PRIN2017 - Italian Scholars in the face of the Race Laws (1938-1945): Ancient Historians and Jurists

Conceived on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of the race laws, the project has a double aim. It will offer an up-to-date analysis of the race laws in Italy and of their impact on the Academic life, especially in the fields of classical and legal studies. It will also contribute to reconstruct the biographies and the intellectual profiles of some important scholars of the ancient world that were affected by the anti-Jewish purges (especially Edoardo Volterra, Mario Attilio Levi, Piero Treves, Aldo Neppi Modona, and Mario Segre). The years of the racial segregation and of the deportations (1938-1945) will be taken into account, in comparison to the immediately preceding and following periods. Examinations of archival sources will be fundamental, in order to analyze unpublished or understudied documents. Research’s results (conference proceedings and monographies) will be published in an open access form on a website, where archival documents accompained by a brief explanation and a bio-bibliographical database of the investigated figures will also be available. Meetings with schools and cultural centers are also scheduled, together with a final congress aimed at a wider public.