Paul Garfinkel

Areas of interest

Modern Italy, criminal and juvenile justice, and Italian cinema.

Education

• PhD, Comparative History, Brandeis University
• MA, Comparative History, Brandeis University
• BA, Anthropology, Macalester College

Biography

A specialist in modern Italian (and European) studies, Paul Garfinkel has two distinct scholarly identities. As a researcher, he is a legal historian who focuses on penal law and criminal justice in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy. He is currently working on two projects: (1) a history of internal exile in Liberal Italy [1861–1922] and (2) an archival study of the Italian juvenile court from its inception under Mussolini in 1934 to the Second World War. In the classroom, his research interest in legal history gives way to teaching modern Italy through film. He offers a wide range of cinema-based courses such as Fascist-era film, the Sicilian Mafia, Italian-style comedy, Fascism in historical memory, neorealism, and the "dolce vita" of the postwar boom years.