Pornography, prostitutes and corsets: all topics on the syllabus for Prof. Alice Kelikian's (HIST) University Seminar, the Anatomy of Gender. Though perhaps her most risque course, this is not Kelikian's main academic focus. Kelikian's research specialty-Italy-takes her to this reservoir of history and culture at least three times a year. Her students describe her as charismatic and energetic and revel in the stories she brings home from her many travels abroad. She took some time to tell the Justice about her experiences.Alice Kelikian
Role at Brandeis: Associate Professor of history, specializing in modern Europe
Roles outside Brandeis: Board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, author of numerous books.

Just Feats: What inspired you to become a professor, and what career would you have chosen as an alternative?
Alice Kelikian: I began as an undergraduate in an intensive B.S./M.D. program at the University of Illinois. I bolted to the humanities three weeks into my freshman year, and transferred to Princeton, where I joined the first co-educational class there.
I had fantastic teachers at Princeton. I became drawn to Italian history in particular by way of a film called The Organizer, directed by Mario Monicelli. Had I not moved into academia, I most probably would have been in the family business, orthopedic surgery or pursued my interest in photography professionally.

JF: You teach Modern History and Social Institutional History. What does this mean exactly? What is your speciality?
AK: I teach modern European social history in a comparative context. Most of my courses have a thematic focus-History of the Family, Crime in Europe, Fascism East and West-but cover many countries.
My area of scholarly expertise is modern Italy, and my own research has always stayed confined to Italy. I am currently trying to complete a study of the cult of appearances in liberal and fascist Italy.
Happily, my teaching and scholarly interests will intersect next semester in my new course History 170 "Italian Films, Italian Histories." I hope to use authorial cinema as a medium for the representation of history.

JF: Where is the most interesting place you have ever been?
AK; In 1991, I went to the Armenian enclave Nagorno-Karabakh, then under martial law. From there I traveled on my own by bus, taxi and train into eastern Turkey, my ancestral homeland, and to the medieval metropolis of Ani.

JF: What is the most exciting trip you've taken?
AK: After graduating from Princeton, I went on a road trip to Brazil with friends from school. The journey in a Volkswagen Bus took three months to complete one way. We had originally intended to go to Chile, but the military closed off the borders before the coup against Salvador Allende.

JF: Why do you travel so much?
AK: I suppose I felt like a provincial from Chicago coming out of high school. And the environment at Princeton probably accentuated that sense. I went to graduate school at Oxford, which had a very open, cosmopolitan aspect about it. The experience widened my horizons.

JF: Who was the most interesting person with whom you've had dinner?
AK: I confess that's a tie between Sir Isaiah Berlin, the late philosopher and essayist, and Stephen Hawking .

JF: Who would you love to have dinner with?
AK: My fantasy would be Tony Soprano but I'd certainly settle for David Chase (the writer, director and creator of The Sopranos) .

JF:What, to you, is the most exciting part about being a professor?
AK: My research takes me to Italy at least three times year.

JF: What was the most tense situation in which you have ever found yourself?
AK: During that trip to South America, while waiting for the VW to come off a boat crossing the Panama Canal, one of my classmates lost my passport in Cartagena. The others in the group decided to proceed to Ecuador without me, leaving me stranded for three weeks in Colombia without papers.

JF: What was the most inspirational event in your life?
AK: On Nov. 15, 1969 Mick Jagger stepped on my hand. A photograph on page 217 of The Unauthorized Rolling Stones Biography captured the moment just before he tiptoed on the edge of the stage.

JF: What is your favorite movie?
AK: Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a 1982 film by Robert Altman.

JF: Who are your favorite actor and actress?
AK: The late Marcello Mastroianni and Lorraine Bracco (from The Sopranos).

JF: If one were to open a book of Professor Kelikian's philosophy, what might be an excerpt?
AK: I cannot overstate the importance of patience, that virtue Oliver Cromwell called "waiting on Providence." Given my temperament, calm endurance does not come to me easily. But it is a quality I've tried to cultivate with discipline over the years.