PRIN 2017 Studiosi italiani di fronte alle leggi razziali (1938-45): storici dell'antichità e giuristi

Conceived on the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of the race laws, the project has a double aim. It will offer an up-to-date analysis of Italy's race laws and their impact on Academic life, especially in classical and legal studies. It will also contribute to reconstructing the biographies and the intellectual profiles of some important scholars of the ancient world who were affected by the anti-Jewish purges: Edoardo Volterra, Mario Attilio Levi, Piero Treves, Aldo Neppi Modona, and Mario Segre. The years of racial segregation and the deportations (1938-45) will be taken into account, compared to the immediately preceding and following periods. The research will pursue the following directions: 1) Analysis and contextualization of the race laws from a historical, legal, and social perspective; 2) biographical reconstruction and profound analysis of the works of the aforementioned scholars between the 1930s and the 1940s, in order to understand whether and how these tragic experiences influenced their research perspectives. Significant attention will be devoted to their correspondence (and, for some of these scholars, the journalistic activity), through which their historical perspective will emerge. Archival sources will be fundamental in analyzing and making available unpublished or understudied documents. Private collections in the possession of family members or pupils of the scholars will also be investigated.