David Ward

Professor of Italian Studies and chair of the Department of Italian Studies, David Ward received his B.A. degree (with honors) in English and American Studies from University of East Anglia, Norwich, Great Britain. After a number of years teaching English and translating in Italy, he came to the United States to pursue graduate studies. He received an M.A. in 1996 and a Ph.D. in 1998 from the Department of Romance Studies, Cornell University. After a year of teaching as a Lecturer in the Department of Romance Languages at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, he came to Wellesley College in 1989 where he was awarded tenure in 1995, and promoted to Full Professor in 2002.

David Ward is author of three books: two in English, A Poetics of Resistance: Narrative and the Writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Madison, NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995) and Antifascisms: Cultural Politics in Italy, 1943-46 Benedetto Croce and the Liberals, Carlo Levi and the ‘Actionists¹ (Madison, NJ and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996); and one in Italian, Carlo Levi:  Gli italiani e la paura della libertà (Carlo Levi:  The Italians and the Fear of Liberty) (Milan:  Rizzoli/Nuova Italia, 2002). Several of his articles and chapters have been published by collections of essays and scholarly journals, most notably the chapter "Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy," in the Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski and Rebecca West; “Primo Levi’s Turin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007), edited by Robert S. Gordon;
“Mysteries about Mysteries,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 13:1: 93-102; and in Italian, “L’otto settembre e dintorni ne I piccoli maestri di Luigi Meneghello,” Prospettive italiane.  Prosa e critica degli italianisti del Nord America (Milan:  Greco & Greco, 2006), Special Issue of Nuova prosa 44: 111-126 and “Il passato del Piemonte nel presente di Piero Gobetti” in Athanor, New Series 18: 11: 150-156.  In spring 2008, he completed a study of the Italian antifascist intellectual Piero Gobetti, entitled “Piero Gobetti’s New World:  Antifascism, Liberalism, Writing.”  The latter was a project for which Professor Ward received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in 1999.

Profile last updated: 09/08

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