Italian Cinema, Literature, and Cultural History After WWII - Charles Leavitt

Professor Leavitt is a scholar of modern and contemporary Italy, with a particular research focus on the literary and cultural history of the post-war period. His work explores the efforts of artists and intellectuals to construct Italian histories, identities, and cultures with their creative and critical interventions across diverse media. Investigating these efforts through both formal and contextual analysis, he draws on and seeks to contribute to scholarship in literature, film studies, and history. While his disciplinary home is Italian Studies, his work adopts a comparative approach, tracing both the transnational configuration of cultural trends that have shaped the Italian scene and the routes of exchange that have conveyed Italian contributions to global culture. He is especially interested in the ways Italian writers and filmmakers have embraced international agendas and audiences when addressing local and national concerns.
His first book, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press, 2020), was awarded the 2020 Book Prize for Visual Studies, Film and Media from the American Association of Italian Studies. The monograph adopts a comprehensive, comparative, and interdisciplinary approach to describe and analyze a neorealist project encompassing film, literature, theatre, art and architecture, cultural criticism, and political and intellectual debate. Professor Leavitt's book examines the work of celebrated neorealist filmmakers, including Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti, as well as that of understudied directors such as De Santis and Vergano, alongside investigations of many of the influential artists and authors who similarly contributed to the development of Italian neorealism.
A Fellow of the UK’s Higher Education Academy, Professor Leavitt has received an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Reading and a Kaneb Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Notre Dame. He teaches a variety of courses on Italian and comparative literature and cinema, in Italian and translation, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He also supervises undergraduate and graduate research in modern Italian studies.
A Faculty Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and a Research Fellow of the University of Reading (UK), Professor Leavitt serves on the editorial boards of the journals Italian Studies and the Italianist.
romancelanguag...
---
With 20 departments across the humanities, arts, and social sciences, the College of Arts and Letters is home to exceptional faculty and talented students who are studying what they love. It's an environment to ask big questions, read classic texts, and explore languages and cultures.
We're not just about learning through acquisition. We're about learning through exploration. Our undergraduate students travel the globe to research topics that fascinate them, then turn their observations into conclusions about the world.

Through the liberal arts, you learn to read deeply. Think about issues critically. Discuss topics thoughtfully. Write arguments persuasively. Contribute to projects creatively. And these abilities aren't just vital in the classroom-they're exactly what employers, graduate schools, and service organizations are looking for.
Subscribe to Arts and Letters on UA-cam:
goo.gl/I2Sru
UA-cam Channel:
/ artslettersnd
Twitter:
@artslettersnd
Website:
al.nd.edu