Matteo Caponi (joint PhD Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa – Université Paris Ouest Nanterre-La Défense, 2010; Laurea Università di Firenze, 2004) is Marie Curie fellow at the University of Genoa (Italy) and visiting scholar at Fordham University, NYC. He is also a founding member of the editorial board of the journal Modernism. Rivista di Storia del Riformismo Religioso in Età Contemporanea (Romolo Murri Foundation, Italy). His current research project Catholicism and the “Negro Question”: Religion, Racism, and Antiracism in a Transnational Perspective (United States and Europe, 1934-1968) aims at writing a cultural history of the circulation of ‘interracialist’ ideals and practices across church networks, outlets and intelligentsias, so as to point out the way and the limits within which antiracism became gradually mainstream in the Catholic panorama.
During his education and post-doctoral training at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Dr. Caponi has been focusing on religious history, with particular emphasis on the relationship between Catholicism, nationalism, warfare, and war remembrance. His PhD dissertation Una Chiesa in guerra, which was published in 2018 by Viella, is an investigation of an important case study during the First World War (the diocese of Florence) addressing the most significant topics of war mobilization. Furthermore, he explored the problem of political sanctity: in particular, the way St. Francis of Assisi has been imagined as the patron saint of Italy. His book on this subject, Il patrono dell’Italia repubblicana, is expected by the end of 2021.
Among his more recent publications are: “Traces des guerres mondiales dans les cathédrales italiennes”, in X. Boniface and L. Dessaivre (eds.), Cathédrales en guerre XVIe-XXIe siècle (2020); “«Con eterna voce al mondo intero ammoniscono fraternità»: i ‘martiri di Kindu’ e il culto dei soldati caduti per la pace”, in M. Paiano (ed.), Pietà e guerre del Novecento/ Piety and Wars in the Twentieth Century, special issue of Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà (2019); “I cattolici italiani e l’insurrezione ungherese del 1956: anticomunismo, violenza insurrezionale, martirio”, Italia Contemporanea (2017). He also edited Santi patroni: politica, religione, identità nell’Europa del secondo Novecento (special issue of Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo, 2017) and co-edited Modernismo e antimodernismo cattolico nella Grande Guerra (special issue of Modernism, 2017).