Professor Emeritus Carlo Ginzburg Passes Away

Carlo Ginzburg, the renowned Italian historian whose works have been translated all over the world, has died in Bologna at the age of 87. The son of the Jewish anti-fascist intellectual Leone Ginzburg and the writer Natalia Levi (née Ginzburg), he taught modern history at the University of Bologna and subsequently at Harvard, Yale (New Haven), Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles (where he also held a chair in the history of the Italian Renaissance). From 2006 to 2010, he taught the History of European Cultures at the Normale in Pisa. His research focuses on the cultural and social history of the modern era, with particular attention to the interaction between elite culture and popular culture. Throughout his long academic and scholarly career, and in his numerous books – which have been translated into over twenty languages – he has engaged in a profound reflection on the historian’s craft. 

This is an apt prologue to a lengthy eulogy that Professor Ginzburg deserves for his legendary scholarship and enduring contributions to our discipline and profession. His numerous writings ranged from the Renaissance to the modern period; many of his histories exemplify a mastery of the microhistorical method. And he deftly defended the truth value of history against the radical skepticism of postmodernist critiques. 

Professor Ginzburg taught at the UCLA Department of History from 1988 to 2006, when he held the Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies. Some of us are fortunate to have known him as students or colleagues and he is greatly missed.

Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam published an article about his late colleague in The Wire: https://thewire.in/history/carlo-ginzburg-obituary-history-italy-microhistory