejournal 'Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History' (www.quest-cdecjournal.it).
His research interests concentrate memory politics in post WW II Europe, the transition from fascism to democracy, the history of the Jews in modern Europe.
He is author of the following books:
1. Ritrovare se stessi. Gli ebrei nell’Italia postfascista, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004;
2. Dalla Guerra alla Pace. Retoriche e Pratiche della smobilitazione nell’Italia del Novecento (with M. Mondini), Cierre-Istrevi, Verona 2007.
3. Tu mi devi seppellir. Riti funebri e culto nazionale alle origini della Repubblica, UTET, Torino 2010.
4. After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy, Vallentine Mitchelle, London - Portland (Or), 2012.
5. Attentato alla Sinagoga. Roma 9 ottobre 1982. Il conflitto israelo-palestinese e l'Italia (with A. Marzano), Viella, Roma 2013.
He edited the following volumes:
1. (with I. Pavan) Gli ebrei in Italia tra persecuzione fascista e reintegrazione postbellica, La Giuntina, Firenze 2001;
2. (with B. Armani) Ebrei borghesi. Identità famigliare, solidarietà e affari nell’età dell’emancipazione, «Quaderni Storici», n. 114, 2003.
3. critical edition of the diaries of the jewish partisan Emanuele Artom, Diari di un partigiano ebreo (gennaio 1940- febbraio 1944), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2008.
4. (with L. Brazzo), The Jews in Europe after the Shoah. Studies and Research Perspectives, "Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History", n. 1 (2010).
Address: Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia e Storia
Via Balbi 6, 16126, Genova (Italy)
He obtained a Phd summa cum laude in Historical Disciplines at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2002. He has been post-doctoral fellow at the University of Bologna, research fellow of the Luigi Einaudi Foundation (Turin), research fellow at the Department of History of the University of Pisa, research fellow at the Deutsches Historiches Institute in Rome, visiting lecturer at the Primo Levi Center in NY and Viterbi Visiting Professor at the Department of History of UCLA.
He is member of the Interdepartmental Center for Jewish Studies of the University of Pisa as well as member fo the scientific boards of the Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (Milan) and of the Fondazione Fossoli (Carpi).
He is editor in chief of the open-access ejournal 'Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History' (www.quest-cdecjournal.it).
His research interests concentrate memory politics in post WW II Europe, the transition from fascism to democracy, the history of the Jews in modern Europe.
He is author of the following books:
1. Ritrovare se stessi. Gli ebrei nell’Italia postfascista, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2004;
2. Dalla Guerra alla Pace. Retoriche e Pratiche della smobilitazione nell’Italia del Novecento (with M. Mondini), Cierre-Istrevi, Verona 2007.
3. Tu mi devi seppellir. Riti funebri e culto nazionale alle origini della Repubblica, UTET, Torino 2010.
4. After Mussolini: Jewish Life and Jewish Memories in Post-Fascist Italy, Vallentine Mitchelle, London - Portland (Or), 2012.
5. Attentato alla Sinagoga. Roma 9 ottobre 1982. Il conflitto israelo-palestinese e l'Italia (with A. Marzano), Viella, Roma 2013.
He edited the following volumes:
1. (with I. Pavan) Gli ebrei in Italia tra persecuzione fascista e reintegrazione postbellica, La Giuntina, Firenze 2001;
2. (with B. Armani) Ebrei borghesi. Identità famigliare, solidarietà e affari nell’età dell’emancipazione, «Quaderni Storici», n. 114, 2003.
3. critical edition of the diaries of the jewish partisan Emanuele Artom, Diari di un partigiano ebreo (gennaio 1940- febbraio 1944), Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2008.
4. (with L. Brazzo), The Jews in Europe after the Shoah. Studies and Research Perspectives, "Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History", n. 1 (2010).
Address: Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia e Storia
Via Balbi 6, 16126, Genova (Italy)
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Books by Guri Schwarz
The book offers an overall view of the reintegration process and of identity transformations.
It deals particularly with the memory of persecutions, which played a fundamental role in the processes of social and cultural reintegration of the Jewish minority. The analysis illustrates how Jewish memories offered legitimacy to the 'myth of the good italian'.
Papers by Guri Schwarz
The book offers an overall view of the reintegration process and of identity transformations.
It deals particularly with the memory of persecutions, which played a fundamental role in the processes of social and cultural reintegration of the Jewish minority. The analysis illustrates how Jewish memories offered legitimacy to the 'myth of the good italian'.
The intent of the essay is to illustrate how the renewed interest in various themes connected to Judaism (i.e. relationship between Judaism and early Christianity; the discovery/invention of Mitteleuropa; Holocaust memory) were in some way linked, and how especially they combined in generating a new climate: orienting the cultural industry to a different production and the public towards the maturation of new tastes. It is the author's belief that it is in that moment that we can track down the origins of the present cultural climate and in particular the role assigned today to the memory of the Holocaust in collective imagination. The article investigates the dynamics that mark this development within the specific Italian cultural context, without renouncing to consider how the phenomenon is to be read within a broader transnational framework.
Participants: M. Bresciani, G. Schwarz, F. Cassata, P. Ther, N. Urbinati, S. Bottoni, A. Testi
In the aftermath of the geopolitical and ideological transformations of 1989-1991, which are symbolically epitomized by the fall of the Berlin Wall, the future seemed to belong to liberal democracy, as part of a “Western model” self-proclaimed winner of the Cold War. Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, this conviction intertwined with the idea of “the end of history” on both sides of the Atlantic (with different meanings and implications) and found in the project of European integration one of its most dynamic driving forces.
The financial and economic crisis of 2007-2008 which transferred from the US to Europe, destabilized the European Union, and brought to the ascent of new political, social and cultural phenomena has demonstrated that the opposite is true. As a matter of fact, the very complexity of the crisis, or better the plurality of global crises developing at different regional levels, requires a huge and deep essay in understanding. In this regard a tense public debate has taken place thanks to the participation of political scientists, sociologists, and historians. On the one hand, a complex and dynamic global context, marked by the geopolitical initiatives of Putin's increasingly authoritarian regime and by his decisive role in the Ukrainian crisis, by the Syrian civil war, where the great powers were involved in different forms and at different stages, by the disrupting consequences of Brexit and of Trump's American presidency. On the other hand, the crisis of the European institutions, the severe economic difficulties of the Mediterranean countries (first of all, Greece), the massive flux of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the hegemonic role of Germany (and its looming crisis) and the instability of the former Communist countries in East Central Europe and in the Balkans, the ascent of the “populist” movements and parties and the affirmation of illiberal governments in Hungary and in Poland.
The debate has focussed on some concepts – “populism”, “illiberal democracy”, “fascism”, and “post-fascism” – by which journalists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tried to define, analyse, and reconstruct the sense, the forms and the background of the new political movements and experiments. This debate has made frequent reference to the term of “fascism” and to the analogy with the 1930s in order to grasp the ongoing trends and dynamics. For that matter, the never-ending question of the definition of “fascism” has been resumed, together with the discussion of its political, social, and cultural features, of its relationship with interwar Europe, and of its legacies in post-1945 Europe.
In which sense the comparative reference to the historical phenomenon of “fascism” is pertinent to today's phenomena, and in which ways it is understood? Why and how can be useful the analogy with the past – the “crisis of democracy” of the 1930s – in order to better understand the present? Can the concepts of “populism” or “illiberal democracy”, and the discussions that have developed around them, offer an innovative contribution, and in which terms?
These and other questions will be at the core of this workshop, aiming to confront points of view of historians and political scientists in order to clarify the aforementioned concepts and to reframe the discussion about the relationship between the today's global and European crises and the complex legacy of the twentieth century.