Department of History

Giuliana Chamedes

Position title: Associate Professor of History

Email: chamedes@wisc.edu

Phone: 608.263.1826

Address:
Office: 5101 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 4027 Mosse Humanities
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Office Hours: TBA

Giuliana Chamedes headshot

Biography

I’m a historian of international and global history, mostly focused on Europe. I study how European internationalist movements tried to go global—while often remaining tethered to exclusionary ideas about justice and solidarity. Empire and its afterlives sit at the center of my work.

My first book, A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe (Harvard University Press, 2019), argues that after World War I, the Vatican developed its own brand of internationalism meant to rival liberal and communist versions. From 1918 to the mid-1960s, the Church’s “Catholic International” deployed international law, public diplomacy, and new media to de-privatize religion and reinforce ties with European imperial states. Drawing on archival research across Europe and North America, I show how these efforts strengthened fascism and Christian Democracy and helped lay the groundwork for a transnational anticommunist crusade well before the Cold War officially began. I revisited some of these themes in a 2023 review essay in the Times Literary Supplement.

My current book, Unpaid Debts: Socialist Internationalism and the Birth of Financialization after Empire (under contract with Princeton University Press), offers an alternative economic history of the past seventy years—and a new history of the democratic Left. From the mid-twentieth century through the 1980s, social democrats and democratic socialists advanced ambitious plans to redistribute wealth globally in a decolonizing world. Why did those plans falter? Drawing on interviews and archives across three continents—from Caracas and New Delhi to Accra, Paris, and New York—the book reframes financialization not as destiny, but as the outcome of political struggle. Things could have turned out otherwise.

I am also at work on Decolonization and the Remaking of Europe (under contract with Princeton, co-authored with Udi Greenberg). The book argues that decolonization reshaped Europe as profoundly as the Cold War or the fall of Communism. We trace how actors ranging from radical feminists and immigrant labor leaders to police officials redefined their agendas in the wake of imperial withdrawal—and how decolonization spurred a retrenchment into racialized and exclusionary visions of “Europeanness.” The legacies of that history are still with us today.

Other current research projects include 99 Takes on the Killing of Alex Pretti: An Exploration in Political-Historical Method (contract under negotiation), a booklet on the history of global social democracy, and perpetually unfinished reflections on the history of the European radical right and the global history of anti-fascism. Articles forthcoming in 2026 examine fascist imperialism, the mainstreaming (and marginalization) of anti-fascism after the 1940s, how the history of decolonization upends standard historical periodizations, and the backstory to why French social democrats embraced privatization as early as 1971.

I teach courses on imperialism and decolonization, internationalism, fascism and anti-fascism, religion, and political economy. My graduate and undergraduate courses explore how history is a practical discipline for building a more just future. At all levels, I strive to help my students build confidence, grow their passions, and find their footing in academia and beyond. I am privileged to have advised dozens of graduate and undergraduate students, who have gone on to become academics, alt-ac pioneers, labor organizers, professional athletes, policy makers, lawyers, and full-time advocates for criminal justice reform.

Within the profession, I regularly organize talk series and workshops, referee manuscripts for many presses and historical journals, and sit on award committees for the ACLS, the American Historical Association, the Society for Italian Historical Studies, and the European Science Foundation. I have been a contributing editor to the American Historical Review History Lab, Contemporary European History, French Politics, Culture & Society, and the Journal of Contemporary History. I’m part of the Public Humanities Initiative at UW-Madison, on the steering committee of the Havens-Wright Center for Social Justice, and a member of the UW Press Editorial Board. Beyond the University, I volunteer at WORT community radio and frequently partner with local public high schools. I am a member of Local #233.

Education

Ph.D., Columbia
M.Phil., Cambridge
B.A., Brown

Books

Selected Publications

  • Book in progress: Decolonization and the Remaking of Europe, with Udi Greenberg (under contract with Princeton University Press)
  • Book in progress: Unpaid Debts: Socialist Internationalism and the Birth of Financialization after Empire (under contract with Princeton University Press)
  • “Fascist Imperialism and the Problem of Exceptionalism,” in Fascism Now: Reconsidering the Present Fascist Debates, ed. Skye Doney (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, forthcoming)
  • “Internalizing Structural Adjustment: The French Socialist Party, Privatization, and Financialization, 1974-1997,” in La ritirata dello Stato? Le privatizzazioni italiane nel contesto internazionale [“The Retreat of the State? The International Context of Privatization in Italy”], ed. Giuliano Garavini (Rome: Viella Press, forthcoming)
  • “The Dreamwork of Decolonization,” The American Historical Review, AHR Historical Lab Forum on “Decolonization and the Durability of Empire since 2025” (forthcoming).
  • “Unpaid Debts: The New International Economic Order and Jamaica’s Struggle to Remake Socialist Internationalism,” The American Historical Review (September 2025): 1039-1069.
  • “Boundaries of Belonging: The Welfare State in the Wake of Decolonization,” with Matthew Sohm, Contemporary European History 32, 2 (May 2023): 1-3.
  • “How to Do Things with Words: Antifascism as a Differentially Mobilizing Ideology, from the Popular Front to the Black Power Movement,” Journal of the History of Ideas 84, 1 (January 2023): 127-155.
  • “Will Mario Draghi’s Center Hold?” Dissent Magazine (March 17 2021).
  • “Transnationalizing the Spanish Civil War,”Contemporary European History (July 2020): 261-263.
  • “The New International Economic Order, Utopian Realism, and the Recovery of an Alternative Vision for Global Governance,” Duke Global Working Paper (May 2019).
  • “New Histories of Internationalism,” Journal of World History 31, 4 (December 2020): 797-804.
  • “The New International Economic Order and the Recovery of an Alternative Vision for Global Governance,” Duke Global Working Paper (May 2019)
  • “Transatlantic Catholicism and the Making of the ‘Christian West,’” in The TransAtlantic Reconsidered, Susanne Lachenicht and Charlotte Lerg, eds. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)
  • “Pius XII, Rights Talk and the Dawn of the Religious Cold War,” in Religion and Human Rights, Devin Pendas, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
  • “The Vatican, Nazi-Fascism, and the Making of Transnational Anticommunism in the 1930s,” Journal of Contemporary History 51,2 (2016): 261-290.
  • “Introduction: Decolonization and Religion in the French Empire,” with Elizabeth Foster, French Politics, Culture, & Society 33, 2 (summer 2015): 1-12.
  • “The Catholic Origins of Economic Development after World War II,” French Politics, Culture, & Society 33, 2 (summer 2015): 55-75.
  • “Catholics, Antisemitism, and the Human Rights Swerve,” The Immanent Frame (June 2015)
  • “The Vatican and the Reshaping of the European International Order after World War I,” The Historical Journal, 56 (December 2013): 955-976.
  • “La Giac di Gedda di fronte alla crisi europea,'” in Luigi Gedda nella storia, Paolo Trionfini and Simon Ferrantin, eds. (Rome: Studium, 2013), pp. 325-336.
  • “Cardinal Pizzardo and the Internationalization of Catholic Action,” in Gouvernement pontifical sous Pie XI, Laura Pettinaroli, ed. (Rome: École française de Rome, 2012)
  • “Primo Tapia and the Mexican Agrarian Revolt,” with artist Christopher Cardinale, in Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World, eds. Paul Buhle and Nicole Schulman (New York: Verso, 2005)

Invited Talks & Research Presentations

  • “Keynote: Unpaid Debts and Socialist Internationalism,” University of Coimbra, November 2026
  • “Who’s Afraid of the 1970s?” What Time Is It? Turning Points and Ruptures in Global Economic Governance, culminating conference of the Histories and Futures of Global Governance Reform initiative, jointly organized by Quinn Slobodian and Christy Thornton, Boston University, May 2026
  • “One Battle after Another: Socialist Internationalism and the Globe,” Johns Hopkins University, April 2026
  • “Alternate Futures, Freedom Paths, and How to Decolonize the State” Brown University, April 2026
  • “Periodizing Internationalism,” Rethinking Internationalism, culminating conference, Birkbeck, University of London, March 2026
  • “Against the Imperial Order: Anti-Colonial Economics and Federalism,” The New School, February 2026
  • “Keynote: Decolonizing the Catholic Church,” Pius XII and Decolonization: Catholicism in North Africa and the Levant, 1939–1958, Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, November 2025
  • “Financialization as a Response to Decolonization,” Johns Hopkins University, November 2025
  • “Illiberal Internationalisms as Anticipatory Phenomena,” The University of Amsterdam, September 2025
  • “The Explosion of Feminist Economics and Structural Adjustment,” Dartmouth College, July 2025
  • “Genealogies of Transnational Antifascism,” European Social Science History Conference, Leiden, March 2025
  • “Socialism, Barbarism, or Economic Liberalization,” Cornell University, March 2024
  • “Genealogies Real and Imagined: The 1970s and Today,” The Crisis of the 1970s and the Reshaping of the International Order, American Historical Association, San Francisco, January 2024
  • “Natural Resources and Economic Decolonization,” Natural Resources, Sovereignty and Markets: Revisiting Socio-Economic Histories of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Harvard University, June 2023
  • “From Nationalization to Privatization: Changing Repertoires of the Socialist Left,” Università Roma III, April 2023
  • “Dreams Differed: Global Inequality and the Failed Promise of the 1970s,” Kandersteg Seminar, New York University/Switzerland, April 2023
  • “(Dis)organized Labor and European Integration in the Wake of Decolonization,” Harvard University, November 2022
  • “Mobilizing against Multinationals: From the Right of Economic Sovereignty to the European Rescue of the Nation-State (Again),” Center for European and Mediterranean Studies, New York University, November 2022
  • “Revisiting Hegemony,” Columbia University, New York, May 2022
  • “Europe from the Margins,” Defining Global Europe. Ideas, Themes and Concepts, University of Trento, Italy, February 2022
  • “Keynote: What We Choose to Remember,” Pius XII (1939-1958) and the Low Countries. Two years after the opening of the Vatican Archives–First results, new insights, research perspectives, Academia Belgica and the Royal Dutch Institute, Rome, February 2022
  • “On Religious Freedom and Oppression,” The Past and Present of Christian Democracy, Budapest, September 2021
  • “The Pius XII papers,” War and Genocide, Construction and Change: The Global Pontificate of Pius XII, Rome, June 2021
  • “How to Do Things With Words: Antifascism as a Differentially Mobilizing Ideology,” American University in Paris, April 2021
  • “The Coup that Shook the World: Chile’s 9/11 and the Reinvention of the European Left,” Institute for Research in the Humanities, UW-Madison, April 2021
  • “A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe,” Washington History Seminar, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, February 2021
  • “Catholic Internationalism,” Oxford University, Seminar in Modern European History, November 2020
  • “A Transnational Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle against Liberalism and Communism” Free University of Berlin,  Berlin, June 2020
  • “A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe,” Washington History Seminar, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, March 2020
  • “A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe,” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, March 2020
  • “Fascism and Anti-Fascism,” Annenberg Seminar, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, October 2019
  • “Transnational Solidarities, Neo-Liberal Economics, and the Chicago Boys in Chile,” Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, August 2019
  • “Christian Conceptions of Global Order,” King’s College, London, June 2019
  • “Modernization Theory is Dead / Long Live Modernization Theory,” Global History and Catholicism conference, Notre Dame University, South Bend, IND, May 2019
  • “A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe,” Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin at Madison, May 2019
  • “The Five-Star Movement, the Northern League, and the Historical Roots of Anti-Politics in Italy,” University of Wisconsin at Madison, Division of Continuing Studies, April 2019
  • “The New International Economic Order and the Recovery of an Alternative Vision for Global Governance,” Realism, Liberal Internationalism, History: Conceiving a New Research Agenda, Duke University, Center for International and Global Studies, Durham, NC, February 2019
  • “The Vatican Agenda after 1945,” Religion, Communism, and the Cold War, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, May 2018
  • “Catholic Internationalism after World War II: The Vatican’s Role in Early Postwar Nation-Building,” 25th International Conference of Europeanists, Chicago, IL, March 2018
  • “Catholic Internationalism,” The Study of Global Catholicism in the Modern Period workshop, Notre Dame, Indiana, February 2018
  •  “Democracy and Crisis,” The Crisis of Democracy and Global Interdependence: Aldo Moro’s vision and George L. Mosse’s Interpretations, New York University, November 2017
  •  “The Vatican’s Anticommunist Crusade,” American Historical Association annual conference, Denver, CO, January 2017
  • “The Pope vs. Wilson: How Catholic Internationalism Outlived the Wilsonian Moment,” United States Intellectual History Conference, Stanford University, October 2016
  • “Sacco and Vanzetti: What Can We Learn From Their Story?” UW-Madison, September 2016
  • “The Vatican, Nation-Building, and International Law,” Political Catholicism Conference, NYU,December 2015
  • “The Vatican, Religious Nationalism, and the Catholic International after World War I,” The Evolution of the Papacy: Modernity, Media, and Mission,” Northwestern University, October 2015
  • “Soft Power and the Vatican,” La Follette School of Public Affairs, UW-Madison, September 2015
  • “Ethno-Nationalism, Antisemitism, and Catholic Internationalism,” the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, August 2015
  • “Catholic Associational Life and State-Making,” Forms of Public Sociality conference, the University of Crete, May 2015
  • “Catholic Civil Society,” special lecture in Global Political Catholicism class, taught by Professor Charles Gallagher, Boston College, October 2014
  • “The Vatican and Catholic Internationalism,” University of British Columbia-Vancouver, February 2014
  • “The Catholic Church and ‘Christian States’ after 1919 and after 1945,” Theorizing Religion in Modern Europe conference, Harvard University, January 2014

Advisor To

Selected Awards

  • National Endowment for the Humanities Individual Fellowship [FEL], September 2024—February 2025
  • Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence for 2023-26: The EU and Comparative Populism (external grant administered by the Center for German and European Studies), with Mark Copelovich (Political Science), fall 2024-present
  • Vilas Associate Professor, May 2021-Summer 2023
  • Yao Teaching Prize, Spring 2021
  • Mellon-Morgridge Award, University of Wisconsin, Madison, September 2020-present
  • Bloomenkranz Award, Center for European Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, September 2020-present
  • Michael H. Hunt Prize for International History from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations for A Twentieth-Century Crusade 
  • Marraro Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association for A Twentieth-Century Crusade
  • IRH Resident Fellowship, University of Wisconsin, Madison, September-December 2019
  • Fall Research Competition, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education,University of Wisconsin, Madison, June 2019
  • DAAD and Center for German and European Studies Research Competition, University of Wisconsin, Madison, January 2019-December 2020
  • First Book Award, University of Wisconsin, Madison, May 2018
  • American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, September 2017-May 2018
  • Brittingham Fund Award for Seminar Series in History and Politics, January 2015; renewed 2016 and 2017
  • U.S. Holocaust Museum summer fellow for research workshop, August 2015

History Courses