B6442 - Issues of Historical Method and the History of Historiography (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The teaching has a twofold order of objectives: on the one hand, it aims to promote critical reflection on the historical method as an approach to the study of human knowledge, aiming in particular at tracing historical genealogies of concepts and categories of thought and analysis, and to trace over time the unfolding of the past/present dialectic in understanding the questions that interrogate the present world: How does one look at the present from a historical perspective? How much of the past lives in the present? How is it possible to historicize the contemporary? What is the purpose of history? On the other hand, it aims to provide an overview of the historiographical seasons that have succeeded one after another in contemporary culture, highlighting how each society has from time to time posed questions to the past in order to understand its present, how it has sought in history answers to the problems before it, how historians have approached the study of previous ages and developed overall interpretations of the development of human societies. In so doing, offering participants also scenarios of the relations of historiography with the other humanities and social sciences, so as to achieve a critical awareness of the methodological and interpretive interweavings between the different fields of humanistic knowledge.

Course contents

Historiography: sense of time, uses of the past, questions of method.

The knowledge of the past, the tools for a possible understanding of the relationship with the present, the elaboration of categories and concepts to explain individual and collective behaviour, find their privileged - though not exclusive - sphere in historiography. The mediation between a society and its past finds in fact in historiography its first threshold of entry, through which the men and events of yesterday become more easily intelligible to the men of today, just as past events are more evident in their connections with the processes of change underway in the present. On the other hand, in this work of mediation, historiography has been increasingly joined in today's world by other forms of approaching the past, primarily those conveyed through social media and the web. Alongside historians, who nevertheless retain a fundamental role, other figures of narrators of the past have come into the picture. And the sense of time, the perception of its passing and of the profound diversity between epochs, of the different temporality of historical processes, is obscured by a crushing on the present that today seems to manifest itself with increasing incisiveness, tarnishing the ability to understand the dialectic past/present.

The course will focus on these topics and others, addressing methodological aspects (how is historical method defined? What is historical truth? How is the past ‘narrated’? How are temporal and spatial dimensions intertwined in historical processes?), perspectives on the history of concepts, ideas and thought, issues related to different regimes of historicity, problems of the public use of history, and the intertwining of historiographical production and historians' biographies.

Readings/Bibliography

An indicative bibliography is provided, which may be expanded and refined at a later date.

In the case of specific interests of the student, the lecturer is willing to agree on ad hoc bibliographies if necessary.

 

For a manualistic approach:

Gian Paolo Romagnani, Storia della storiografia. Dall'antichità ad oggi, Carocci.

 

For a fundamental methodological reflection on the craft of the historian and the past/present dialectic:

Marc Bloch, Apologia della storia. O mestiere di storico, Feltrinelli (or the earlier edition published by Einaudi)

 

Reflections:

Pietro Rossi, Il senso della storia. Dal Settecento al Duemila, Il Mulino;

Paolo Rossi, Storia e filosofia. Saggi sulla storiografia filosofica, Einaudi;

François Hartog, Regimi di storicità. Presentismo e esperienze del tempo, Sellerio;

F. Hartog, Chronos. L'Occidente alle prese con il tempo, Einaudi;

Carlo Ginzburg, Miti emblemi spie. Morfologia e storia, Adelphi;

C. Ginzburg, Rapporti di forza. Storia, retorica, prova, Quodlibet;

Paul Ricoeur, Ricordare, dimenticare, perdonare. L'enigma del passato, Il Mulino;

Sigfried Kracauer, Prima delle cose ultime, Marietti;

Aleida Assmann, Ricordare, Il Mulino;

Paul Connerton, Come le società ricordano, Armando;

P. Connerton, Come la modernità dimentica, Einaudi;

Enzo Traverso, La tirannide dell’io. Scrivere il passato in prima persona, Laterza;

E. Traverso, Il passato: istruzioni per l'uso. Storia, memoria, politica, Ombre corte;

Reinhart Koselleck, Storia. La formazione del concetto moderno, Clueb;

R. Koselleck, Futuro passato. Per una semantica dei tempi storici, Clueb (oppure l'edizione Marietti);

Francesco Benigno, La storia al tempo dell'oggi, Il Mulino.

 

For the purposes of the colloquium, the reading of Bloch's volume, Apology of History, will be considered compulsory. It will be accompanied by two texts of your choice from those listed among the ‘author's reflections’ (other titles will be indicated in the course of the lectures).

Romagnani's textbook is to be understood as a supplementary support to what is said in the classroom by the lecturer.

Teaching methods

The course will be conducted in the form of "face-to-face" lectures, with the possible use of materials to explore specific themes and clarify the contours of historical issues as they are discussed.

Assessment methods

The examination will take the form of an oral interview.

The proposed questions will aim to verify the ability to frame a broad theme in its historiographical context, articulating the exposition in clear and effective terms; to measure the mastery of well-defined contents and the ability to make connections of relationship and causality; to deepen more specific knowledge, while at the same time operating general focus on the most relevant historical issues.

In particular, the interview will therefore be aimed at verifying knowledge of the main turning points in Italian and European historical culture, the ability to situate them in the era in which they took shape, and to expound them in a clear and distinct manner; the understanding of the relationship links between phenomena, their causal and multi-causal relationships; the ability to operate an initial form of conceptualisation of the processes of change over time; the ability to place an author or a historiographic school in the political-cultural context of which it is an expression.

 

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders are entitled to special adjustments according to their condition, subject to assessment by the University Service for Students with Disabilities and SLD. Please do not contact teachers or Department staff, but make an appointment with the Service. The Service will then determine what adjustments are specifically appropriate, and get in touch with the teacher. For more information, please visit the page:
https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students

Teaching tools

From time to time,   the reading and illustration of historical texts and documentary sources may be used.

Office hours

See the website of Luca Baldissara