About

Enzo Traverso is a historian specializing in modern and contemporary Europe, with a focus on the intellectual history and political ideas of the twentieth century. His research landmarks include war, fascism, genocide, revolution, and collective memory, which are central themes in his numerous books. Born in Italy, he studied history at the University of Genoa and earned his PhD from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris in 1989. Before joining Cornell University in 2013, he taught political science for twenty years in France and has been a visiting professor at several European and Latin American universities. Traverso's work has been widely translated into more than fifteen languages, and he has contributed to many collected works. His articles and reviews have been published in various academic journals and magazines, and he has received several awards for his historical essays, including the Premio Pozzale, Empoli, Florence (2014), the Premio Lo Straniero/Gli Asini, Lecce (2018), and the Premio Napoli (2022). His research interests encompass intellectual history, historiography, Jewish history, memory studies, critical theory, Marxism, and related fields.

Research topics

• Humanities
• Art
• Philosophy
• Political science
• History

Selected publications

• Cruzando fronteras. Para una epistemología del extranjero

  Sociohistórica · 2026-03-01

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  El presente artículo recoge la intervención realizada por Enzo Traverso en ocasión del recibimiento del Doctorado Honoris Causa, entregado por la Universidad Nacional de La Plata el 7 de noviembre de 2025. El texto ofrece, por un lado, una referencia al rol que jugó en el despliegue de las ideas de Traverso el vínculo estrecho con nuestra Universidad y, por el otro, una reflexión en torno a las múltiples dimensiones que incluye la experiencia del exilio. Se agrega una descripción de la trayectoria académica y política del autor, realizada por el Comité Editorial de Revista Sociohistórica

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• The Holocaust and Social Thought

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2025-05-16

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• Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Günther Anders

  Historical Materialism · 2024-10-04 · 1 citations

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  Abstract Widely translated into several Western languages (with the exception of English), Günther Anders (1902–92) has, in the last two decades, attained the status of a classic figure within twentieth-century critical thought, close to Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School without ever becoming one of its members. This article analyses his intellectual trajectory and his body of work, which includes many articles, essays, short stories, and even a novel. It focuses on his Jewish roots, which made him a paradigmatic representative of the ‘non-Jewish Jew’: a Jew confronted with antisemitism, an internationalist standing before the Jewish tradition. The crucial premises of his original theory, the author emphasises, were Auschwitz and Hiroshima, the extermination of European Jewry, and the atomic bomb. Set out in his most ambitious work, The Outdatedness of Human Beings (Volume 1, 1956; Volume 2, 1980), Anders’ thought appears as a kind of dialectical sublation, from a Marxist perspective, of Heidegger’s philosophy of technique (where technique has replaced human beings as the subject of history), articulated with a radical criticism of Heidegger’s political ontology.

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• Ce qui vient, c’est l’inconnu

  Lignes · 2024-01-30

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Cuerpos revolucionarios

  Cuadernos LIRICO · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  La mujer, en la Sociedad Comunista, no depender de su marido, sino que sus robustos brazos sern los que le proporcionen el sustento El matrimonio quedar purificado de todos sus elementos materiales, de todos los clculos de dinero que constituyen la repugnante mancha de la vida familiar de nuestro tiempo. El matrimonio se transformar desde ahora en adelante en la unin sublime de dos almas que se aman, que se profesen fe mutua; una unin de este tipo promete a todo obrero, a

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• Longing for the <i>Sonderweg</i>

  New German Critique · 2023-11-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The highly controversial idea of Sonderweg, a special path to modernity, is frequently invoked to depict the history of Germany in the twentieth century. Initially claimed by nationalists as an exceptionalism proudly opposed to the development of both France and the United Kingdom, the German Sonderweg became a stigma after 1945, the mark of the wrong turn that had led to National Socialism. Beyond these debates, the thought remains that, under the shadow of this supposedly unique destiny, Germany was a volcano of aesthetic and intellectual creativity. This article analyzes the mental and cultural inversion produced by the end of the Cold War and the birth of a new “Berlin Republic.” From 1990 on, German politics and society tenaciously pursued a project of “normalcy” that consolidated both its democracy and its economy by establishing Berlin leadership in Europe. But this spectacular accomplishment also meant intellectual dryness and a memorial “wisdom” combined with a conservative “constitutional patriotism.” This inverted Faustian fate—conformist and mediocre prosperity instead of evil genius—is the transitory aftermath of a century of fire and blood.

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• Imágenes e Historia cultural: un debate

  Acta Poética · 2023-01-10 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Este texto a dos manos integra en un solo espacio el debate que sostuvieron dos figuras académicas indiscutibles, Georges Didi-Huberman, historiador del arte, y Enzo Traverso, historiador, en la revista digital francesa AOC, entre los meses de mayo y octubre de 2022. En un intercambio epistolar público, Didi-Huberman comienza la discusión sobre un breve comentario que Traverso incluye en su libro Revolution. An Intellectual History (2021), que hacía alusión a una imagen problemática del fotógrafo Gilles Caron —tomada durante las manifestaciones anticatólicas en Irlanda del Norte en 1969—, parte de Soulèvements, una exposición que Didi-Huberman curó para el Museo Jeu de Paume de París entre 2016 y 2017. A partir de este punto, el debate entre ambos intelectuales se extenderá a una de las más interesantes reflexiones, que muestra dos posiciones sobre los modos de ver la imagen y su relación con la historia.

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• Marxism and the National Question

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-11-08 · 69 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Marx’s thought on nationhood emerged from the cosmopolitan legacy of the “radical Enlightenment.” It took shape in the crucible of European nationalisms, the persistence of dynastic multinational empires, and the appearance of socialism as a new political actor.1 In 1848, the national question was deeply intermingled with the question of class. As a minority current of socialism, at least until the end of the nineteenth century, Marxism promoted a new form of political internationalism of which the most significant expression was the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864. A constitutive tension quickly appeared between this cosmopolitan aspiration – well synthesized by The Communist Manifesto’s sentence: “the workers have no country”2 – and the growing tendency of the nascent socialist movements to inscribe themselves into national patterns made of inherited cultures, languages, traditions, and social practices.

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• Chapter Five DISCOURSE ON METHOD

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2022-11-17

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• Chapter Seven HISTORY AND FICTION

  Columbia University Press eBooks · 2022-11-17

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Frequent coauthors

• Bernard Gibbons

  12 shared

• Régis Meyran

  6 shared

• 頼三 宇京

  4 shared

• Santiago Cueto Rúa

  3 shared

• Simon Levis Sullam

  Ca' Foscari University of Venice

  3 shared

• Juan Luis Carnagui

  3 shared

• Daniel Weissbort

  3 shared

• Emmanuel Nicolás Kahan

  Universidad Nacional de La Plata

  3 shared

Education

• PhD

  Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

Awards & honors

• Premio Pozzale, Empoli, Florence (2014)
• Premio Lo Straniero/Gli Asini, Lecce (2018)
• Premio Napoli (2022)