Ruth Ben‐ghiat
Biographic Data
| ID | 3858038 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Ben‐ghiat |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Ben‐ghiat |
| SIGNATURE | BEN GHIAT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Fascism in America: Past and Present
Has fascism arrived in America? In this pioneering book, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to survey the history of fascism in the United States. Although the US established a staunch anti-fascist reputation by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the unsettling truth is that fascist ideas have long been present within American society. Since the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, scholars have debated wh…
Five Faces of Fascism
Visualizing fascism" might seem to be an easy endeavor. Most of us can easily conjure mental pictures of the right-wing regimes of the interwar and World War II years. Uniformed men on the march, children performing in sports arenas, the dictator in his uniformed splendor, state-sponsored violence on the street and in disciplinary spaces (prisons, camps, penal colonies) probably figure in this repertoire. One national case may come to mind, or pe…
Narrating the Nation
Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945
Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that—…
Realism in transition
This essay argues that the political and moral rejection of Fascism was prepared before 1943 by developments in the cultural sphere. Realist aesthetics were a main site of explorations that anticipated the Resistance’s rethinking of Fascist conceptions of the self and humanity. The years 1941 and 1942 were particularly fertile ones for the appearance of realist films, criticism, photography, and literature that are often considered precursors of …
The Imperial Moment in Fascist Cinema
The Imperial Moment in Fascist Cinema This essay looks at how Italian feature and non-fiction cinema on imperial themes engaged with themes of temporality as it asserted Fascism's right to occupy Ethiopia (1936) and, during World War II, Greece as well. For the Fascists, cinema was a means of displaying the colonies as theatres of Italian modernity, rebuking rhetorics of Italian «backwardness». As I argue, the movies made between 1936 and 1943 re…
Response to Matteo Millan: Mapping Squadrist Violence
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Reflections on Italian Nationalism and Fascism: Essays for Alexander De Grand
It is a pleasure to present this special issue of The Journal of Modern Italian Studies in honor of Alexander De Grand. Like so many scholars working in modern Italy, we have learned much over the
Un cinéma d'après-guerre: Le Néoréalisme Italien Et La Transition Démocratique
Cet article examine le cinéma italien dans les années de transition du fascisme à la démocratie. Le cinéma offre une source privilégiée pour comprendre les expérience de perte, de crise et de privation qui ne trouvaient pas de place dans les récits traditionnels de la reconstruction de l'Italie. Les films néoréalistes en particulier cherchaient à exprimer la conscience diffuse de vivre un moment de transition. À travers une analyse du film d'Albe…
Modernity Is Just Over There: Colonialism and Italian National Identity
My essay will examine the relationship among conceptions of modernity, national identity and colonial conquest in Italy. Since the country's unification in 1870, Italy's position as a bridge between northern Europe and the Mediterranean has stimulated insecurities and utopian thinking in equal measure. Was modernity, and geopolitical significance, always just out of reach, in the hands of what Mussolini would later call the ‘plutocratic countries…
Unmaking the fascist man: Masculinity, film and the transition from dictatorship
This essay examines the recasting and renegotiation of Italian masculinity during the war and during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Film is my privileged source for understanding the complexities of male experience during this period of dramatic change, but I also rely on war crimes charges, diaries and memoirs. While not explicitly comparative in nature, the essay considers whether we can speak of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in pos…
The Italian colonial cinema: Agendas and audiences
What role has culture played in shaping Italians’ experiences of Italian colonialism before and after the Second World War? How can the tools of cultural analysis be employed to understand the place and space Italian colonialism has had within Italian and European history? This article draws on and discusses the growing body of scholarly work about colonial narratives and representations (exhibitions, travel writings, etc.) but is centred on the …
Fascist ModernitiesItaly, 1922-1945: Italy, 1922-1945
Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that …
The Secret Histories of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful
"This is a simple story. But it's not easy to tell. Like a fable, there is sorrow, there is wonder and happiness." So begins Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, a comic's meditation on the tragedy of the Holocaust. Set in fascist Italy, the movie recounts the story of the Italian Jew Guido Orefice, who is deported to a Nazi concentration camp together with his son Joshua and his Christian wife Dora. Guido is an endearingly hapless buffoon whose …
History as it really wasn't: The myths of Italian historiography
According to a number of influential Italian contemporary historians, Italian political history since Unification has been distorted by politicized scholarship and the existence of a large number of untenable political myths. These views are presented in the volume Miti e storia dell'Italia unita (1999). In this roundtable, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Carl Ipsen and David Kertzer discuss this thesis with two of its leading proponents: Ernesto Galli della Log…
Mapping the Modern: Rites of Spring Revisited
Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy
(1997). Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 438-443
Italian Fascism and the Aesthetics of the 'Third Woy
In recent years, the work of Zeev Sternhell and other historians has underscored the appeal fascism held for interwar intellectuals as a 'spiritual revolution' that would establish a new 'moral order' in Europe. While scholars of fascism continue to debate whether this 'revolution' was conservative or radical in its aims, most agree on the centrality of the category of 'spirituality' to any definition of fascism as a 'third way' distinct from lib…
Envisioning Modernity: Desire and Discipline in the Italian Fascist Film
Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950
A Strange Alliance: Aspects of Escape and Survival in Italy, 1943-1945. Roger Absalom
Architecture and Urbanism in Fascist Italy
The Aesthetics of Politics: Europe and America in the Thirties
Journal Article L'estetica della politica: Europa e America negli anni trenta (The aesthetics of politics: Europe and America in the thirties). Ed. by Maurizio Vaudagna. (Rome: Gius, Laterza & Figli, 1989. xvi, 237 pp. Paper, Lit 35,000, ISBN 88-420-3364-2.) In Italian, summaries in English Get access Ruth Ben-Ghiat Ruth Ben-Ghiat University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goo…
L'ideologia del fascismo: Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime
L'ideologia del fascismo: Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime." History of European Ideas, 12(6), pp. 860–861
Envisioning Modernity: Desire and Discipline in the Italian Fascist Film
Italian Fascism and the Aesthetics of the 'Third Woy
In recent years, the work of Zeev Sternhell and other historians has underscored the appeal fascism held for interwar intellectuals as a 'spiritual revolution' that would establish a new 'moral order' in Europe. While scholars of fascism continue to debate whether this 'revolution' was conservative or radical in its aims, most agree on the centrality of the category of 'spirituality' to any definition of fascism as a 'third way' distinct from lib…
Unmaking the fascist man: Masculinity, film and the transition from dictatorship
This essay examines the recasting and renegotiation of Italian masculinity during the war and during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Film is my privileged source for understanding the complexities of male experience during this period of dramatic change, but I also rely on war crimes charges, diaries and memoirs. While not explicitly comparative in nature, the essay considers whether we can speak of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in pos…
Modernity Is Just Over There: Colonialism and Italian National Identity
My essay will examine the relationship among conceptions of modernity, national identity and colonial conquest in Italy. Since the country's unification in 1870, Italy's position as a bridge between northern Europe and the Mediterranean has stimulated insecurities and utopian thinking in equal measure. Was modernity, and geopolitical significance, always just out of reach, in the hands of what Mussolini would later call the ‘plutocratic countries…
Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950
Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy
(1997). Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 438-443
History as it really wasn't: The myths of Italian historiography
According to a number of influential Italian contemporary historians, Italian political history since Unification has been distorted by politicized scholarship and the existence of a large number of untenable political myths. These views are presented in the volume Miti e storia dell'Italia unita (1999). In this roundtable, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Carl Ipsen and David Kertzer discuss this thesis with two of its leading proponents: Ernesto Galli della Log…
L'ideologia del fascismo: Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime
L'ideologia del fascismo: Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime." History of European Ideas, 12(6), pp. 860–861
Architecture and Urbanism in Fascist Italy
The Aesthetics of Politics: Europe and America in the Thirties
Journal Article L'estetica della politica: Europa e America negli anni trenta (The aesthetics of politics: Europe and America in the thirties). Ed. by Maurizio Vaudagna. (Rome: Gius, Laterza & Figli, 1989. xvi, 237 pp. Paper, Lit 35,000, ISBN 88-420-3364-2.) In Italian, summaries in English Get access Ruth Ben-Ghiat Ruth Ben-Ghiat University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goo…
A Strange Alliance: Aspects of Escape and Survival in Italy, 1943-1945. Roger Absalom
Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950
Italian Fascism and the Aesthetics of the 'Third Woy
In recent years, the work of Zeev Sternhell and other historians has underscored the appeal fascism held for interwar intellectuals as a 'spiritual revolution' that would establish a new 'moral order' in Europe. While scholars of fascism continue to debate whether this 'revolution' was conservative or radical in its aims, most agree on the centrality of the category of 'spirituality' to any definition of fascism as a 'third way' distinct from lib…
Envisioning Modernity: Desire and Discipline in the Italian Fascist Film
Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy
(1997). Language and the construction of national identity in fascist Italy. The European Legacy: Vol. 2, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 438-443
Mapping the Modern: Rites of Spring Revisited
Fascist ModernitiesItaly, 1922-1945: Italy, 1922-1945
Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that …
The Secret Histories of Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful
"This is a simple story. But it's not easy to tell. Like a fable, there is sorrow, there is wonder and happiness." So begins Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, a comic's meditation on the tragedy of the Holocaust. Set in fascist Italy, the movie recounts the story of the Italian Jew Guido Orefice, who is deported to a Nazi concentration camp together with his son Joshua and his Christian wife Dora. Guido is an endearingly hapless buffoon whose …
History as it really wasn't: The myths of Italian historiography
According to a number of influential Italian contemporary historians, Italian political history since Unification has been distorted by politicized scholarship and the existence of a large number of untenable political myths. These views are presented in the volume Miti e storia dell'Italia unita (1999). In this roundtable, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Carl Ipsen and David Kertzer discuss this thesis with two of its leading proponents: Ernesto Galli della Log…
The Italian colonial cinema: Agendas and audiences
What role has culture played in shaping Italians’ experiences of Italian colonialism before and after the Second World War? How can the tools of cultural analysis be employed to understand the place and space Italian colonialism has had within Italian and European history? This article draws on and discusses the growing body of scholarly work about colonial narratives and representations (exhibitions, travel writings, etc.) but is centred on the …
Unmaking the fascist man: Masculinity, film and the transition from dictatorship
This essay examines the recasting and renegotiation of Italian masculinity during the war and during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Film is my privileged source for understanding the complexities of male experience during this period of dramatic change, but I also rely on war crimes charges, diaries and memoirs. While not explicitly comparative in nature, the essay considers whether we can speak of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in pos…
Modernity Is Just Over There: Colonialism and Italian National Identity
My essay will examine the relationship among conceptions of modernity, national identity and colonial conquest in Italy. Since the country's unification in 1870, Italy's position as a bridge between northern Europe and the Mediterranean has stimulated insecurities and utopian thinking in equal measure. Was modernity, and geopolitical significance, always just out of reach, in the hands of what Mussolini would later call the ‘plutocratic countries…
Un cinéma d'après-guerre: Le Néoréalisme Italien Et La Transition Démocratique
Cet article examine le cinéma italien dans les années de transition du fascisme à la démocratie. Le cinéma offre une source privilégiée pour comprendre les expérience de perte, de crise et de privation qui ne trouvaient pas de place dans les récits traditionnels de la reconstruction de l'Italie. Les films néoréalistes en particulier cherchaient à exprimer la conscience diffuse de vivre un moment de transition. À travers une analyse du film d'Albe…
Reflections on Italian Nationalism and Fascism: Essays for Alexander De Grand
It is a pleasure to present this special issue of The Journal of Modern Italian Studies in honor of Alexander De Grand. Like so many scholars working in modern Italy, we have learned much over the
Response to Matteo Millan: Mapping Squadrist Violence
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Imperial Moment in Fascist Cinema
The Imperial Moment in Fascist Cinema This essay looks at how Italian feature and non-fiction cinema on imperial themes engaged with themes of temporality as it asserted Fascism's right to occupy Ethiopia (1936) and, during World War II, Greece as well. For the Fascists, cinema was a means of displaying the colonies as theatres of Italian modernity, rebuking rhetorics of Italian «backwardness». As I argue, the movies made between 1936 and 1943 re…
Realism in transition
This essay argues that the political and moral rejection of Fascism was prepared before 1943 by developments in the cultural sphere. Realist aesthetics were a main site of explorations that anticipated the Resistance’s rethinking of Fascist conceptions of the self and humanity. The years 1941 and 1942 were particularly fertile ones for the appearance of realist films, criticism, photography, and literature that are often considered precursors of …
Narrating the Nation
Fascist Modernities: Italy, 1922-1945
Ruth Ben-Ghiat's innovative cultural history of Mussolini's dictatorship is a provocative discussion of the meanings of modernity in interwar Italy. Eloquent, pathbreaking, and deft in its use of a broad range of materials, this work argues that fascism appealed to many Italian intellectuals as a new model of modernity that would resolve the contemporary European crisis as well as long-standing problems of the national past. Ben-Ghiat shows that—…
Five Faces of Fascism
Visualizing fascism" might seem to be an easy endeavor. Most of us can easily conjure mental pictures of the right-wing regimes of the interwar and World War II years. Uniformed men on the march, children performing in sports arenas, the dictator in his uniformed splendor, state-sponsored violence on the street and in disciplinary spaces (prisons, camps, penal colonies) probably figure in this repertoire. One national case may come to mind, or pe…
Fascism in America: Past and Present
Has fascism arrived in America? In this pioneering book, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to survey the history of fascism in the United States. Although the US established a staunch anti-fascist reputation by defeating the Axis powers in World War II, the unsettling truth is that fascist ideas have long been present within American society. Since the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, scholars have debated wh…
Italian Fascism and Post-war Society (20 works) · Art (14 works) · History (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · European history and politics (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art history (6 works)