The Center for Italian Studies is pleased to host a lecture by Professor Silvana Patriarca (Fordham University) titled:"Anticolonialism(s) as antiracism(s)?" Italian Radicals Facing 'Race' and the Colonial Question at the Turn of the Twentieth Century In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Italians fully participated in the racialization of the African populations that they and other Europeans colonized. At the same time, Italians themselves were often racialized by other Europeans (including Americans) and engaged in the racialization of southern Italians. In this context, some anthropologists and sociologists of leftist orientation such as Napoleone Colajanni questioned the idea of “pure races” and the racial hierarchies that placed Nordic peoples (including northern Italians) above southern Europeans. A number of leftist and radical thinkers and politicians — radical democrats, socialists, and anarchists — also rejected colonialism and especially the consequences that colonial wars had for the inhabitants of a country like Italy that was still poor and underdeveloped. Some anarchist geographers even claimed a right to so-called “barbarity.” To what extent did the critique of colonialism (including the internal variety) lead to an explicit rejection of anti-Black racism? Were anticolonial thinkers able to express sympathy and solidarity with the colonized people victimized by European aggressions? Analyzing the works of the thinkers and the leftist press of that period, this lecture will address these questions as part of a larger project on the history of antiracist beliefs and sensibilities in modern Italian culture. Silvana Patriarca received her laurea at the University of Turin and her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Florida, and is currently a professor in the Department of History of Fordham University. She specializes in the history of modern Italy and her research has ranged from the social history of industrialization to the intellectual and political history of statistics to the cultural history of nationalism and the construction of national identities in their intersection with gender and “race.” The author of the award-winning Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge University Press) and of Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic (Cambridge University Press), she has co-edited (with Lucy Riall) The Risorgimento Revisited: Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Palgrave Macmillan). She has held fellowships at the National Humanities Center (North Carolina) and at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, and visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) in Paris. Her most recent book, Race in Post-Fascist Italy: "War Children" and the Color of the Nation (2022), focuses on the experiences and representations of the "brown babies" born at the end of World War Two from the encounters between Black Allied soldiers and Italian women, and explores the persistence of racial thinking and racism in post-fascist and postcolonial Italy. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.The Italian Research Seminar, a core event of the Center for Italian Studies, aims to provide a regular forum for faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and colleagues from other universities to present and discuss their current research. The seminar is vigorously interdisciplinary, and embraces all areas of Italian literature, language, and culture, as well as perceptions of Italy, its achievements and its peoples in other national and international cultures. The seminar constitutes an important element in the effort by Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies to promote the study of Italy and to serve as a strategic point of contact for scholarly exchange.Originally published at italianstudies.nd.edu.

Wrestling with the fallout of the war in Gaza on Jewish identity, political commentator Peter Beinart shares his personal reckoning with the moral reconstruction needed to build a future "that recognizes the infinite value of all human life." Atalia Omer, professor of religion, conflict and peace studies, will moderate. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and an MSNBC analyst, Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. He is also the editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter. Note: Bags and backpacks will not be allowed inside the venue. A storage space will be provided on site. Originally published at kroc.nd.edu. This event is co-sponsored by Contending Modernities, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Mirza Family Professor in Islamic Thought & Muslim Societies.

Edgar TaylorKellogg Institute Visiting FellowLecturer in the Department of History, Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Makerere University This book project charts the entangled fates of racial populism and electoral democracy in the public life of Uganda’s urban centers between the developmental colonialism of the late 1940s through the economic dependency and stagnation of the 1970s. It uses previously inaccessible archives, historical newspapers and interviews to illuminate how urban populism was informed by deep historical conversations over authority and reciprocal obligation among elites and commoners anchored in a Luganda conceptual vocabulary. The project also shows how activists inhabited changing infrastructures — of media, urban commerce, residential segregation, and legal paternalism — to uphold and subvert democratic ideals. The book will be anchored in African social history but will contribute to debates over democracy and racial populism in the wake of colonial violence among political historians and anthropologists of the state. More information here

The impacts of extreme climate and weather events pose a greater threat to communities in politically fragile settings. Join Halvard Buhaug, research director and research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), for a conversation focused on the importance of investing in peace, justice, and strong institutions for mitigating risk and successfully adapting to a changing climate. Register to Attend via Zoom About the Speaker Halvard Buhaug Research Director and Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); and Associate Editor of the Journal of Peace Research   Much of his research concerns security dimensions of climate change, which has received funding from the European Union, the World Bank, the US Department of Defense, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the Research Council of Norway. He is the recipient of the 2015 Karl Deutsch Award; principal investigator for two ERC projects (Consolidator Grant 2015-2021; Advanced Grant 2022-), and chapter Lead Author in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2022). Originally published at pulte.nd.edu.

The roots of modern Ukraine are the rhythms and rhymes of Taras Shevchenko (1814-61). His innovative poetry has long been Ukraine’s source code, a cultural algorithm in pursuit of personal, national, and universal human freedom. Today it helps fuel widespread grassroots resistance against a Russian war of aggression and conquest that threatens all of Europe. In this lecture, Rory Finnin, professor of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, places Shevchenko’s work in the context of a long Ukrainian anticolonial struggle against Russian imperialism. Through close readings, he examines Shevchenko’s fierce “solidarity with the subaltern” and explores coded mysteries in his painting and poetry, where freedom is depicted as buried and entombed, awaiting rescue. All are welcome to this public lecture. Lunch will be available beginning at 12:00 p.m., while supplies last. About the speakerRory Finnin (Photo by Peter Ringenberg/University of Notre Dame).Rory Finnin is professor of Ukrainian studies at the University of Cambridge. He launched the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies program in 2008. Finnin’s primary research interest is the interplay of culture and identity in Ukraine. His broader research interests include nationalism studies, solidarity studies, and cultural memory in the region of the Black Sea. Finnin is a graduate of St Ignatius High School (Cleveland), Georgetown University (B.A.), and Columbia University (Ph.D.). From 1995-97 he served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. In 2024, he received the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies for his book Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (University of Toronto Press, 2022).   Finnin will also be featured in the Ukrainian Studies Hub conference "Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine," March 6-8, 2025. He will join Archbishop Borys Gudziak during the opening keynote session.   Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.

The Ukrainian Studies Hub will host its first conference on March 6–8, 2025. This conference will feature academic discussions, lectures, and presentations centered around Ukraine and Ukrainian studies. For more information about this conference, please visit the conference page. Learn more about the conference The conference will convene leading academics, policymakers, faith leaders, and artists to examine how hope has shaped Ukraine through pivotal historical moments, including its independence in 1991, the Russian aggression of 2014, and the full-scale invasion, which began in 2022 and continues. Keynote speakers include:Ambassador Oksana Markarova, Ukraine Mission to the U.S.Archbishop Borys Gudziak, president of Ukrainian Catholic University and Metropolitan-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia;Rory Finnin, professor of Ukrainian studies, University of Cambridge, and recipient of the Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies in 2024;Olesya Kromeychuk, director, Ukrainian Institute London; andSerhii Plokhii, professor of Ukrainian history, Harvard University.For a complete list of panelists and speakers, view the conference schedule. The conference is supported and co-sponsored by:Department of German, Slavic, and Eurasian Studies;Kellogg Institute for International Studies;Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies;Notre Dame Democracy Initiative;Notre Dame Global;Office of the President at Notre Dame;Raclin Murphy Museum of Art; andUkrainian Catholic University.Originally published at nanovic.nd.edu.