West Virginia University

Joshua Arthurs

Assistant Professor
Joshua Arthurs

Teaching Fields

Modern Western and Southern Europe; Italy and France; cultural and intellectual history

Contact

Joshua Arthurs
G3B Woodburn Hall
P.O. Box 6303
Morgantown, WV 26506-6303
Phone: (304) 293-2421 ext. 5227
Fax: (304) 293-3616
joshua.arthurs@mail.wvu.edu
http://www.jarthurs.net/

  • Degrees

      Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2007
      M.A., University of Chicago, 1999
      B.A., Wesleyan University, 1997

  • Research Interests

      My current research focuses on problems of historical representation, urban space and political culture in modern Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean. I am currently working on a book manuscript, tentatively titled Excavating Modernity: the Idea of Rome in Fascist Italy, which examines the intersection of ideology, history and archeology, and romanitą under Mussolini’s regime. Across a series of case studies – in historical scholarship, urban archaeology and museum display – I explore the ways in which intellectuals approached the Eternal City as a blueprint for Fascist modernity, a source of dynamic values to be realized in the present, and a model for imperial conquest.

      I am also in the early stages of a new project, which examines the afterlife and contemporary resonance of Fascist monuments in the decades after World War Two. Unlike the architectural remnants of National Socialism in Germany, the monumental remains of Italian Fascism were never turned into memorials or subjected to a comprehensive damnatio memoriae. I am interested in the political, social and aesthetic debates surrounding these sites and how they were integrated into the fabric of everyday life in postwar Italy.

  • Grad Students Advised

  • Courses Offered

      102: Western Civilization since 1600
      209: Twentieth-Century Europe
      331: Italy since 1800
      414: France since 1815

  • Publications

      Fascism as Heritage in Contemporary Italy in Andrea Mammone and Giuseppe Veltri, eds., Italy Today: the Sick Man of Europe. Routledge, 2009.

      Roma Sparita: Local Identity, Memory and Modernity in Fascist Rome. Cittą e Storia Vol. 3, no.1-2, 2008.

      Presenting Roman History in Italy, 1911-1955 in Claire Norton, ed., Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)Construction of the Past. New Academia Press, 2007.

      The Eternal Parasite: Anti-Romanism in Italian Politics and Culture since 1870. Annali d’Italianistica (forthcoming in 2010).