Nancy Harrowitz

Nancy Harrowitz is the Chair of the Dept. of Romance Studies at Boston University.

Professor Harrowitz’s research and teaching interests include  nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian literature, science and  literature, and Holocaust Studies. She is a specialist in Primo Levi  and is currently writing a book on Levi, science and Jewish identity.  She has published Antisemitism, Misogyny and the Logic of Cultural  Difference: Matilde Serao and Cesare Lombroso (1995), has edited  Tainted Greatness: Antisemitism and Cultural Heroes (1995), and co- edited with Barbara Hyams Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger (1996). Her work includes articles on Primo Levi, Giorgio  Bassani, Carlo Levi, and Margherita Sarfatti among others.

She teaches courses on modern Italian literature and on fascism and the Holocaust in Italy, often including film as part of the curriculum. She also teaches courses in the comparative literature  program on Holocaust literature and film, and on Primo Levi and Holocaust literature.