Marla Stone

Marla Stone, a specialist in the history of fascism, dictatorship, and genocide in Europe, emphasizes the relationship between culture, politics, and the state in the 20th century.

Professor Stone publishes and lectures on various European history topics, including Italian Fascist politics and culture, the contemporary far right in Europe, Italian Holocaust memory culture, conspiracy theories, and interwar cultural diplomacy.

She served as Department Chair at Occidental College from 2000 to 2004 and 2015 to 2019. From 2021 to 2023, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the American Academy in Rome. Her books include The Patron State: Culture and Politics in Fascist Italy (1998), The Fascist Revolution (2012), When the Wall Came Down (1993), and A Fascist in Red Spain: The Prison Memoirs of Italo Orciani (with Brian Griffith, forthcoming 2024).

Professor Stone’s scholarship has appeared in various journals, including The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, The Journal of Contemporary History, Constellations, Memoria e ricerca, The New England Journal of History, The European History Quarterly, and The Journal of Hate Studies.

Professor Stone holds numerous national and international fellowships, including to the American Academy in Rome, the Wolfsonian Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the European University Institute. She’s currently writing a book titled The Enemy: The Politics and Propaganda of Italian Anti-Communism. Professor Stone served as the past President of the ACLU of Southern California and the Society for Italian Historical Studies, and she’s a fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.