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The Governing Council of the UAB has today approved the appointment of the Italian historian Enzo Traverso as an honorary doctorate at the proposal of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. Traverso is one of the historians with the most international projection today, especially for his contributions to cultural and intellectual history, and for the interdisciplinary nature of his works. The university will pay tribute to him at the investiture ceremony, still undated, which will take place soon.
Traverso graduated in history from the University of Genoa and obtained his doctorate from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1989, under the direction of Michael Löwy. Professor at that same school and at the TMV Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, from 1995 to 2012 he was a teacher and researcher at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens. Since 2013, he has held the Susan Chair
He has dedicated special attention to the German and Central European intellectual world and, in particular, to the German-Jewish intellectual milieu. One of his most recent and notable contributions is a voluminous study on the intellectual history of contemporary revolutions that has been considered one of the most important works published in recent years. Traverso’s work has also focused on other topics such as what he calls the period of “European civil war” that includes the interval between 1914 and 1945 – that is, the two world conflagrations and the interwar period -, the question of totalitarianism, the relationship between memory and history or the methodological and theoretical problems of historiography.
Traverso is also characterized by constant dialogue with other disciplines such as sociology, political science or philosophy. In his works, thinkers such as Hanna Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Günther Anders, Carl Schmitt, Max Weber, Pierre Bourdieu or Zygmunt Bauman, as well as literary figures such as Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Paul Celan, Primo Levi or Susan Sontag.
The new honorary doctor is the author of more than two hundred publications, including monographs (widely translated), book chapters and articles in academic and cultural journals. Regarding his relationship with the UAB, Traverso has been collaborating for 15 years with the department of Modern and Contemporary History, with the Center for Studies on Dictatorships and Democracies (Cedid-UAB) and with the Research Group on War, Political Radicalism and Social Conflict (Grecs) cooperating in the work of researchers and participating in conferences, courses and other academic activities.
In the presentation of Traverso as a candidate for the honorary doctorate, the professor of Contemporary History Pere Ysàs has praised his informative capacity and his firm positions in the public debate – with the recent example, in a context such as the North American academic world, of his conviction to the actions of Hamas and Israel in the current conflict in Gaza – and has described him as “an intellectual committed to the time in which he has lived.”
