Simon Levis-Sullam

Università di Venezia

Ca' Foscari

Political Theologies and Political Religions in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s

2005-2006

Simon Levis-Sullam (Venezia 1974) received a PhD in European Social History from the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari. His main fields of interest are the history of ideas in Europe between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth century, with a particular focus on nationalisms and fascisms; the history of the Jews and of Anti-Semitism; the history of the Holocaust. He has studied at the University of Venice, Ca' Foscari, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and he has been a fellow of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin. He is the author of Una Comunità Immaginata: Gli Ebrei a Venezia, 1900-1938 (Unicopli: Milan 2001), and the editor of Risorgimento Italiano e Religioni Politiche (special issue of "Società e Storia", 2004, 106). He is also the editor, with M. Cattaruzza, M. Flores and E. Traverso, of an international Storia della Shoah, the first volume of which was published by UTET (Turin) in October 2005. He is working on a book on the relationship between the Risorgimento and Fascism through the influence of Mazzini. At the Italian Academy, this year, he is initiating a new research project on "political theologies" in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, based on a comparison between Giovanni Gentile and Carl Schmitt, and aimed at the study of the long-term influence of "political romanticism" in the rise of fascisms in Europe.