Year Started in Program:

Tuesday, 3:00-5:00PM and by appointment

Dissertation Title:

Shahrazad A. Shareef is a PhD Candidate at Duke University in the Program in Literature. She focuses on European intellectual history, the history of social science, and labor history after the second world war. She is a writing a dissertation that explores the transformations in the practice of social science at Svimez, Italy’s Association for the Industrial Development of the South, between 1946 and 1963. This project looks at tension between social research and development economics inside of the organization as well as various modeling practiced pursued by research staff. During the spring 2020 semester, she is serving as a teaching fellow for a survey of the history of science. 

Shahrazad received her B.A. from Duke University and M.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a Visiting PhD Researcher at the University of Bologna in the Department of History, Culture, and Civilization from 2017-2018.  

Committee Members:

Michael Hardt, Roberto Dainotto, Saskia Ziolkowski and Mark Hansen

Research Interests:  

I am interested in the intellectual tradition of Italian historicism during the 20th century with a focus on Marxist philosophers like Antonio Labriola, Antonio Gramsci, and Benedetto Croce. My research goal is to understand the fate of the philosophy of praxis, a high culture dialectically fused to a low culture in which intellectuals affirm and subvert the popular philosophy of the masses in order to create a critical and coherent philiosophy, underwritng the ascension of the popular classes to a universal level. My dissertation, "Gramsci 1954: Italian Intellectuals, the RAI, and the Philosophy of Praxis" asks about transformations in the character of philosophy in 1954, at a moment when a new strata of Italian intellectuals emerged in connection with the expansion of the RAI and the beginning of national television service. This interdisciplinary project, located in the throes of the mid-century economic and cultural transition in Italian history is simultaneously in conversation with Marxism, media studies, and intellectual history.