History

Brian Griffith

Assistant Professor

Photo of Brian Griffith

Office: Social Sciences 118

Email: brianjgriffith@csufresno.edu

Office Phone: 

Professional Website: https://www.brianjgriffith.com

Education:

Ph.D. - University of California, Santa Barbara (2020)
M.A. - San Francisco State University (2011)
B.A. - Sonoma State University (2008)

Graduate Student Mentorship:

If you are interested in studying with Dr. Griffith in the MA program, please write to him before applying to see if he will be available to supervise your graduate studies. 

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 modern Europe, with a particular emphasis on Italian Fascism and German Nazism, food and beverage history, the history of (trans)nationalism, and Digital and Public History. His 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).

Fall 2026

 
Course Days/Times
HIST 21 - World History II M/W/F 10:00am - 10:50am
HIST 135 - European Cultural History M/W/F 11:00am - 11:50am
HIST 137 - Modern Italy: Napoleon to Present M/W/F 12:00pm - 12:50pm
HIST 200A - Introduction to Graduate Research M 6:00pm - 8:50pm

Spring 2027

 
Course Days/Times
HIST 21 - World History II T/Th 9:30am - 10:45am
HIST 21 - World History II T/Th 11:00am - 12:15pm
HIST 136 - Interwar Crisis: Europe 1914-1945 T/Th 12:30pm - 1:45pm
HIST 140 - Holocaust T/Th 3:30pm - 4:45pm

  • Modern Europe (1715 to Present)
  • Political / Cultural History of Italian Fascism
  • Food and Beverage History
  • History of (Trans)nationalism
  • Digital and Public History

Articles and Book Chapters:

"'Propaganda for Our Italy': Ruth Williams Ricci, Gendered Mobility, and Fascist Italy’s African Empire, 1935-1941" in Andrea Germer and Jasmin Rückert, eds., Gendering Fascism: Organisations, Bodies, Representations (Leiden: Brill, 2024)

"(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)

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

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

  • Winner of the 2021 SIHS Article Prize for Modern Italian History

Co-authored with Sarah A. Curtis and Jason Lahman, "Blogging in the Classroom: Using a Blog as a Supplemental Resource" in Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association (April 1, 2012) 

Digital Humanities:

Co-curated with Dr. Amy King, Where Monsters are Born: Documenting a Fascist Revival in the Streets of Rome, 2018-2019.

Undergraduate: 

  • World History
  • Europe in the 20th Century
  • European Cultural History
  • The Holocaust

Graduate:

  • Comparative Fascisms

Monograph:
Cultivating Fascism: Wine, Politics, and Identity in Mussolini's Italy (in development)
This monograph explores the history of winemaking, dictatorship, and identity construction in Benito Mussolini's Italy.

Edited Volume:
Co-edited with Dr. Marla Susan Stone, From “Red Spain” to Fascist Prison: The Counter Memoir of Italo Orciani, 1937-1946 (under contract with University of Toronto Press)
This edited volume centers on Italo Orciani’s unpublished Spanish Civil War “counter memoir,” written during his five-year sentence to political confinement at the Fascist regime’s Tremiti Islands penal colony, which we interpret as an exercise in performative compliance intended to demonstrate his political and moral rehabilitation and secure his early release from imprisonment.