Charles L. Leavitt IV, recipient of the 2025-2026 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Rome Prize, is the William Payden Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Associate Director of the Center for Italian Studies at the University of Notre Dame. A Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies and the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Leavitt studies modern Italian culture in a comparative context. He was awarded the 2022 Society for Italian Studies Prize for his essay "Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust" and the 2021 Book Prize from the American Association for Italian Studies for his first monograph, Italian Neorealism: A Cultural History (University of Toronto Press, 2020).
How has your time in Rome shaped or shifted the direction of your project so far?
I'm in Rome researching and writing The War Between Black and White, a book about the Allied occupation of Italy during the Second World War. The investigation focuses on a place that's little remembered today, but which was once infamous across the globe: Tombolo, a Tuscan pine forest that came to be known as il paradiso nero (the Black Paradise) because of the African American soldiers encamped there. I've spent my time at the American Academy poring over a wealth of material: tranches of archival documents; newspapers from nearly every continent; fifty or more novels, poems, and plays in half a dozen languages; films, radio broadcasts, and other representations in the international media. I could never have uncovered so many resources, let alone studied them with the care they deserve, if I hadn't been invited to spend the year at the American Academy in Rome.
For me, the promise made in the Academy's motto, "time and space to think and work," has proven invaluable. Without the time that I've been given here—time that I've spent thinking and working—I would never have managed to complete this project. It would have been impossible, all but unimaginable. When I publish The War Between Black and White, it will be entirely because of the Rome Prize, because I was given the time to work in this idyllic space.
What part of your daily routine or environment at the Academy has most influenced you and your work?
I've come to cherish the conversations that develop spontaneously over lunch here at the Academy. I tend to work each morning in the beautiful Ross Library, reading and writing in perfect quiet. By 1 p.m., I'm ready to break the silence. I'm so grateful to have the opportunity every day to catch up with the other residents while we all enjoy the wonderful lunches prepared by the Rome Sustainable Food Project. I've met such fascinating people, learned so much, and taken many new ideas with me into the library, where I spend nearly every afternoon. That routine—breaking up extended periods of deep concentration with friendly conversations over lunch—has sustained me throughout my time in Rome.
Have any encounters—with people, places, or new information—opened up new paths in your research or practice in the past months?
Working at the American Academy alongside so many accomplished scholars, artists, and architects has helped me refine my thinking, expand my inquiries, and advance my research in so many unexpected ways. I could, and should, credit everyone here, each and every one of the other Fellows, so it would be invidious to name just one. Perhaps, then, it would be better to emphasize my encounters beyond the Academy. I've been fortunate to be invited this year to discuss my work at universities in Rome, Naples, Genova, and Bologna, and I've received insightful feedback from the students and colleagues at those institutions. Enrica Asquer, Luca Barra, Lorenzo Benadusi, Guri Schwarz, Paolo Noto, Matteo Pretelli, Caterina Romeo, Neelam Srivastava, and many others have been so generous with their time and so insightful in their comments.
Being in Rome, I also had the chance to attend a performance of a play, Pia e Damasco, which portrays some of the events that I'm here to research. Before the show, I met the playwright, Patrizia Pasqui, and my conversation with her opened up new vistas. I couldn't have seen the show, and would never have met Patrizia, if I hadn't been able to spend this year at the American Academy.