CV
Education
Present
PhD, History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (ABD)
2016
Department of English Studies, Fitchburg State University Fitchburg, MA
2013
MA, Department of Linguistics & Cognitive Science University of Delaware, Newark, DE
2011
BA, Department of Linguistics, Boston University, Boston, MA
Publications
Caputi, Ross, “The War on Terror Entailed Mass Deception,” review of Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall, Catalyst, June 29, 2023.
Caputi, Ross & Richard Hil. “How US Propaganda Won Iraq’s ‘Battlespace’” Al Jazeera, March 20, 2023.
Caputi, Ross, “The forgotten decade that made the invasion of Iraq possible,” review of The Regime Change Consensus: Iraq in American Politics, 1990-2002 by Joseph Steib, Society for U.S. Intellectual History, January 15, 2022.
Caputi, Ross, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn. The Sacking of Fallujah: A people’s History. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.
Caputi, Ross. “Remembering Fallujah on Memorial Day.” Islah Reparations Project Blog, May 27, 2019.
Caputi, Ross. “Journalism as a Tool of War: The Age of Jihad by Patrick Cockburn.” The Massachusetts Review, December 15, 2016.
Caputi, Ross. The Battle for Your Hearts and Minds: The Occupation of Iraq, Information Warfare, and American War Culture.Master’s thesis, Fitchburg State University, 2016.
Caputi, Ross. “Convalescence for the Wounded” [Review of the book Afterwar]. American Book Review 36 no. 5 (July/August 2015): 18-19.
Caputi, Ross. “The Battle for Your Hearts and Minds in Fallujah.” Insurge Intelligence. August 24, 2015.
Fontan, Victoria and Ross Caputi. “Fallujah and Obama’s proxies in Iraq.” Middle East Eye, July 17, 2015.
Caputi, Ross. “US Policy Aiding & Abetting Another Attack on Fallujah.” Speakout, July 15, 2015.
Malley-Morrison, Kathleen, Ross Caputi, Ellen Gutowski, et al. “Engaging moral agency for human rights: Outlooks from the Global South.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 21 no. 1 (January 2015): 68-88.
Malley-Morrison, Kathleen, Ellen Gutowski, Ross Caputi, et al. “What Are Rights? Definitions and Perspectives from the Global South.” International Psychology Bulletin 19 no. 1 (Winter 2015): 8-14.
Caputi, Ross. “American Sniper?” TeleSur, January 10, 2015.
Caputi, Ross. “Unthinkable Thoughts in the Debate about ISIS in Iraq.” Common Dreams, June 15, 2014. (Also available in Italian.)
Jessica Kali Rubaii and Ross Caput. “On Memorial Day, What We Choose to Remember and What We Forget.” Stir Journal, May 25, 2014.
Caputi, Ross. “I Helped Destroy Falluja in 2004. I Won’t Be Complicit Again”. The Guardian, January 10, 2014.
Caputi, Ross. “Howard Zinn: A Moral Example For GI Resistance.” In Agitation with a Smile: The Legacies of Howard Zinn and the Future of Activism, edited by Stephen Bird, Adam Silva, and Joshua C. Yesnowitz. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2013.
Malley-Morrison, Kathleen and Ross Caputi. “Moral Disengagement: America’s Missing Conscience.” The War Crimes Times (Fall 2013): 4-5.
Caputi, Ross. “Iraqi protests defy the Maliki regime and inspire hope.” The Guardian, January 17, 2013.
Caputi, Ross. “Seeing the Truth.” In Why Peace, edited by Mark Guttman. East Lyme: Mark Guttman, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “The Victims of Fallujah’s Health Crisis are Stifled by Western Silence.” The Guardian, October 25, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “The Vicious Cycle of Jihadism and Patriotism.” Common Dreams, May 2, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “The Inconvenient Truth the Pentagon Would Prefer We Didn’t See.” The Guardian, April 18, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “Tarek Mehanna: Punished for Speaking Truth to Power.” The Guardian, April 16, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “The Systematic Atrocity of Afghanistan’s Occupation.” The Guardian, March 13, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “The Marines urination video doesn’t show the real war crime.” The Guardian, January 13, 2012.
Caputi, Ross. “I’m sorry for the role I played in Fallujah.” The Guardian, December 22, 2012.
Interviews
Caputi, Ross. “On Reparative Oral History: An Interview with Ross Caputi.” Interviewed by Mohammad Ataei. past@present, March 3, 2020.
Caputi, Ross. “We Broke Fallujah In Irreversible Ways: Ross Caputi on The Sacking of Fallujah.” Public Seminar, June 7, 2019.
Caputi, Ross. “Iraq. L’importanza di tornare a Fallujah secondo Ross Caputi (seconda parte).” Interviewed by Stefano Nanni. Osservatorio Iraq, July 25, 2013.
Caputi, Ross. “L’Iraq e la comunità internazionale. Intervista a Ross Caputi (prima parte).” Interviewed by Stefano Nanni. Osservatorio Iraq, July 24, 2013.
Caputi, Ross. “Toxic Iraq.” Vice, April 19, 2013.
Caputi, Ross, Raed Jarrar, and Dai Williams. “Did the US cause Fallujah’s birth defects?” Interviewed by Shihab Rittansi. Inside Story Americas, Al Jazeera, August 3, 2012.
Caputi, Ross, Chris Hedges, and Manal Omar. “US post-Iraq legacy.” Interviewed by Shihab Rittansi. Inside Story Americas, Al Jazeera, December 30, 2011.
Digital Productions
Archive Iraq, website, 2024
I built this website using Omeka to serve as Archive Iraq’s organizational website and as a repository for our digital collections.
“A cazzòlë,” video, 2022
I made this video to demonstrate how a traditional Easter recipe is made in the Italian village of Grumento Nova—a cazzòlë. The video is mostly in Italian, but there are also moments in Saponarese, the language I’m documenting in the Memoria e lingua grumentina project.
Memoria e Lingua Grumentina, website, 2022
With the support of the Fulbright “Con il sud” grant, I have begun documenting the language spoken in the Italian village of Grumento Nova (called Saponarese) and building a website with a database to preserve a record of the language and create resources for the community. Approaching this project from a public history perspective, I’m developing a UI (user interface) that makes the database more accessible and interactive for multiple publics, namely the community of Grumento Nova and professional linguists.
The Islah Reparations Project, website, 2020
I built this website using WordPress for an all volunteer, nonprofit organization—the Islah Reparations project.
“La pizza saponarese”, video, 2019
I made this video to demonstrate how a traditional pizza napoletana is made in the village of Grumento Nova. The video is mostly in Italian, with English subtitles. But there are also moments in Saponarese, the language I’m documenting in the Memoria e lingua grumentina project.
Fear Not the Path of Truth: A Veteran’s Journey After Fallujah, independent film, 2014
Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah (2014) is an independent, investigative documentary that looks at the U.S.-led sieges of Fallujah in 2004 and their human consequences. Ross Caputi, a U.S. Marine veteran of the second siege, interviews residents and experts to learn the truth about the war crimes he participated in and the public health crisis the operation caused for Fallujah’s residents. This film won the Changemaker Award at the 2015 Traverse City Film Festival.
Professional Presentations
“Remembering the Battlespace: 20 Years After the Anglo-American Invasion”
A Faculty Lecture presented at Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, March 27, 2023.
“Italian Dialectology: A Paragon for the study of Microvariation.”
Presented at Santa Reparata International School of Art, Florence, Italy, November 30, 2021.
“The Atemporal Violence of U.S. Information Operations”
Presented at conference hosted by Al Anbar University in Ramadi, Iraq: International Discussion on the Effects of the American Invasion of Iraq: The Province of Al Anbar as a Model, (via Zoom) March 18, 2021.
“Grassroots Reparations and the People’s History of Fallujah Oral History Project”
Paper presented on the panel “Remembrance, Resilience, and Reconciliation: The Challenges of Eliciting War Stories” at the Oral History Association’s conference, Montreal, Canada, October 13, 2018.
“Lawfare and Genocide in Iraq: ISIS, the Anbar Uprising, and Operation Inherent resolve”
Paper resented at the Fourth International Graduate Students’ Conference on Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, April 14, 2018.
“From Little Italy to Basilicata: Mapping Linguistic Heritage and Documenting an Endangered Language”
Presented at Santa Reparata International School of Art, Florence, Italy, September 14, 2017.
“The Necropolitics of US Information Warfare: the sieges of Fallujah as a case study”
Paper presented at War Frenzy: Exploring the Violence of Propaganda, an interdisciplinary conference at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, May 12-14, 2017. Also presented on panel “Gendered and Imperial Intersections in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency” at the 11th Pan-European Conference on International Relations in Barcelona, Spain, September 13-16, 2017.
“The Other’s Use of Human Shields”
Paper presented on a panel titled “Securing and Contesting Middle Eastern Frontiers: Iraq and Palestine” at Middle Eastern Studies Association conference, at Denver, Colorado, November, 2015.
Work History
2023 – Present
Archival Assistant, Center for Italian Culture, Fitchburg State University
2023 – Present
Adjunct Instructor, Department of English Studies, Fitchburg State University
2023 (spring)
Visiting Instructor, Wheaton College, Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies, Norton, Massachusetts
2022 – 2023
(winter & spring)
Adjunct Instructor, Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2022 – 2023
Oral History Interviewer, South End Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts
2020 – 2021
Special Education teacher, ELA 9-12, School for Exceptional Studies, Lawrence, Massachusetts
2017 – 2020
Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2016 – 2017
Teaching Assistant, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Massachusetts Amherst
2014 – 2016
Graduate Assistant, Department of English Studies, Fitchburg State University
2014 – 2016
Editor of The Falconer, graduate publication of the English Studies Department, Fitchburg State University
2003 – 2006
United States Marine Corps, Rifleman and Radio Transmissions Operator. Received a General Under Hdonorable Conditions discharge.
Volunteer Work
2023
Main organizer of conference Archive Iraq: Repairing Collective Memory of the Anglo-American Invasion and Occupation, hosted by Archive Iraq, University of Mosul, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and New York University.
2022 – Present
Co-founder and Director of Archives at Archive Iraq.
2016
Main organizer of the symposium Envisioning the Postwar: A Dialogue with Scholars, Organizers, and Veterans at New York University.
2015 – 2016
Student Representative on the Education Curriculum Committee at Fitchburg State University.
2015 – 2016
Student Representative to the Graduate Council at Fitchburg State University.
2013 – 2025
Co-founder and Board member of the Islah Reparations Project, a California based 501(c)3.
2010
President of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition.
2010 – 2014
Founder and Director of the Justice For Fallujah Project.
Awards, Grants, & Fellowships
2024
Jumpstart Grant for Dissertation Research
2024
Frederic Gilbert Bauer Research Fellowship
2021 – 2022
Fulbright “Con il Sud” Award
2019
Dr. Charles K. Hyde Public History Intern Fellowship
2019
Marvin Ogilvie Memorial Award for Foreign Language Study
2019
UMass History Department Hands-on Grant
2016
Partnership Award from the Howard Zinn Fund for Peace and Justice, affiliated with Veterans for Peace
2016-2020
Research Enhancement And Leadership (REAL) Fellowship at University of Massachusetts Amherst
2016
Graduate Student Leadership Award at Fitchburg State University
2015
Changemaker Award, won at the Traverse City Film Festival for Fear Not the Path of Truth
2011
Scarlet Key Society Inducted into student activities honor society at Boston University for student leadership
2007
Center for Italian Culture Scholarship at Fitchburg State College
Languages
English
Native Speaker
Italian
Reading, writing, speaking