Gerhard Riegner Memorial Lecture
Professor Carlo Ginzburg (University of California, Los Angeles)
Georges Bataille, the French thinker and novelist, put forward a religious interpretation of Fascism in the framework of the Collège de Sociologie, which he founded in Paris with his friend Roger Caillois in 1937. The lecture will deal with the precedents, ambiguities, and relevance of Bataille's approach.
Carlo Ginzburg is the Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his Dottore in Lettere from the University of Pisa (1961) and taught at the University of Bologna before moving to the United States. His fi eld of interest ranges from the Italian Renaissance to Early Modern European History. He is a leader in the field of 'microhistorical' methodologies. He has published extensively and written numerous books including The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1983), The Enigma of Piero della Francesca (1985 and revised edition 2000), History, Rhetoric, and Proof. The Menachem Stern Jerusalem Lectures (1999).
