Draft:Leo Ferrero Raditsa

Leo Ferrero Raditsa (March 2, 1936 – February 22, 2001) was a teacher, scholar, and historian of Ancient History who spent most of his career teaching at St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) in Annapolis, Maryland. His publications on classical subjects include studies on Augustus’s legislation on marriage and adultery, Julius Caesar’s writings, the Second and Third Macedonian Wars, and the trial of Socrates. Raditsa also wrote widely on other topics, including publishing books on the controversial psychologist Wilhelm Reich and South Africa, as well as articles on the division of the West during the Cold War, the state of education in the contemporary university, and current events. He often sought to connect the lessons of crises in the ancient world, particularly the collapse of democracy in Athens during the Peloponnesian War and the fall of the Roman Republic, to present realities, particularly the division of the West between free and unfree countries that followed the First and Second World Wars. Raditsa’s influence as a teacher was evident in a memorial at St. John’s College [attended by over 200 students and colleagues. His papers are collected at the Hollis Library of Harvard University.

Biography

Raditsa was born in Geneva, Switzerland to Bogdan Raditsa, a member of the Yugoslavian delegation to the League of Nations at the time, and Nina Ferrero, the daughter of the Italian historian and journalist Guglielmo Ferrero, on March 2, 1936. In 1940, the family came to the United States, where Raditsa’s father had joined the Yugoslav Embassy in the United States before ultimately breaking with Tito’s government. Raditsa graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and received his B.A. from Harvard in 1956.

As an undergraduate at Harvard, Raditsa founded (with Angus Fletcher (critic)) and served as one of the editors of the journal i.e. The Cambridge Review, which became famous in academic and intellectual circles for its criticism of Harvard and its publication of the work of figures who, at that time, were lesser known or unknown, including poems by Gregory Corso, articles by Paul Goodman, the subway photographs by Walker Evans, and a section of James Agee’s novel A Death in the Family. The covers were designed by Ivan Chermayeff, who went on to become a prominent graphic designer. A special student-written issue, titled Harvard, criticized the undergraduate program, concluding that “the University is in the early stages of a profound crisis” because it failed “to encourage thought and art” and instead imposed “the dead pedantry of . . . a pseudo-scientific jargon” on the study of great works.

In 1957, after graduating from Harvard, Raditsa worked for Reader’s Subscription, a book club founded by W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling. Raditsa edited and wrote for the club’s monthly magazine, The Griffin. At that time, Raditsa persuaded Roger Williams Straus Jr. to re-publish the books of the psychologist Wilhelm Reich, later the subject of Raditsa’s own book, Some Sense about Wilhelm Reich. Raditsa went on to obtain an M.A. in medieval history (1962) and Ph.D. in Ancient History (1969) at Columbia University; his dissertation, under Elias Bickerman was titled A Historical Commentary to Sallust’s Letter of Mithridates. During this time, Raditsa also was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study at the University of Munich and began teaching in the Classics Department at New York University (1965 – 1972).

In 1973, Raditsa began teaching at St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe) in Annapolis, Maryland, where he spent the remainder of his career. From the late 1970s through 1983, Raditsa edited The St. John’s Review; during his tenure as editor, the journal published poetry, criticism, and political and scholarly articles. During 1977–1978, Raditsa was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He served on the editorial advisory board of the journal Academic Questions, published by the National Association of Scholars, and on the board of the Italian journal Ideazione. Raditsa regularly published in the journals Midstream (magazine), Chronicles of Culture, Academic Questions, and Ideazione.

Raditsa died of a stroke in Annapolis, Maryland on February 22, 2001, age sixty-four.

Selected Works by Raditsa

Books

• Some Sense about Wilhelm Reich. New York: Philosophical Library, 1978. ISBN 0802222129. This book has been translated into German as: Wilhelm Reich, Eine philosophisch-kritische Betrachtung. Frankfurt: Nexus Verlag, 1987.

• Prisoners of a Dream: The South African Mirage. Annapolis, Maryland: The Prince George Street Press, 1989. ISBN 0927104008.

Translation

• Translation from the French, with Helen Weaver, of: Joseph Kessel, The Man with the Miraculous Hands. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961.

Selected Articles

Classical Topics

• "Bella Macedonia". Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt. I (1). Berlin. 1972.

• "Julius Caesar and his Writings". Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt. I (3). Berlin. 1973.

• "The Fall of the Roman Empire in the West - and the Present Crisis". Quadrant. 20 (9). September 1976.

• "Socrates' Defense and His Audience". The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists. 15 (1/2). 1978. (with Larissa Bonfante)

• "The Collapse of Democracy at Athens and the Trial of Socrates". Rivista storica dell' Antichita. 1979., republished in The St. John’s Review, Vol. XLVI, No. 3, 2002, "The St. John's Review". St. John's College..

• "Augustus' Legislation Concerning Marriage, Procreation, Love Affairs and Adultery". Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt. 13 (2). Berlin. 1980.

• "Iranians in Asia Minor". The Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge University Press. 1983. p. 100-115.

Christian Topics

• "The Appearance of Women and Contact: Tertullian's 'De habitu feminarum'". Athenaeum. 73: 297-326. 1985.

Contemporary Topics

• Raditsa, Leo (1974). "On Paul Goodman - and Goodmanism". Iowa Review. 5 (3): 62-79. doi:10.17077/0021-065X.1663.

• "Let Us Listen to the Silence of the Dead". Chronicles of Culture. 2 (4). 1978.

• "The Division of the West—and Perception". The St. John's Review: 111-139. 1983.

Education and the University

• "On Sustenance: Teaching and Learning the Great Works". Academic Questions. 2 (2): 30-39. 1989. doi:10.1007/BF02682817 (inactive 2024-10-20).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of October 2024 (link)

• "Education in an Age of Haste, A Class Day Speech". Chronicles of Culture: 48-50. 1991.