Matteo Bortolini is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Padova, Italy. He is currently writing a sociological biography of Robert N. Bellah from the standpoint of the sociology of the intellectuals. His English-language articles include: “The Trap of Intellectual Success. Robert N. Bellah, the American Civil Religion Debate, and the Sociology of Knowledge,” (Theory & Society, 2012); “The ‘Bellah Affair’ at Princeton. Scholarly Excellence and Academic Freedom in America in the 1970s” (The American Sociologist, 2011); “Before Civil Religion. On Robert N. Bellah’s Forgotten Encounters with America, 1955-1965” (Sociologica, 2010).