Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg papers (Ms.2012.022)

Biographical / Historical

Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg (February, 1957–) was born to Gaither and Julia Stewart in Munich, Germany. She has four siblings: Jennifer (1956-1958), Anthony (1959–), Elizabeth (1961–), and John (1968–). Both of her parents were journalists working in Germany, but later moved the family to Rome, Italy in 1968. There, Stewart-Steinberg attended the German School of Rome, where, in addition to learning Italian, she continued her education in German. For her last two years of high school (1973-1975), Stewart-Steinberg attended the Forum School, an experimental liberal learning school in the heart of Rome. It was here that she started studying and writing in English for the first time.

Upon graduating, Stewart-Steinberg attended the University of Essex, where she studied Sociology. This was her first encounter with poststructuralist Marxism, Antonio Gramsci's work, and Eurocommunism. At Essex, Stewart-Steinberg began translating Italian texts into English, and under Ernesto Laclau (who at the time had just written his first major book on Populism), she wrote her honours thesis on Gramsci. Stewart-Steinberg notes that Laclau was extremely influential in her choice to pursue political economy. After leaving Essex in 1978, Stewart-Steinberg went to Yale University to write a dissertation on the partition of India and Pakistan, and Pakistani populism in the Political Science department. The department believed the political situation to be too dangerous for fieldwork at the time, so she then switched to political theory, and completed a thesis on Rousseau, Levi-Strauss, Marx, and Freud with David Apter as her thesis advisor. Also while at Yale, Stewart-Steinberg studied under significant academics such as Frederic Jameson and James Scott, and this is where she first encountered the Derridians, and began working on deconstruction.

In 1980, after completing her comprehensive exams, Stewart-Steinberg moved to New York City, where she married Joseph Sweet and had her first two children, Jonah (1983–) and Ben (1985–). In 1985, they moved to Ithaca, New York, where Sweet studied Visual Arts at Cornell University. They separated in 1989. At Cornell, Stewart-Steinberg continued working on her dissertation, and later in 1990, she submitted her thesis. Stewart-Steinberg also started lecturing at Cornell in the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, where she taught Italian. She received a second graduate degree in 1995 in German Studies, for which Dominick LaCapra and Sander Gilman were her advisors.

In 1998, Stewart-Steinberg was remarried to Michael Steinberg and their daughter, Anna, was born in 1997. Michael and Suzanne Steinberg continued to teach at Cornell until their move to Brown University in 2005. Michael and Suzanne later divorced. Brown University awarded Stewart-Steinberg tenure in 2007. She teaches Comparative Literature, Italian Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and Gender and Sexuality Studies. Stewart-Steinberg is also the director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2017. She has published three books: Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siècle (1998), The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (1860-1920) published in 2007 and translated into Italian in 2011, and Impious Fidelity: Anna Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Politics (2012). Additionally, Stewart-Steinberg has written numerous published articles, chapters in books, and book reviews, and she has lectured at various institutions around the world. She is still teaching at Brown University whilst completing her latest book, Grounds for Reclamation: Italian Fascism, Post-Fascism and the Making of Consent.