Cornell University professor to speak as part of ‘Life of Ideas’ series

Enzo Traverso, the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University, will speak March 29 at the University of Maine.

Traverso’s talk, “Burdens of the Past: The Age of Left-Wing Melancholia,” will begin at 4 p.m. in the Allen and Sally Fernald APPE space at the IMRC Center in Stewart Commons. Refreshments will be served.

Traverso was born in Italy, studied history at the University of Genoa, and received his Ph.D. from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales of Paris in 1989. He has taught political science in France and been visiting professor in several European and Latin American countries. In 2013 he became the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University.

His publications, translated into a dozen languages, include ”The Jews and Germany,” ”The Origins of Nazi Violence,” ”Fire and Blood: The European Civil War, 1914–1945” and ”The End of Jewish Modernity.”

At UMaine, Traverso will talk about his latest book, “Left-Wing Melancholia: Marxism, History, and Memory.”

The presentation is hosted by the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center. It is the last presentation in the “Life of Ideas” series curated by Frederic Rondeau, an assistant professor of French and assistant director of the Canadian-American Center at UMaine.

Rondeau created the series as part of the 2017–2018 symposium “Juvenescence/Obsolescence: Humanities Approaches to Aging Across the Ages.” The series consists of panel discussions by UMaine professors and lectures by visiting scholars.

More about the talk is online.

For more information or to request a disability accommodation, contact Rondeau at 581.2072, frederic.rondeau@maine.edu.