Rate My Professor Mark Seymour

Professor Mark Seymour is a Professor in the History programme at the University of Otago, specializing in modern Italian history from the 1850s to the 1970s, with a particular focus on the intersections between personal experience, politics, and the law. He earned his BA (Hons) from the University of Sydney in 1992, MA from the University of Connecticut in 1994, and PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2001. At Otago, Seymour teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses including HIST 102: The Global Twentieth Century, HIST 225: Totalitarian Regimes: Europe 1922-1945, HIST 325: Modern Italy, and HIST 452: Rethinking History. His research employs innovative approaches, such as micro-history, to explore themes like emotions in post-unification Italy, marriage law reforms, King Victor Emanuel III's tours of 'Africa italiana' under fascism, homosexual liberation, and the cultural construction of masculinity. Seymour's scholarship bridges Italian social history with broader European and international perspectives on gender and sexuality.

Seymour's major publications include his first book, Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians, 1860-1974 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), which analyzes the protracted struggle to reform indissoluble marriage and reveals traditional societal fault-lines from novel viewpoints. His monograph Emotional Arenas: Life, Love, and Death in 1870s Italy (Oxford University Press, 2020), part of the 'Emotions in History' series, uses a sensational Roman murder trial to examine how emotions were experienced, expressed, and shaped after unification. He co-edited the pioneering collection From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage: International Perspectives Since 1789 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) with Sean Brady, offering historical insights into shifts in attitudes toward same-sex relationships. Other key contributions feature chapters on global happiness in The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World (2023), royal tours in Royals on Tour (2018), same-sex unions in Italy, and forthcoming works on Italian marriage law from 1770 to 2025 and masculinity from 1770 to 1970. Seymour served as co-editor of the journal Modern Italy from 2015 to 2020 and is on the editorial boards of Modern Italy, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Italia Contemporanea, and Memoria e Ricerca. His work has significantly influenced understandings of personal-political dynamics in modern Italy and beyond.