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Professor Aristotle Kallis

Professor of Modern and Contemporary History

Degree: BA Hons (Athens), PhD (Edinburgh)

Associated research centres and groups: Twentieth Century

Current Teaching

HIST232: Nationalism and genocide in twentieth-century Europe

HIST233: The 'totalitarian' city: Fascist Rome, Nazi Berlin, and Soviet Moscow

HIST452: Researching modern history

Research Interests

My main research interests are situated in three main fields:

• the study ofextremism, with particular emphasis oninterwar fascism(generic concept and comparison of case-studies) and thecontemporary extreme/populist right. I am particularly interested in the ideological foundations of extremist discourses, the dynamics and patterns of theirdiffusion, as well as their 'mainstreaming' effect (namely, effect on 'mainstream' political parties and social attitudes);
• the forces behind the facilitation and radicalisation ofmass violencein a comparative, global context;
• totalitarian regimes, modernism, and the urban environment, with the main focus on Fascist Rome but also interests in the study of interwar Berlin and Moscow.

Potential Doctoral Proposals

I would be very interested in supervising students with interests in the following broad fields:

• extremist ideologies (20th-century and contemporary)
• anti-Semitism
• Islamophobia
• fascism and the contemporary extreme-right
• modern propaganda
• violence, genocide, terrorism
• modernism and urban studies
• German and Italian history/politics
• Greek interwar history

Current research projects

I am currently working on three projects:

• Fascist Rome (1922-43). This project, which combines urban, cultural and intellectual history, examines the way in which Fascism attempted to re-create 'space' and symbolism in Rome with a view to transforming the city as a statement of its universal(ist) project - in other words, as the symbolic 'sacred' space of a universal fascist 'political religion'. It analyses the Fascist regime's universalist intentions (placed in a wider framework of urbanistic debates, both inside Italy and across Europe/ the world) and examines the extent to which they were translated into practice in the two decades of Fascist rule.Research for the project has been funded by the British Academy (2007-08). A research monograph (titledRome, 1922-43: the making of the fascist capital)is expected to be published in 2012 (Palgrave Macmillan).
• Fascism, 'fascist regime', and 'para-fascism'. This project has evolved in the context of a partnership of thirteen international scholars, with two research workshops organised by Antonio Costa Pinto and myself in Lisbon (October 2009, February 2011). We are currently editing a collective volume that deals with the dynamics of the diffusion (and adaptation) of 'fascist' ideas and practices (pioneered in Fascist Italy and/or National Socialist Germany) across Europe during the 1920s/1930s; and the complex hybridisation that occurred at the time between fascist regimes and authoritarian dictatorships. Publication of this volume (to which I will also contribute a detailed, comparative theoretical chapter) is expected in late 2012.
• Authority, 'licence', and 'spaces of violence':on the dynamics of transgressive mass violence. This research project intends to provide new insights into how mass murderous violence is facilitated, unleashed, and diffused in a particular environment as a dynamic, poly-centric process. It starts from the premise that resort to extra-ordinary violence is a transgressive act that (i) becomes possible in the wake of a special derogation of ethical, cultural, and/ or legal norms; and (ii) usually produces the momentum for further, more profound trangressive behaviour, based on a combination of authorisation, empowerment, and initiative. The project focuses on the overarching mechanisms that legitimise and precipitate the discharge of violence as both collective and individual, hierarchical and spontaneous undertaking. At the heart of this analysis lies the concept oflicenceas the critical facilitator and precipitant of violence. In this context of this research licence refers to a mandate, derogation or dispensation that generates (and then contributes to) a habitat of violence - a specific milieu of extreme empowerment and diminished accountability for violence against other humans of a kind that, in 'normal' circumstances, would be proscribed. My main focus is on 'spaces of violence' - namely, incidental, institutional, ad hoc or invisible spaces where transgressive violence becomes the norm (whether for a limited or an indefinite period of time). I am especially interested in how mass violence unfolds as a spatially conditioned phenomenon in each case and how the mechanics of 'licence' define those spaces in the first instance. This research has brought me to a theoretical and empirical examination of different spaces (prisons, institutionalised camps, death camps or public locations where transgressive violence occurred through collective agency)

Major and recent publications

• "Fascism: a historiographical survey of a concept", in J Mellor (ed)Fascism: global theories, national experiences[in Spanish, Trotta Publications, 2012] - Forthcoming
• 'Framing' Romanità: the celebrations for the Bimillenario Augusteo and the Augusteo-Ara Pacis Project,Journal of Contemporary History,46/4 (2011):809-831
• 'In miglior tempo … ': what fascism did not build in Rome,Journal of Modern Italian Studies.16/1 (2011):59-83.25 p
• Fascism and the Jews: from the internationalization of fascism to a 'fascist anti-Semitism',Holocaust Studies,15/1-2 (2010):15-34
• Neither fascist nor authoritarian: The 4th of August regime in Greece (1936-1941) and the dynamics of fascistisation in 1930s Europe,East Central Europe,37/2-3 (2010):303-330
• "Nazi propaganda decision-making: the hybrid of 'modernity' and 'neo-feudalism' in Nazi wartime propaganda", in Antonio Costa Pinto (ed)Ruling Elites and Decision-Making in Fascist-era Dictatorships(New York: Columbia University Press/Social Sciences Monographs, 2009) 83-118
• Genocide and fascism: the eliminationist drive in fascist Europe(London: Routledge, 2008)
• "Fascism and Terror", in Michael Davis, Brett Bowden (eds),From Tyrannicide to Terrorism in Europe, 1605-2005(University of Queenland Press, 2008)
• National Socialist Propaganda in the Second World War(Basingstoke: Palgrave / Hardback ed: 2005; Paperback ed: 2007)
• "Operation Barbarossa, 'ordinary people' and the 'licence to kill'",Nations and Nationalism,7/3 (2007): 6-23
• "Fascism and Religion: The Metaxas Regime in Greece and the 'Third Hellenic Civilisation'. Some Theoretical Observations on 'Fascism', 'Political Religion' and 'Clerical Fascism',Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8/2 (2007): 229-46
• "A War within the War: Italy, Film, Propaganda and the Quest for Cultural Hegemony inEurope (1933-43)", in D Welch, R Vande Winkel (ads),Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of the Third Reich Cinema(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 137-56
• "Fascism, 'Charisma' and 'Charismatisation': Weber's Model of 'Charismatic Domination' and Interwar European Fascism",Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 7/1 (2006): 25-43
• "The Jewish Community of Salonica under Siege: The Antisemitic Violence of the Summer of 1931",Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 20/1 (2006): 34-56
• "Racial politics and biomedical totalitarianism in interwar Europe", in Marius Turda, Paul J Weindling (eds)Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, 1900-1940(Budapest/New York: CEU Press, 2006) 389-416
• " Der Niedergang, der Deutungsmacht. Die nationalsozialistische Propaganda im Kriegsverlauf" in J. Echternkamp (ed.),Das Dritte Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Vol 9/2, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005, pp. 203-50
• "'Fascism', 'Para-fascism' and 'Fascistization': On the Similarities of Three Conceptual Categories",European History Quarterly,33/2 (2003): 219-50
• "To Expand or not to Expand? Territory, Generic Fascism and the Quest for an 'Ideal Fatherland'",Journal of Contemporary History,38/2 (2003): 238-60
• The Fascism Reader(Routledge, 2003)
• Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansion in Italy and Germany (1919-1945)(London: Routledge, 2000)

Eprints Publications Repository and Bibliographic Database

Aristotle Kallis has 8 selected publication records listed on this webpage. Use links to access abstracts and full text where available. View all records to sort by date, type and title. For all ePrints records go to http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk

Other Interests and Hobbies

Photography (with enthusiasm compensating for a conspicuous lack of talent!); web design; cinema and theatre; travel; exploring urban spaces.

Associated Keywords: Biopolitics, Cities, Citizenship, Ethnicity, Europe, European, European identity, Foucault, Germany, Hannah Arendt, Historians, Historiography, History, History of medicine, Human rights, Italian, Nation, National identities, Politics, Self-determination, Transnationalisation, Urban studies, Utopianism, Violence

View all research activities, ePrints, news and events associated with Aristotle Kallis.

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