B4803 - Europe in Global History (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

Through direct contact with some specific research fields students will be able to show capacity of a critical use of sources and literature as well as to apply research perspectives and methodologies aimed at challenging Eurocentric paradigms. Students will acquire awareness of research problems in a wide range of topics drawn from migration history, history of ideas circulation, social conflicts, transnational mobilization processes, power relations and resistance strategies, global labour history.

Course contents

This 6 CFU course is part of the 12 CFU Integrated Course “Global History (C.I.) (LM)". It will introduce and analyze controversial concepts – Europe, decolonization, solidarity among others – in relation to some critical events that marked the passage from the Western colonial/imperial order to the post-war constellation in the frame of the Cold War. The thematic focus will target theories and practices of international, class and women's solidarity with regard to social groups who elaborated, embodied and acted out principles of solidarity since the end of the 19th and during the 20th century. Sources and historiographical literature will be discussed with respect to following main topics: class solidarity, international solidarity in relation to decolonization conflicts; women's solidarity in relation to the interplay between civil society and institutions and among movements. The programme is articulated in 5 weeks, each of them will focus on specific topics.

Week 1: Building the analytical frame: introduction to key concepts and analytical categories of the programme: Europe and non-Eurocentric approaches to European history; solidarity as a 'dynamic concept' in 20th century at the interplay of Global and European history.

Week 2: Fraternité, class solidarity and social rights: Achievements and limits of the workers movement in establishing principles and practices of class solidarity. The role of workers migration in the circulation of patterns of solidarity since the early 20th century to the Cold War context.

Week 3: International solidarity: in the 1960s and 1970s decolonization conflicts challenged hugely former pattern of international solidarity. Addressed will be so-called third-worldist solidarity as it was conceived and pursued both in the Western and in the Socialist world - with a particular focus on the GDR - and the respective relations with decolonization movements.

Week 4: Sisterhood and Women's solidarity. In the last two weeks the focus will shift to a gender perspective with the aims of: Revisiting historiography on Women's internationalism and solidarity; reassessing concepts and analytical categories to address forms and practices of women's solidarity in the 20th century. Week 4 will focus on the first half of the century, the building of international women's associations and their respective agency.

Week 5: From women's to feminist solidarity in the interplay between social organizing and institutions. In the Cold War frame women's solidarity were faced with new challenges. Sisterhood and Feminism stood as controversial concepts resonating the intersection of conflicts determined by multiple factors. Nevertheless feminism(s) informed hugely both international institutional policies and new patterns of creating women's solidarity. From this perspective the relevance of UN Conferences on Women (from Mexico City 1975, to Nairobi 1985 and Beijing 1995) will be addressed.

Readings/Bibliography

1. Antrobus P., The Global Women's Movement. Origins, issues and strategies, London 2004
2. Burton E. et al., Navigating Socialist Encounters: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War, Berlin, Boston 2021;
3. Internationalisms: a twentieth-century history, ed. by Glenda Sluga, Patricia Clavin, Cambridge UP, 2017;
4. Dainotto R., Europe (in theory), Durham 2007
5. D’Auria M., F. Gallo (eds.), Mediterranean Europe(s)Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores, ed. by, London 2023;
6. Delap L., Feminisms. A Global History, London 2020
7. Featherstone D., Solidarity. Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism, London 2012;
8. Garland Mahler A., From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism and Transnational Solidarity, Durham, Duke University Press, 2018
9. Hewitson M., J. Vermeiren (eds.), Europe and the East. Historical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989, London 2023;
10. Hong S.-Y., Cold War Germany, the Third World, and the Global Humanitarian Regime (Human Rights in History). Cambridge 2015;
11. Jansen J., J. Osterhammel, Decolonization: A Short History, Princeton 2017;
12. Janz O., D. Schönpflug (eds.), Gender history in a transnational perspective : biographies, networks, gender orders,
    New York 2014
13. Jiang H., La Commune de Shanghai et la Commune de Paris, Paris 2014
14. Kalter Ch., The discovery of the Third World. Decolonization and the rise of the New Left in France,1950-1976, Cambridge 2016
15. Karagiannis N., P. Wagner (eds.),Varieties of world-making: beyond globalization, edited by Nathalie Liverpool 2007;
16. Laqua D., Activism across Borders since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflicts in and beyond Europe, London 2023;
17. Monaco E., L’Europa di Jean Monnet. Una biografia transatlantica, Roma 2024;
    
18. Olcott J., International womens year : the greatest consciousness-raising event in history, New York-Oxford 2017
19. Slobodian Q. (ed.), Comarades of Color. East Germany in the Cold War world, New York 2015
20. Slobodian Q., Foreign front : Third World politics in sixties West Germany, Durham 2012;
21. Stjerno S., Solidarity in Europe: the history of an idea, Cambridge 2005;
    
22. Stromquist S. (ed.), Labors cold war: local politics in a global context, Urbana: University of Illinois press, 2008
23. Westad A., The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times, Cambridge university press, Cambridge 2007

Teaching methods

The course is organized in a mixed form consisting of lectures and seminar moments. Students are asked to participate actively by reading and preparing class presentations of assigneed articles, essays or book chapters. Reading groups will be created at the beginning of the course, depending on the number of attending students. Guidelines for the presentations will be uploaded on Virtuale.

Readings will be presented weekly as scheduled:

November 14:

From Europe and the East. Historical Ideas of Eastern and Southeast Europe, 1789-1989, ed. by M. Hewitson, J. Vermeiren, London 2023, chapters:

1. Patrick Pasture, Europe’s Many Easts: Why One Orient Is Not the Other

2. Gavin Murray-Miller, Europe and its Orientalisms: Epistemology and Practice in the Long Nineteenth Century

From Mediterranean Europe(s)Rethinking Europe from its Southern Shores, ed. by M. D’Auria, F. Gallo, London 2023, chapters:

4. Felix Wiedemann, Cradle, Frontier, and Contact: The Mediterranean in Geohistorical Narratives of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

6. Roberto Dainotto, Max Weber in Southern Europe: The Problem with Work

November 20-21

Stefano Luconi, "Crossing Borders on the Picket Line: Italian-American Workers and the 1912 Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts", Italian Americana, 28, 2010, 2, pp. 149-161;  

Elizabeth McKillen, "The Irish Sinn Féin Movement and Radical Labor and Feminist Dissent in America, 1916–1921", Labor: Studies in Working-Class History, 16, 2019, 3, pp. 11-37.

Chapter 3 from David Featherstone, Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism, London 2012, pp. 69-98;

Josephine Fowler, "From East to West and West to East: Ties of Solidarity in the Pan-Pacific Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, 1923–1934", International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 66, Fall 2004, pp. 99–117.

November 27-28

Chapter 4 and chapter 5 from D. Featherstone, Solidarity: Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism, London 2012,

Toni Weis, "The Politics Machine: On the Concept of 'Solidarity' in East German Support for SWAPO", in: Journal of Southern African Studies 37(2011), 2, pp. 351-367

Chapter 12 (P. Sprute) from E. Burton et al., Navigating Socialist EncountersMoorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War, De Gruyter 2021, pp. 293-318.

December 4-5

Zaib un Nisa Aziz, "Songs of Sisterhood: Feminist Political Practice between Empire and Internationalism 1910–20", Gender & History, 35, 2023, 1, 155-71;

Nicole Robertson, Women at Work: Activism, Feminism and the Rise of the Female Office Worker during the First World War and Its Immediate Aftermath, in K. Laybourn, J. Shepherd (eds), Labour and Working-Class Lives: Essays to Celebrate the Life and Work of Chris Wrigley, Manchester, 2017, pp. 172–193.

S. Hellawell, “Antimilitarism, Citizenship and Motherhood: The Formation and Early Years of the Women’s International League (WIL), 1915–1919”, Women’s History Review, 27:4 (2018), pp. 551–564

J. Carlier, “Forgotten Transnational Connections and National Contexts: An ‘Entangled History’ of the Political Transfers That Shaped Belgian Feminism, 1890–1914”, Women’s History Review, 19:4 (2010), pp. 503–522

December 11-12

Bruno Toscano, "From Margin(s) to Center(s). The Third World Women’s Alliance (1969-1979)", in Contemporanea, n. 4, 2023, pp. 595-618

Chapter 17 (J. Olcott), Globalizing Sisterhood: International
Women's Year and the Politics of Representation, in The shock of the global: the 1970s in perspective, ed. by N. Ferguson et al., London 2020, pp. 281-93.

Chapter 6 (P. Antrobus), in The Oxford handbook of transnational feminist movements, ed. by R. Baksh, W. Harcourt, Oxford,

Anne M. Bracke, “Contesting ‘Global Sisterhood’: The Global Women's Health Movement, the United Nations and the Different Meanings of Reproductive Rights (1970s–80s).” Gender & History 35, 2023, 3, 811–29

Assessment methods

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

The following instructions on the final exam concern both modules of the integrated course Global History (B4802 - 12 credits).

Attending students are required to participate actively to all classes and discussions on the reading texts listed in the class programm in due time; they will further write a 4,500-word final paper on one of the following areas:

• End of Empires and transnational political movements after the First World War (to be agreed with Prof. Capuzzo)
• Ideas and practices of solidarity crossing European spaces in the late 19th and20th century (to be agreed with Prof. Tolomelli)

Students are required to choose a specific subject within one of these two areas with the advise of one of the two professors (Tolomelli and Capuzzo).

Deadline for the submission of the final paper is either on January 31 or March 31.

The grade assigned to the paper will be based on:

- participation in class presentations and discussions;

- selection of the topic of the final paper and its relatedness with the course content

- ability to identify relevant bibliography

- critical analysis

- clarity in structure and aims

- language proficiency

The final grade will result from the evaluation of all aspects concerning the course: active participation in class; accuracy and punctuality in delivering the due papers; accuracy in oral presentation and academic writing; capability to deepen and master topics addressed during the course; ability to identify relevant bibliography; critical analysis; clear and logical structure of the final paper.

Proper language and the ability to critically analyze relevant topics will lead to a good/excellent final grade

Acceptable language and the ability to resume relevant topics will lead to a sufficient/fair grade.

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of relevant topics will lead to a failure in passing the exam.

Non-attending students are required to pass a written exam. The exam will refer to both modules of the integrated course (12CFU) and will consist of eight open questions (four for each module) that students are expected to answer in 2 hours.

The questions will deal with following books:

Section 1 (module 1):

S. Conrad, D. Sachsenmaier, Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s, New York 2007;

G. Sluga,P. Clavin, eds., Internationalisms: a twentieth-century history. Cambridge 2017.

Section 2 (module 2):

R. M. Dainotto, Europe (in theory), Durham 2007

G. Garavini, After empires. European integration, decolonization, and the challenge from the global south, 1957-1986, Oxford 2012

The final grade for non-attending will result from the arithmetic average of the marks obtained in the two sections of the exam. It will be based on:

- critical analysis of the texts

- conciseness and clarity in exposition

- terminological and conceptual accuracy

Teaching tools

Reading materials ppt presentations used during the course and other information materials will be uplaaded on the Virtuale platform linked to the course.

N.B.: 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: LINK 

Office hours

See the website of Marica Tolomelli