2015 Programme
Event #22
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Marc Bloch: from the Sorbonne to the Gestapo prisons
Marc Bloch (1886-1944) is one of the greatest historians of the 20th century. In 1929 he founded the periodical Annales d’histoire économique et sociale with Lucien Febvre, along with the Annales school, which would revolutionise historiography worldwide. The so-called histoire-bataille – the old historiography that dealt only of politics and wars – was exchanged for the approach that is still accepted today, which also looks at ideology and economy, at the history of daily life, at women and common people. However, Bloch was not just a historian: he was a French citizen at a time when hard choices had to be made. A decorated officer during World War I and again in World War II, a French and Jewish patriot, Bloch took part in the Resistance up until his capture, torture and execution by the Nazis.
Alessandro Barbero is a historian and a writer and a tenured professor of Medieval History at Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale e Vercelli. He writes for La Stampa and Tuttolibri. He is a contributor on the television program Superquark and the shows Il tempo e la storia and a.C.d.C., broadcast by Rai Storia. His publications include: Benedette guerre. Crociate e jihad («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2009), Lepanto. La battaglia dei tre imperi («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2010), Donne, madonne, mercanti e cavalieri. Sei storie medievali («i Libri del Festival della Mente», 2013), published by Laterza; Gli occhi di Venezia (Mondadori, 2011); Il divano di Istanbul (Sellerio, 2011); Dietro le quinte della Storia. La vita quotidiana attraverso il tempo, written with P. Angela (Rizzoli, 2012); Le Ateniesi (Mondadori, 2015); Costantino il vincitore (Salerno Editrice, 2016); Le parole del papa (2016) and Caporetto (2017), published by Laterza. Il divano di Istanbul (2011), Alabama (2021) and Poeta al comando (2022) and Brick for stone (2023), published by Sellerio.
Event #6
Alessandro Barbero
The historian's responsibility. Gaetano Salvemini: from Socialist interventionism to anti-Fascism

Event #8Approfonditamente
Marco Rossi-Doria, Giulia Tosoni
Kids and school: what, how and where are they learning

Event #13Approfonditamente
Adolfo Ceretti, Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Alfredo Verde
Gender-based violence: Perpetrators, victims and models of intervention.

Event #22
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Marc Bloch: from the Sorbonne to the Gestapo prisons

Event #25Approfonditamente
Marco Belpoliti, Gianfranco Marrone, Anna Stefi
Laziness, fatigue, and our constant running

Event #26
Eugenio Borgna, Simonetta Fiori
Knowing ourselves and knowing others: a different way of being responsible

Event #35
James R. Flynn, Armando Massarenti
Without an alibi: a voyage across life’s greatest questions

Event #38
Alessandro Barbero
The historian’s responsibility. Ernst Kantorowicz: from the Freikorps to McCarthyism

Event #57Children / Kids
Sante Bandirali e Lorenza Pozzi di uovonero
Read like you’ve never read before
