Benedetta Carnaghi is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. As a historian of modern Italy, Germany, and France, she examines totalitarianism from below by exploring the everyday experience of terror under authoritarian regimes. Her first book manuscript, “Agents of Betrayal: A Comparative History of Fascist and Nazi Spies, 1927-1945,” draws on previously unexplored police records and court trials to tell the stories of the largely forgotten spies who enforced Nazi and Fascist repression. Her second book project, “Making Fun of the Fascists: Humor Against the Leader Cult in Italy, France, and Germany, 1922-1945,”…
Benedetta Carnaghi is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. As a historian of modern Italy, Germany, and France, she examines totalitarianism from below by exploring the everyday experience of terror under authoritarian regimes. Her first book manuscript, “Agents of Betrayal: A Comparative History of Fascist and Nazi Spies, 1927-1945,” draws on previously unexplored police records and court trials to tell the stories of the largely forgotten spies who enforced Nazi and Fascist repression. Her second book project, “Making Fun of the Fascists: Humor Against the Leader Cult in Italy, France, and Germany, 1922-1945,” conceptualizes humor as a form of resistance to authoritarianism. She compares anti-fascist satire in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Vichy France, exploring forms of humorous opposition ranging from popular jokes to print publications and comic radio broadcasts. Throughout, she argues that laughter functions as a multifaceted and multilingual form of transnational resistance: a psychological weapon, a defense mechanism, a morale booster, and a means of countering the false propaganda of authoritarian leaders. Dr. Carnaghi was previously a British Academy Newton International Fellow at Durham University, an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin, and a visiting lecturer at Cornell University. She earned her doctorate in History from Cornell in 2021, winning the Messenger-Chalmers Prize for the Best Dissertation on Human Progress & the Evolution of Civilization.
