Over the last 30 years, Silvana Patriarca, a professor of Contemporary History at Fordham University, New York, has deeply and consistently investigated the construction of the Italian national narrative: its ‘long term’ genealogy, its characteristics, its tensions. Her first book, Numbers and Nationhood (Patriarca 1996), focused on the co-production of statistical knowledge and the national image of Italy during the Restoration and the Risorgimento, rereading the interplay of science, culture, and politics in the formation of bourgeois ‘public opinion’ in the liberal period. In Italian Vices (Patriarca 2010), she dissected the rhetoric and tropes of the national character, its ostensible fragility, and the different political uses of the recurring discourse on Italian vices and virtues, from the Risorgimento to the Republic.

在过去的 30 年里，纽约福特汉姆大学当代史教授西尔瓦娜·帕特里亚卡 (Silvana Patriarca) 深入而持续地研究了意大利民族叙事的构建：它的“长期”谱系、它的特征、它的张力。她的第一本书《数字与国家》（Patriarca 1996）重点关注了复辟和复兴运动期间统计知识与意大利国家形象的共同生产，重新解读了科学、文化和政治在资产阶级形成过程中的相互作用。自由主义时期的舆论。在意大利的恶习中（Patriarca 2010），她剖析了民族性格的修辞和比喻、其表面上的脆弱性，以及从复兴运动到共和国，反复出现的关于意大利罪恶和美德的话语的不同政治用途。