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Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities & Arts
Dr Charles Burdett
C.F.Burdett@bristol.ac.uk Tel: 0117 9288610
Charles Burdett studied Modern Languages (French and Italian) at Oxford University (BA 1989) where he also studied as a postgraduate, writing his doctoral thesis (awarded 1994) on Italian literary culture between the wars. He taught at Cardiff University (1993-97) and has worked at Bristol since 1997 as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer (2002), and Reader in Modern Italian Studies (2009).
2000 ‘Journeys to Italian East Africa 1936-1941: Narratives of Settlement’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 5 (2): 207-226.
2000 ‘Journeys to the Other Spaces of Fascist Italy’, Modern Italy, 5 (1): 7-23.
1999 ‘Different Visions of Space: Italian Fascist Writers and the United States’, New Readings, 5: 9-25.
Charles Burdett studied Modern Languages (French and Italian) at Oxford University (BA 1989) where he also studied as a postgraduate, writing his doctoral thesis (awarded 1994) on Italian literary culture between the wars. He taught at Cardiff University (1993-97) and has worked at Bristol since 1997 as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer (2002), and Reader in Modern Italian Studies (2009).
Research Interests
The principal areas of his research are Italian culture under Fascism; the representation of colonialism; travel writing, and theories of inter-cultural contact. His most recent book, Journeys through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars (2007, paperback 2010) sought to determine how the inhabitants and cultures of other countries appeared to Italian writers and journalists of the 1920s and 1930s. Using a range of theoretical perspectives, it examined representations of Libya and Italian East Africa, Spain during the Civil War, Nazi Germany, Russia and the United States. As a development from his work on travel in the inter-war period, he has published recently on the significance of Mussolini’s journey to Libya in 1937 and on the eschatological elements of Fascist colonial discourse. His work also attempts to place Italian representations of the reality of Fascism in a transnational perspective, and he has edited collections on European memories of the Second World War (1999) and on European travel writing of the 1930s (2003). He is currently working on a study of Italian representations of the Islamic world from the period of Fascist rule to the present. He is engaged in collaborative projects with colleagues in the UK and in Italy.
He is on the editorial board of Italian Studies and he is a member of the Peer Review College of the AHRC. From was from 2007-2010 he held the research portfolio for the Society for Italian Studies and is now Chair of the subject association.
Selected Publications
Books
2007 Journeys Through Fascism: Italian Travel Writing between the Wars, Berghahn Books.
2002 Cultural Encounters: European Travel-Writing in the 1930s, eds. C. Burdett and D. Duncan, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
1999 European Memories of the Second World War, eds. C. Burdett, C. Gorrara, H. Peitsch, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
1999 Vincenzo Cardarelli and his Contemporaries: Fascist Politics and Literary Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Edited Journals
2003 ‘Approaches to Colonialism’, Special Issue, Modern Italy 8 (1), eds. J. Andall, C. Burdett, D. Duncan.
2003 ‘Italian Colonialism: Historical Perspectives’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8 (3), eds. J. Andall, C. Burdett, D. Duncan.
Articles/Chapters
‘Italian Fascism, Messianic Eschatology and the Representation of Libya’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions (Forthcoming).
‘Mussolini’s Journey to Libya (1937): Travel, Ritual and Transculturation’ in National Belongings: Hybridity in Italian Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures, eds J. Andall and D. Duncan, 2010.
‘Travel and Writing in Fascist Italy’, Italian Politics and Society, No.67, Spring 2009, pp. 14-21.
‘Idee di colonialismo nella letteratura di viaggio tra le due guerre’, in Africa Orientale Italiana 70 anni dopo, eds. B. Carcangił and T. Negash, Carocci, 2008, pp.301-315.
2007 'Italian War-Correspondents and the Spanish Civil War: Propaganda and Autobiography', in P. Hainsworth and M.McLaughlin (Eds.), Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy, (pp.133-145) (Oxford: Legenda).
2005 'Colonial Associations and the Memory of East Africa', in Jacqueline Andall & Derek Duncan (Eds.), Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory, (pp. 125-142), (New York: Peter Lang).
2003 ‘Italian Fascism and Utopia’, History of the Human Sciences, 16 (1): 93-108.
2002 ‘Signs of Roman Rule: Italian Tourists and Travellers in Greece and Egypt’ in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, eds. C. Burdett and D. Duncan, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books: 107-119.
2000 ‘Journeys to Italian East Africa 1936-1941: Narratives of Settlement’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 5 (2): 207-226.
2000 ‘Journeys to the Other Spaces of Fascist Italy’, Modern Italy, 5 (1): 7-23.
1999 ‘Different Visions of Space: Italian Fascist Writers and the United States’, New Readings, 5: 9-25.