16919 - Modern and Contemporary Archive Administration for Special Purposes

Learning outcomes

With the historiographical discussion on the one hand, the examination of specific situations on the other, at the end of the course the student reaches an advanced understanding of the problems of the discipline and receives adequate training on the technical-operational side

Course contents

The course will examine two particular manifestations of archival realities, public security archives and art archives, in particular theater archives, analyzing their forms and characteristics through the study of the documentation they preserve. The course will focus in its theoretical part on the use of archival categories as a tool for interpreting documentary corpuses and historical-institutional contexts and in the practical part on the analysis of concrete case studies on archives and inventories.

For public security archives, contemporary institutions in the Ravenna area will be examined, the results on the production and conservation of archives through the ages and the analysis of the public document as a source for history.

For art and theater archives, we will examine ways and characteristics of the construction of personal archives, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, and those of institutions linked to the performing arts to study the relationship between the sedimentation of papers and the "will to 'archive"

Readings/Bibliography

General introduction

Isabella Zanni Rosiello, Gli archivi tra passato e presente, Bologna, il Mulino, 2005, pp. 7-121

Stefano Vitali, Di angeli, di paperi e di conigli, ovvero dello strano mestiere dell'archivista in “Archivi per la storia”, 2001, pp. 179-187

Archivistica. Teorie, metodi, pratiche, a cura di Maria Guercio e Linda Giuva, Roma, Carocci, 2014, in particolare i saggi: Paola Carucci, L’Ordinamento, pp. 137-177; Stefano Vitali, La descrizione archivistica al tempo degli standard e dei sistemi informatici, pp. 179-210.

Police and goverment archives

Guido Melis, Storia dell'amministrazione italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020, in particolare i cap. I, IV, V;

Annantonia Martorano (a cura), Gli archivi delle Prefetture. Un universo complesso tra storia e amministrazione, Torre del Lago Puccini (LU) : Civita, 2022

Giovanna Tosatti, Storia del Ministero dell'Interno, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009, cap. I, III, IV.

Art and theater archives

Leonardo Mineo, Ilaria Pescini e Manuel Rossi, Le Muse in archivio. Itinerari nelle carte d’artista, Roma, Edizioni ANAI, 2023

Stefano Vitali, «Io sono uno che non butta... Io faccio delle pile...»: rappresentazioni, immagini e fantasmi negli archivi di persona, in "Le Carte e la Storia, Rivista di storia delle istituzioni" 2/2022, pp. 26-34, doi: 10.1411/105834

Teaching methods

Lectures and visits at the Ravenna State Archives (Ravenna), the Teatro delle Albe Archive (Ravenna) and other archival institutes in Bologna and Ravenna.

Assessment methods

Oral interview and preparation of a written report on the activities carried out in the archive (to be delivered one week before the exam). The knowledge of the topics discussed during the lessons and of the recommended bibliography, the understanding of the use of research tools and the critical and methodological skills developed by the students will be evaluated.

Teaching tools

Slides and sheets of theoretical and institutional history analysis, examples of digitized documentation and inventory tools will also be analyzed during the lessons to deepen their use for research and interpretation of sources. During visits to the archives, the original documents will be analyzed directly.

Office hours

See the website of Dario Taraborrelli