Charles L. Leavitt IV

Biography

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, he 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 and was shortlisted for the Bridge Literary Prize. 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.

Professor Leavitt’s current research examines minoritized cultures in twentieth-century Italy. Working with the University of Notre Dame’s Primo Levi Collection, and co-directing the Primo Levi Digital Commentary, a joint collaboration with Cambridge University, Leavitt studies Italian Jewish culture, as well as the history and legacy of Italian anti-Semitism. A representative publication, “Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust: Gian Paolo Callegari’s Cristo ha ucciso (1948),” was awarded the 2022 essay prize of the Society for Italian Studies. Leavitt also continues to research and teach the intersections between Italian and African American history and culture. His current book project, provisionally entitled The War Between Black and White: Racial Conflict in Allied-Occupied Italy, examines the significant role played by African American soldiers during and after the Second World War in Italy. For more details, see the video below.

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 is Director of Graduate Studies in Italian and supervises graduate and undergraduate research in modern Italian studies and film studies.

As Associate Director of Notre Dame's Center for Italian Studies, Professor Leavitt is responsible for organizing the Italian Research Seminar, as well as the Modern Roads to Rome lecture series, a collaboration with Notre Dame Rome. He is a Faculty Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, as well as a Visiting Scholar of St Edmund's College, University of Cambrige and a Research Fellow of the University of Reading (UK), Professor Leavitt serves on the editorial boards of the journals Italian Studies, the Italianist, and Annali d'italianistica.