Living in a New Sattelzeit: An Interview with Enzo Traverso – Journal of the History of Ideas blog

Enzo Traverso, a leading scholar of modern European history and thought, is the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University. His books include The Origins of Nazi Violence (2003), The End of Jewish Modernity (2016), Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914–1945 (2016), Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory (2017), The New Faces of Fascism: Populism and the Far Right (2019), The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate(2018), Revolution: An Intellectual History (2021), and Singular Pasts: The “I” in Historiography (2022), which he discussed with Sakiru Adebayo on the Blog. Traverso’s work is distinguished by its vast scope, metahistorical self-reflexivity, and distinctive relation to the history of the Left, given that he was born into the Italian Communist Party. His latest book, Gaza Faces History (Other Press, 2024), translated from the Italian by Willard Wood, began as a series of articles and interviews for Italian and French newspapers in the months after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Contributing editor Jonathon Catlin spoke with Traverso about his latest book and how modern European history and thought can illuminate our present moment.