Hyperbolic Italians: the travels of the members of the Positive School of Anthropology of Italy in South America, 1907-1910

Abstract This study, based on research undertaken in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, and the USA, presents a preliminary reconstruction of the time, the political climate, and the debate sparked in Brazil and Argentina by the visit of Guglielmo Ferrero and his wife, Gina Lombroso Ferrero, in 1907, and two voyages by the jurist and criminal sociologist Enrico Ferri in 1908 and 1910. These three Italian intellectuals associated with the Positive School of Criminology in Turin, led by the physician and physical anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, visited Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile on the invitation, among others, of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Academia Brasileira de Letras) and the Argentinean newspaper La Nación.