A specialist in the history of fascism, dictatorship and genocide in the Europe, Marla Stone's work emphasizes the relationship among culture, politics, and the state in the 20th century.
Professor Stone publishes and lectures on a variety of topics in European history, including Italian Fascist politics and culture, the contemporary far right in Europe, Italian Holocaust memory culture, conspiracy theories, and interwar cultural diplomacy.
Marla Stone is Professor of History at Occidental College and where she served as Department Chair from 2000 to 2004 and 2015 to 2019. From summer 2021 to winter 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).
In addition to the edited collections Fascism in America (2022) Als die Demkratie starb (2022), Fears Past (2012), Totalitarian Art and Modernity (2010), The Legacy of Primo Levi (2002), Reviewing Fascism (2002) and Fascist Visions (1999), Professor Stone’s scholarship has appeared in 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 is the recipient of numerous national and international fellowships, including to the American Academy in Rome (1995/1996), the Wolfsonian Foundation (1995 and 2024), the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University (2007), the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (2011/2012) and the Ferdinand Braudel Fellowship to the European University Institute (2017). She is currently completing a book entitled The Enemy: The Politics and Propaganda of Italian Anti-Communism. Professor Stone is a past President of the Board of the ACLU of Southern California and the Society for Italian Historical Studies; she is a fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.