Dr Nico Pizzolato
Lecturer in American History
Location: Arts Two 3.31email: n.pizzolato@qmul.ac.uk
Dr Nico Pizzolato took his first degree at the Università di Palermo, Italy before moving to London where he gained his MA and PhD in History at the University College London. His doctoral thesis, and forthcoming book, focuses on labor migration and working class activism in 1960s Detroit and Turin. His work addresses the problem of how a transnational process such as Fordism produced comparable outbursts of social protest in places far apart. Since 2003 he has published articles in leading journals such as International Review of Social History, Labor History, Quaderni Storici, and Contemporary European History. Dr Pizzolato has previously taught at Università di Palermo, University College London, and University of Edinburgh.
Research interests:
Dr Pizzolato is interested in the interplay between racial representations, political identity, and social protest in American history. He is also interested in exploring these themes in a comparative and transnational perspective. His current research project, at the intersection of social, political, and cultural history, is on peonage - compulsory work in order to pay a real or alleged debt - in which he investigates the forms of unfree labour that persisted in the American South between the 1930s and the 1950s and the numerous groups and individuals who campaigned, organized, and protested against these practices.
Beyond American history, Dr Pizzolato has published essays on sexual crimes in early modern Sicily.
Publications:
Latest Publications
• ‘ “I Terroni in Città”: Revisiting Southern Migrants’ Militancy in Turin’s ‘Hot Autumn’, Contemporary European History (forthcoming)
• ‘Transnational Radicals: Labour Dissent and Political Activism in Detroit and Turin (1950–1970)’, International Review of Social History, 56, (2011), pp. 1-30
• ‘ “Con gran periculo della vita”: lo stupro nella diocesi di Monreale (1590-1680) in Renata Ago and Benedetta Borello (eds), Famiglie. Circolazione di beni, circuiti di affetti in età moderna (Roma: Viella, 2008), pp. 241-283
• ‘Revolution in a comic strip: Gasparazzo and the identity of southern migrants in Turin (1969-1975)’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 52, Supplement 15, (2007), pp. 59-75
• ‘Gli operai, gli immigrati, la rivoluzione. Detroit e Torino: un’ipotesi comparativa (1967-1973)’, Meridiana, n. 56 (2007), pp. 47-69
Undergraduate teaching:
Building the American NationAmerican Capitalism
The American Century