David I. Kertzer is Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology (1992– ), Professor of History (1992–2001), and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University. He became Provost of Brown on July 1, 2006.
He is the author of ten books on various aspects of Italian society, especially 19th- and 20th-century history. One of those, Prisoner of the Vatican, is about the acrimonious relationship between the Holy See and the newly unified kingdom of Italy during the period from the overthrow of the Papal States in 1870 until the two adversaries settled their differences in the Lateran Treaty of 1929, establishing Vatican City as an independent state. Two of his books, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara and The Popes Against the Jews, treat relationships between Catholics and Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries. Amalia's Tale, published in 2008, is a study by Kertzer about a poor peasant woman, Amalia Bagnacavalli, in the Italy of the 1890s. She was believed to have contracted syphilis from an infant child of a foundling hospital after serving as a wet-nurse for the baby. The book explores the story of a long court case and her lawyer Augusto Barbieri's untiring pursuit of compensation from that hospital on behalf of his client.
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