Prof. Charles Leavitt Wins Prize for Best Article

Author: Maurcia Marschke

Bj 9

The Society for Italian Studies has announced that the 2022 Italian Studies Article Prize has been awarded to Charles Leavitt for his article "Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust: Gian Paolo Callegari’s Cristo ha ucciso (1948)." (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348) The readers summarized their reasons for selecting Prof. Leavitt's article as follows: “This is a powerful and pithy article of considerable originality which explores an overlooked play and author but also investigates the whole context of Italy pre- and post-Fascism with reference to anti-semitism and the Holocaust. The quality of the reconstruction of both Callegari as author and surrounding texts and contexts is very high, and equally strong is the critical reviewing of categories and of related production. Through a detailed analysis of Callegari’s play, the article makes an original, novel and topical contribution to the much broader debate on anti-Semitism in postwar Italy. For both readers, an outstanding essay in historical, literary and critical terms.”