Brendan Leonard Connors – PhD Student
Phd Program in History, Cultural heritage and International studies
I began studying Italian in 2009 in Massachusetts before coming to Italy for three weeks in the summer of that year to study medieval history and Romanesque churches in Tuscany. After finishing my degree in history at Bridgewater State University, I continued to study Italian on my own while working as a history teacher in Massachusetts. In 2013 I returned to Italy to complete a master’s degree with Middlebury College. During this period I focused on modern political history in Italy and the organization of political parties, specifically my thesis was on the transformation of the 5 Star Movement into a political party. For four months I attended political meetings and other activities of the 5 Star Movement in Florence.
During this period I developed a great interest for the history of the Italian Republic and, having decided to continue with my studies, began to develop plans for a research project for a doctoral program. I enlisted in the competition for entrance to the Università degli Studi di Cagliari for the opportunity to conduct research on campus and in the Italian archives in Rome and Florence as well as those in the United States. It is also important to me to continue using Italian in my daily life which is not possible in other countries. In the summer of 2014 I visited Cagliari and the history of the city as well as the natural beauty of Sardinia were overwhelming. I had the opportunity to meet several doctoral candidates in the history department in Cagliari and I was impressed by their preparation and passion for history. My research project in Cagliari will focus on the international relations of the 1950s between Italy and the United States. I plan to reconstruct the cultural and political formation of two American ambassadors to Italy (Clare Boothe-Luce and James David Zellerbach) in the period of 1953-1961, a time period in Italy that witnessed the end of Alcide De Gasperi’s centrism and the beginning of the Italian center-left.