UCLA’s Eugen Weber Postdoctoral Fellowship
In July 2020, I was named the inaugural Eugen and Jacqueline Weber Post-Doctoral Scholar in European History at University of California, Los Angeles. During my 2020-2021 postdoctoral fellowship, I will be working towards the completion of my first monograph, which I have tentatively titled Cultivating Fascism: Wine and Politics in Mussolini’s Italy, by carrying out the remaining research and early composition for two of my planned four additional chapters. Additionally, I am teaching two upper-division undergraduate courses on modern European history.

Fulbright Research/Study Grant
I am pleased to announced that I have been awarded a 2018-2019 Fulbright Research Grant to Italy. During my year in Rome, I will be consulting source materials at a number of archives and libraries, conducting interviews with winemakers, completing my dissertation’s remaining chapters, volunteering periodically in the vineyards of Rome’s nearby castelli romani winemaking region, and delivering a public lecture at the International Library, “La Vigna” in Vicenza.

Professional Biography:

Brian J Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at California State University, Fresno. He writes and teaches courses on the political and cultural history of Italian Fascism, food and beverage history, the history of (trans)nationalism, and Digital and Public History. Griffith’s current research focuses on the history of industrial-scale winemaking and national identity in Mussolini’s Italy (1922-1945), the history of transnational volunteerism during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the history of neo-fascism in Italy (1950s-2010s). He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Cultivating Fascism: Wine, Politics, and Identity in Mussolini’s Italy.

Select Publications:

“Bacchus among the Blackshirts: Wine Making, Consumerism and Identity in Fascist Italy, 1919-1937,” Contemporary European History 29:4 (November 2020): 394-415.

“(Inter)National Spirits: On the Cultural Politics of the ‘Cocktail Craze’ in Fascist Italy, 1920s-1930s,” in David Inglis and Hang Kei Ho, eds., Drinks in Vogue: Exploring the Changing Worlds of Fashions and Beverages (New York: Routledge, 2024): 77-103.

“Journey to Fascism,” Hoover Digest: Research + Commentary on Public Policy No. 4 (October 2022): 201-219.

Bringing Bacchus to the People: Winemaking and “Making Italians” in Fascist Italy (2020)

Claudio Fogu
Erika Rappaport
Lisa Jacobson
Carol Helstosky