Dominique Reill

University of Miami

Nationalists against the nation: 19th century projects for a multinational Europe

2008-2009

Dominique Kirchner Reill specializes in Modern European history with particular emphases on the Nineteenth Century, regionalism, nationalism, Italy, and the Balkans, as well as cultural and intellectual history. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2007. Currently she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami in Florida. 

During her time at the Italian Academy she will be working on finishing her manuscript with the tentative title "Nationalists against the nation: 19th century projects for a multinational Europe," based largely on her dissertation. The book examines a group of local activists living in mid-nineteenth-century Venice, Trieste, and Dalmatia (part of current-day Croatia) who pushed for the formation of a multi-national Adriatic state system along the lines of Belgium and Switzerland. These multi-national activists regarded their project as realist, not utopian, arguing that in a trade-oriented maritime world where Italian, German, and Slavic dialects were used interchangeably, and residents adhered to either Catholic, Christian Orthodox, Jewish, or Protestant faiths, no one language or national identity could be promoted without provoking intolerance and bloodshed. An article based on this research has been published in the volume Different paths to the nation. Regional and national identities in Germany, Italy, and the Habsburg Monarchy, 1830-1870 (2007). Research for this project was conducted in Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia and was funded by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, the German Marshall Research Fellowship, the Delmas Foundation Grant for Independent Research on Venetian History and Culture, and the Whiting Foundation Fellowship among others. 

Professor Reill has also been an active member of Columbia University’s Institute for Social Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) and NYU’s Remarque Institute. At the University of Miami, Professor Reill teaches courses on Nineteenth Century Europe and post-World War II Europe, Italy, and the Balkans.