29512 - Global History: Economy, Environment and Society (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the module, the student acquires the methodological principles of historiography on the global economy and is introduced to the latest trends in research on the global profile of material culture circuits and environmental change.

Course contents

The second module of the course aims to provide students with analytical tools to understand the main themes of global history related to economic globalization, the environment, and migrations. Special attention will be paid to the interactions between humans and nature with a specific focus on the consequences of wars on the landscape and population movements; the evolution of post-imperial global political visions; flows of migrants and refugees in contemporary times; and the onset of what several scholars define as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human action has become the main cause of Earth transformation.

The course is divided into 5 parts. The themes of the parts are as follows:
1. History of globalization and global economy: approaches, methodologies, concepts. Lessons 1-3.
2. Contemporary migrations: population movements between the 20th and 21st centuries and the political use of migrations. Lessons 4-8.
3. Global visions between war and technology. Lessons 9-11.
4. The Anthropocene: current debate and its implications in historiographical context. Lessons 12-14.
5. The global perspective and its opponents. Lesson 15.

 

The course includes both lectures and seminars where active participation of students is required. Some readings for discussion in class will be assigned in the first week of lessons to small groups of students, who will then present and discuss them during the course. The texts for the reading groups will be available in the course's educational resources.

Course Outline

Part I: Global Economy
1. Global Economy and Globalization (31/3)
- Jurgen Osterhammel, Niels P. Petersson, "Storia della globalizzazione," Il Mulino, 2005. (Introduction)
2. Global Capitalism (1/4)
- Jamie Martin, "The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance," Harvard University Press, 2022. (Introduction)
3. Globalism and Post-Imperial Neoliberalism (3/4)
- Quinn Slobodian, "Globalists: La fine dell’impero e la nascita del neoliberalismo," Meltempi, 2021. (Introduction)
OR
- Tehila Sasson, "Milking the Third World? Humanitarianism, Capitalism, and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott," The American Historical Review, Volume 121, Issue 4, October 2016.

Part II: Global Migrations
4.Settler colonialism  (7/4)

Arthur Asseraf, '"A New Israel": Colonial Comparisons and the Algerian Partition that Never Happened', French Historical Studies, 41:1, 2018.
5. Women and Migrations (8/4)
- Frazier, J., & Leinonen, J. (2023). "Women’s Migration and Transnational Solidarity in the Twentieth Century." In M. Borges & M. Hsu (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Global Migrations. pp. 381-400
OR
- Alessandra Gissi, ‘Donne e migrazioni’ in Silvia Salvatici (ed.), "Storia delle donne nell’Italia contemporanea," Carocci, 2022.
6. Mass Migrations and European Refugees (10/4)
- Gatrell, Peter, "L’inquietudine dell’Europa: Come la migrazione ha rimodellato un continente," Einaudi, 2020. (Introduction)
7. Visit to the university library archives (14/4)

8. writing lab (15/4)

Part III: War and Technology
9. Nuclear War and Environmental Destruction (17/4)
- J.R. Mcneill, “The biosphere and the Cold War,” The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol 3.(2010).
10. Decolonization and the Biosphere (24/4)
- Kennedy, D. (2017). "The perils of the midday sun: Climatic anxieties in the colonial tropics." In Imperialism and the natural world. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press.
11. Global Imaginaries (28/4)
- Benjamin Lazier, “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture,” The American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 3, 2011, pp. 602–30.

Part IV: The Anthropocene
12. The Anthropocene, feminism and Global History (29/4)
- Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, "La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene," Roma: Treccani, 2019

or
- Donna Haraway, "Chthulucene. Sopravvivere su un pianeta infetto," Produzioni Nero, 2019.
13. The Climate Crisis and Global History
- Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 2009 35:2, 197-222.
14.Antropocene, anthropology and global history

Guest: Dr Valentina Mann 

Part V: Rethinking Global History

15. Global history and its critiques
- John-Paul A. Ghobrial, ‘Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian’, Past & Present Special issue on ‘Global History and Microhistory’ 242, supplement 14 (2019), 1-22.
or 
- Richard Drayton and David Motadel, 'Discussion: The Future of Global History,' Journal of Global History, 13:1 (2018), pp. 1-21.

Readings/Bibliography

Acker, Antoine, Laurent Warlouzet, Conversation with Debjani Bhattacharyya, Roberta Biasillo, Iris Borowy, Claudia Leal, Christof Mauch, Gregory Quenet, 'From the Globe to the Planet? New Challenges of Global and Environmental History', Monde(s), 21 (2022), pp. 21-46.

Adelman, Jeremy ‘What is Global History Now?' https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment

Armiero, Marco, Richard Tucker (eds.), Environmental History of Modern Migrations, New York: Routledge, 2017.

Audenino, Patrizia, La casa perduta: la memoria dei profughi nell'Europa del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2015.

Beckert, Sven and Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global history, globally: research and practice around the world (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), ‘Introduction’.

Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2007)

Bonneuil, Christophe, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene, Roma: Treccani, 2019

Borges M. & M. Hsu (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Global Migrations.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Castles, Stephen, Mark J. Miller, L'era delle migrazioni: popoli in movimento nel mondo contemporaneo, Bologna, Odoya, 2012.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh, La sfida del cambiamento climatico: globalizzazione e antropocene, Verona, Ombre Corte, 2021.

Colucci, Michele, Matteo Sanfilippo, Le migrazioni. Un'introduzione storica, Roma: Carocci, 2009.

Colucci, Michele, Storia dell'immigrazione straniera in Italia: dal 1945 ai nostri giorni, Roma: Carocci, 2018.

Corona, Giovanni Gozzini, Le migrazioni di ieri e di oggi. Una storia comparata, Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2005.

Drayton, Richard and David Motadel, 'Discussion: The Future of Global History', Journal of Global History, 13:1 (2018), pp. 1-21.

Edwards, Andrew David, Peter Hill, Juan Neves-Sarriegui, ’Capitalism in Global History’, Past & Present, 249 (2020), e1–e32.

Gabriella Breve, storia dell'ambiente in Italia, Bologna: il Mulino, 2015.

Gatrell, Peter, L’inquietudine dell’Europa: Come la migrazione ha rimodellato un continente, Einaudi, 2020.

Ghobrial, John-Paul A. ‘Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian’, Past & Present Special issue on ‘Global History and Microhistory’ 242, supplement 14 (2019), 1-22.

Gungwu Wang (ed.), Global History and Migrations, New York, Routledge, 1997.

Hetherington, Philippa and Julia Laite. "Editorial Note: Special Issue: Migration, Sex, and Intimate Labor." Journal of Women's History, vol. 33 no. 4, 2021, p. 7-39. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2021.0043 .

Hoerder, Dirk ‘Migration studies: deep time and global approaches’, Journal of Global History 11/3 (2016): 473-480 (review article)

Lazier, Benjamin, “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture.” The American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 3, 2011, pp. 602–30.

Lewis, Simon L. Mark Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l'Antropocene, Torino: Einaudi, 2019.

Martiin, Carin, Juan Pan-Montojo, Paul Brassley (eds.), Agriculture in Capitalist Europe, 1945–1960: from food shortages to food surpluses, London:Taylor and Francis, 2016.

Martin, Jamie, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, Harvard University Press, 2022.

McKeown, Adam “Global Migration, 1846-1940,” Journal of World History15, no. 2 (2004), 155-189.

McNeill, John R. and Corinna R. Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

McNeill, John R. Peter Engelke, La grande accelerazione. Una storia ambientale dell'Antropocene dopo il 1945, Torino: Einaudi, 2018

Neri Serneri, Simone Incorporare la natura. Storie ambientali del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2005.

Osterhammel, Jurgen, Niels P. Petersson, Storia della globalizzazione, Il Mulino, 2005.

Salvatici, Silvia, Senza casa e senza paese: profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008

Strangio, Donatella, Globalizzazione, diseguaglianze, migrazioni: introduzione alla storia economica contemporanea, Roma: Carocci, 2017.

Trischler, Helmuth The Anthropocene. A Challenge for the History of Science, Technology, and the Environment, «Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin», 24, 2016, pp. 309-335

Tucker, Richard P. Tait Keller, J. R. McNeill, Martin Schmid (eds.), Environmental Histories of the First World War,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Vecchio, Giorgio Gabriella Gotti (a cura di), Il paesaggio violentato. Le due guerre mondiali, le persone, la natura, Roma: Viella, 2020.

Vuorisalo, Timo Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, The Long Shadows A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2017.

Zahra, Tara Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars, Norton, 2023.

Zinkina, Julia, David Christian, Leonid Grinin, et al., A Big History of Globalization: The Emergence of a Global World System (Cham: Springer International, 2019).

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures, discussions, analysis of sources.

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered attending.

Attending students are required to produce a written paper on a topic related to one of the two modules, to be agreed upon with the respective module's teacher.

For a paper worth a total of 12 credits, a paper of approximately 7,500 words is required.

The paper will be evaluated both in terms of formal presentation and articulation of the work, presentation skills, and precision in the use of historiographic concepts and categories, as well as the critical elaboration of the bibliographic material used and its coherence in relation to the subject of the paper.

In the evaluation of attending students, consideration will also be given to their constancy and active participation in the lessons.

In addition to the final paper, non-attending students must take a written exam - valid for both modules of the integrated course - on the following two books:
- Sebastian Conrad, "Storia Globale. Un'introduzione," Carocci, Roma 2015.
- Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, "La Terra, la storia e noi: l'evento antropocene," Treccani, Roma 2019.

The exam, lasting 90 minutes, will consist of six open questions, three on each book.

The overall grade for non-attending students will result from the average between the oral exam and the final paper (to be agreed with one of the two teachers of the integrated course).

Based on the criteria above, the following grading scale will be followed:
- Excellent (30 e lode)
- Very Good (28-30)
- Good (25-27)
- Fair (22-24)
- Sufficient (18-21)

This course (6 credits) is part of the Integrated Course "Profiles of Global History C.I. (1) LM". If the student has the Integrated Course (12 credits) in their study plan, the final grade will be the arithmetic mean of the grades obtained in the two components ("Global History: Public Sphere and Mass Communications" and "Global History: Economy, Environment, Society").

 

Exam sessions for the submission of the final paper are scheduled for the following months of the academic year (exact dates are published on Alma Esami):

- May 2025

- July 2025

- September 2025

- October 2025

- November 2025

- January 2026

- March 2026

 

Teaching tools

The course is divided into 5 sections, each consisting of 3 lessons, and includes both lectures and seminars where active participation of students is required. Some readings for discussion in class will be assigned in the first week of lessons to small groups of students, who will then present and discuss them during the course. The texts for the reading groups will be available in the course's educational resources.

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office:

[https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students]

 

Office hours

See the website of Or Rosenboim