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MATTEO BORTOLINI

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Position

Professore Associato

Structure

Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Geografiche e dell'Antichita' - DiSSGeA

Address

VIA DEL VESCOVADO, 30 - PADOVA

Telephone

0498274363

E-mail

matteo.bortolini@unipd.it

Matteo Bortolini (12/23/1971) is associate professor of Sociology at the DISSGEA Department of the University of Padua. His research focuses on the sociology of intellectuals and ideas, social and political theory, and the historical sociology of the social sciences (especially in Italy and the US).

His volume "A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah" (Princeton University Press, 2021) won the 2022 Distinguished Publication Award of the History of Sociology and Social Thought section of the American Sociological Association.

His current research is mainly focused on a biography of the late American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz (1926-2006).

His papers and essays have been published in "Intellectual History Review", “History and Anthropology”, "Minerva", "Theory & Society", "European Journal of Social Theory", "Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences", "The American Sociologist", "Sociologica", "Studi culturali" "Rassegna italiana di sociologia", "La società degli individui", "Politica e società", "Scuola democratica" and "The European Legacy". Among his books are: "Italian Sociology 1945-2010. An Intellectual and Institutional Profile", co-written with Andrea Cossu (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), and "The Anthem Companion to Robert N. Bellah" (Anthem Press, 2019).

In the year 2024-2025 Bortolini was a Research Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine; in the first verse of 2024 he was a fellow at CURA - Boston University; in the year 2019 he was Robert Bellah distinguished fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at the University of Erfurt.

During the 2000/2001 a.y. he received a Fulbright Commission grant as a fellow of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture (now CURA) at Boston University. He has been a Visiting fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University (sept. 2006), at the Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley (July 2007; Summer 2016), and at the Department of Sociology, Harvard University (March-May 2009; June-August 2013). He taught at Harvard (summer 2013) and Berkeley (summer 2016).

He is currently a vice president of RC08-History of Sociology of the International Sociological Association for the four-year term 2023-2027. At present, he is an associate editor for "Serendipities". He is also on the editorial board of "The American Sociologist", "Civic Sociology" and "Comparative Sociology". He was co-editor (2013-2015) of "Sociologica. Italian Journal of Sociology Online", and was a member of the board of the "History of Sociology" section, American Sociological Association.

He graduated in Political Sciences at the University of Bologna (a.y. 1994/1995) and got his Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from the same University with a dissertation titled "The governance of civil society. A sociological research on the 'Table of Women' experience" (a.y. 1999/2000).

Matteo Bortolini taught in the Universities of Verona and Bologna, and currently (ay 2023-2024) teaches "Sociology", "Ideas, Culture and Society" and "Sociology and History Workshop" at the University of Padova.

Notices

ATTENTION:

For any problem (theses, grades, exams, etc.) please email me: matteo.bortolini@unipd.it

Office hours

  • at Su Zoom
    Prima dell'inizio delle lezioni il ricevimento si tiene solo previo appuntamento per email. I giorni di ricevimento verranno pubblicati una volta saputo l'orario del primo semestre. Scrivere a: matteo.bortolini@unipd.it

Teachings

Publications

Main publications:
– “The Octopus Ride: Rereading Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)”, forth. in History of Social Science.
– “‘The First Experiment in a Transnational Dialog’? Il Caso Italiano and the 1970s Crisis of the Social Sciences”, forth. in Intellectual History Review.
– “‘A Twenty-Four Hour Job.’ Hildred and Clifford Geertz’s First Foray into the Field and the Scholarly Persona of the Ethnographer”, History and Anthropology, 36(1), 2025, pp. 163-185.
- “Writing, Reading, and Interpreting a Rorschach Text. An Attempt at Fourth-Order Observation and Reflexivity”, The American Sociologist, November 2023, pp. 1-23, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12108-023-09599-8
- “Il lungo dopoguerra de 'Il caso italiano'. Scienze sociali e broker di idee nell’Italia degli anni Settanta”, in Altopiano, 1(2), 2023, pp. 69-87.
- “Tre libri che parlano di libri e la sociologia della cultura”, con G. Zampieri, Rassegna italiana di sociologia, 2023, pp. 1-11.
- “In Search of a Schema in a Joyfully Serious Life”, Civic Sociology, 2023, pp. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1525/cs.2023.74337.
- “La teoria che non c’era. Secolarizzazione, religione e campi intellettuali”, La società degli individui, 75, 3, 2022, pp. 58-73.
- "A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah", Princeton University Press, 2021.
- “Finding Sociology in Its Funding? Networks, Relations, and Key Players in Late 20th Century Social Science”, with G. Zampieri, Sociologica, 15, 3, 2021, pp. 169-188.
- “A Revolutionary Science and its Carriers: On Talcott Parsons, Robert N. Bellah, and Teacher-Pupil Chains in Scholarly Fields”, in A. J. Treviño and H. Staubmann (eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Talcott Parsons Studies, Routledge, London, 2021, pp. 237-248.
- “Talcott Parsons and Italian Sociology: A Complex and (Perhaps) Surprising Story”, with A. Cossu, in A. J. Treviño and H. Staubmann (eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Talcott Parsons Studies, Routledge, London, 2021, pp. 329-341.
- “The Grudging Modernizer. A Trip to the Middle East and Cold War Social Science”, Minerva, 59, 2, 2021.
- “The Return of the Repressed. On Robert N. Bellah, Norman O. Brown, and Religion in Human Evolution”, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 56, 1, 2020, pp. 20-35.
- “In the Field but not of the Field. Clifford Geertz, Robert Bellah, and Interdisciplinary Success”, with A. Cossu, European Journal of Social Theory, 23, 3, 2020, pp. 328-349 (published online in 2019).
- "Italian Sociology 1945-2010. An Intellectual and Institutional Profile". A. Cossu and M. Bortolini, Palgrave, 2017.
- “Found In Translation. Habermas and Anthropotechnics”, The European Legacy, 22, 5, 2017, pp. 583-599.
- “Blurring the Boundary Line. The Origins and Fate of Robert N. Bellah’s Symbolic Realism”, in C. Fleck and A. Hess (eds.), Knowledge for Whom? Public Sociology in the Making, Ashgate, Farnham, 2014, pp. 205-227.
- “The Trap of Intellectual Success. Robert N. Bellah, the American Civil Religion Debate, and the Sociology of Knowledge”, in Theory & Society, 41, 2, 2012, pp. 187-210.

Research Area

Historical sociology of ideas and intellectuals; historical sociology; history and sociology; sociology of success and celebrity; social and political theory

Thesis proposals

Basic requirements for thesis work with me:

- demonstrate a strong interest in the disciplines I teach (ie a good grade)
- be ready to read a lot, including English texts
- RESPECT the rules spelled out in the "thesis syllabus" I will give to you after our first meeting.

Listed below are a few different topics and items that I will supervise at this time.

NB: ALL topics involve the use of English texts:

- Relationships between sociology and history
- History of American Anthropology
- Celebrity culture and the sociology of success
- Intellectuals and Ideas
- Institutions of higher education (especially American universities and research organizations)

Contemporary anthropologists: Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, Hortense Powdermaker, Alice Dewey, Hildred Geertz, Larry Rosen, Sol Tax, Marshall Sahlins.

Contemporary sociologists: Thomas Kuhn, Robert Bellah, Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Norbert Elias, Shmuel Eisenstadt, Margaret Archer, Charles Tilly, Andrew Abbott, John R. Hall.