Larry Wolff

Stanford University, PhD 1984

Harvard, A.B. 1979

Eastern Europe, Poland, Habsburg Monarchy, Enlightenment, history of childhood, history of opera

Professor Wolff works on the history of Eastern Europe, the Habsburg Monarchy, the Enlightenment, and on the history of childhood. He tends to work as an intellectual and cultural historian. He has been most interested in problems concerning East and West within Europe: whether concerning the Vatican and Poland, Venice and the Slavs, or Vienna and Galicia. In the book Inventing Eastern Europe (1994) he developed the argument that Eastern Europe was "invented" in the eighteenth century, by the philosophes and travelers of the Enlightenment, who attributed meaning to a supposed division of Europe into complementary regions, Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Professor Wolff has analyzed Western perspectives on Eastern Europe as a sort of "demi-Orientalism," negotiating a balance between attributed difference and acknowledged resemblance. In books about Venetian perspectives on Dalmatia (Venice and the Slavs, 2001) and Habsburg perspectives on Galicia (The Idea of Galicia, 2010), he has attempted to explore the meaning of "Eastern Europe" within imperial frameworks and the ideology of empire. His research on the history of childhood has included books on child abuse in Freud's Vienna (Postcards from the End of the World, 1988) and child abuse in Casanova's Venice (Paolina’s Innocence, 2012). His most recent book, The Singing Turk (2016), concerns Turkish subjects on the European operatic stage during the long eighteenth century, and analyzes musical and dramatic representations in the context of European-Ottoman relations. His current research concerns Woodrow Wilson and Eastern Europe. Professor Wolff also writes music and opera criticism.  

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs, introduction by Larry Wolff, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, New York: Penguin Classics, 2000. 

“The Western Representation of Eastern Europe on the Eve of World War One: Mediated Encounters and Intellectual Expertise in Dalmatia, Albania, and Macedonia,” Journal of Modern History, Vol. 86, No. 2 (2014), pp. 381-407.

“Childhood and the Enlightenment: The Complications of Innocence,” Childhood in the Western World, ed. Paula Fass (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 78-99.

“Nostalgia antropologica: Venezia e la Dalmazia,” Nostalgia:  Memoria e passaggi tra le sponde dell’Adriatico, ed. Rolf Petri (Venice: Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, 2010), pp. 107-122.

“Kennst du das Land? The Uncertainty of Galicia in the Age of Metternich and Fredro,” Slavic Review, Vol. 67, No. 2 (Summer 2008), 277-300

“Dalmatinische und italienische Reisen: Das Paradies der mediterannen Rückständigkeit,” Der Süden:  Neue Perspektiven auf eine europäische Geschichtsregion, eds. Frithjof Benjamin Schenk & Martina Winkler (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007), pp. 207-228

“The Global Perspective of Enlightened Travelers: Philosophic Geography from Siberia to the Pacific Ocean," European Review of History/Revue Européenne d’histoire, Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 437-53.

“Depraved Inclinations: Libertines and Children in Casanova’s Venice,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring 2005), pp. 417-40. 

“The Spirit of 1776: Polish and Dalmatian Declarations of Philosophical Independence,” History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe: Junctures and Disjunctures in the 19th and 20th Centuries, eds. Marcel Cornis-Pope & John Neubauer (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004), pp. 294-306.

"Dynastic Conservatism and Poetic Violence in Fin-de-siècle Cracow: The Habsburg Matrix of Polish Modernism," The American Historical Review, Vol. 106, No. 3 (June 2001), pp. 735-764.

"Sacra la scelta: At the Verdi Altar in Parma," Hudson Review, Winter 2020

"A Scary Magic: Wagner's Northern Seascapes," review of Flying Dutchman, Times Literary Supplement, 13 March 2020

"Murder, Trauma, and Modernism," review of Wozzeck, Times Literary Supplement, 17 January 2020

"Repertoire in Blues," review of Porgy and Bess, Times Literary Supplement, 18 October 2019

"In 1919 an Opera Tried to Heal a Broken Europe," on Die Frau ohne Schatten, New York Times, 12 October 2019

"Korngold's Operatic Dreamscapes," review of Die tote Stadt at La Scala, Los Angeles Review of Books, 8 September 2019

"Pesaro's Opera Festival Accelerated Rossini's Renaissance,"  New York Times, 23 August 2019

"A Resonant Centenary for Strauss at the Vienna State Opera," review of Die Frau ohne Schatten, New York Review of Books, 13 June 2019

"On from the ancien régime," review of Dialogues of the Carmelites, Times Literary Supplement, 29 May 2019

"Opera and Brexit in London," review of La Forza del Destino, The New Yorker, 2 April 2019

“The Verdi Festival and the Soul of Italy,” Los Angeles Review of Books, 15 December 2018

“I Feel Pretty," on Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, New York Review of Books, 27 September 2018

“End Notes," on Mozart in Vienna, New York Review of Books, 5 April 2018

“All the World’s a Stage," on opera and politics, New York Review of Books, 7 December 2017

“Signor Tambourossini," on Rossini’s Siege of Corinth, New York Review of Books, 12 October 2017

“A Longed-For Tristan,” New York Review of Books, 5 May 2018

“Così in Coney,” New York Review of Books, 27 March 2018

“Wagner on Trial," on Die Meistersinger at Bayreuth, New York Review of Books, 8 August 2017

“Muslims, Christians, and Mozart,” New York Times, 21 April 2016