Dante Lee Germino (June 9, 1931 – May 25, 2002) was an openly gay Italian-American, born in Durham, N.C.
Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Wellesley College (Seven Sisters), 106 Central St, Wellesley, MA 02481
Dante Lee Germino (June 9, 1931 – May 25, 2002) was an openly gay Italian-American, born in Durham, N.C.
Dante Lee Germino had a long and distinguished career as scholar and teacher. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1956, working with Carl Friedrich, he began to teach political theory at Wellesley. Although promoted to associate professor, with tenure, Dante left Wellesley in 1965 to teach at the University of the Philippines for the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1968 he accepted a professorship at the University of Virginia, where he stayed for 29 years, until his retirement in 1997.
Germino joined the University of Virginia faculty in 1968 as a member of the Center for Advanced Studies and assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences. He resigned from the deanship in 1984 and continued teaching until 1997. Since his retirement from U.Va., he taught at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and the University of Bangkok in Thailand. In his career, he also lived and taught in the Philippines, Italy, Germany and Great Britain.
At University of Virginia, he won the Z Society's Medallion for Distinguished Teaching and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Germino's Modern Western Political Thought: Machiavelli to Marx (1972) developed his concept of the open society. That idea became the subject of an Italian conference he organized in 1972 for the Rockefeller Foundation.
Germino's chief research interests included political theory and Italian politics. He wrote seven books and nearly 50 articles on the history of political theory and Italian politics, and in 1980 organized the first international Seminar for Philosophy and Political Theory in Italy.
After retiring, Dante moved to Amsterdam, where he had some of his most productive years, teaching at the Universities of Amsterdam and Leiden, and at the University of Bangkok. He died in Amsterdam in a train accident. He is survived by five children.
My published books:
