Italian Intellectuals and the End of Marxism
Patrick McCarthy Memorial Series on Intellectuals and Politics
Supported by the “Patrick McCarthy Fund" (www.jhubc.it/McCarthy/)
hosted by Professor
Mark Gilbert
Piero Ignazi
Professor of Comparative Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Bologna, Italy
PATRICK MCCARTHY MEMORIAL SEMINAR SERIES
INTELLECTUALS AND POLITICS
Patrick McCarthy was one of the leading scholars of contemporary Italian history and a major figure in the field of intellectual history of twentieth century Europe. He was also a distinguished member of faculty at the Bologna Center and an inspiration for many Bologna Center graduates. Upon his death, many of his former students contributed to establish a memorial fund in his name. Without their past generosity, this series would not be taking place.
This seminar series aims to revive a tradition of studies in the humanities that has always been part of the Bologna Center’s mission. Studying International Relations requires knowledge of what makes other countries and other cultures tick. It requires knowledge of the mores, ideas and histories of societies around the world. Patrick McCarthy, who published books on the French writers Celine and Camus as well as on the politics of Italy, France and Germany, was an able interpreter of this cultural dimension to international affairs.
This seminar series will mostly – albeit with occasional detours – deal with Italy. Italy, along with Greece and, of course, Germany, was the West European country most divided by the Cold War and its intellectual history was marked by the choice between East and West, Communism or Catholicism. The intellectual conflicts of post war Italy are perhaps the most intense in all Europe, but are less well known, in part for linguistic reasons, than the fervent ideological battles that took place in France.
In collaboration with the languages department, the seminar series will also be hosting several film nights in which classic "political" movies, in Italian with English subtitles, will be shown.
Overall, the seminar will help Bologna Center students grasp the immense cultural and political strains that have characterized Italian society in the post-war period.
PIERO IGNAZI
Piero Ignazi is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bologna.
After graduating from the University of Bologna his doctoral and post-doctoral training was pursued at the EUI in Florence, at the MIT in Cambridge, MA., and at the FNSP in Paris. He has been lecturer in the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bologna, assistant professor in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Calabria, and full professor in the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bologna.
He has taught in France at the IEP of Lille and at the Universitè Paris II-Pantheon and researched for periods of time at Oxford (Christ Church and Nuffield colleges), in Denver (Denver University), in Paris (FNSP), in Trier (Faculty of Political science), and in Madrid (Universidad Autonoma).
At present he is Chairman of the Committee for Political Sociology of IPSA and ISA, member of the scientific board of
the International Political Science Review, and of the
Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica. He is the general editor of the journal
il Mulino. He chairs the on-line Observatory of Italian Foreign Policy: www.foreignpolicy.it. He regularly writes for the economic daily
Il Sole-24Ore and the weekly
L’Espresso.
He is currently working on the transformation of parties and party systems in Europe, on the process of secularization in Italy, on the impact of class and religion on party politics, and on the comparative foreign policy of the European democracies.
Publications:
I partiti italiani, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1997;
The Organization of Political Parties in Southern Europe, Westport, Praeger, 1998 (co-edited with C.Ysmal);
Il polo escluso. Profilo storico del Movimento Sociale Italiano, Bologna, Il Mulino, (1989) 1998 (expanded and updated edition);
L’estrema destra in Europa, Bologna, Il Mulino, (1994) 2000 (expanded and updated edition);
Il potere dei partiti. La politica in Italia dagli anni Sessanta ad oggi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2002;
Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, (2003) 2006 (expanded and updated edition);
Political Parties and Political Systems. The Concept of Linkage Rivisited, Westport, Praeger, 2005.( co-edited with A.Rommele and D.Farrell);
Partiti politici in Italia, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2008.
