96813 - International History of the Contemporary Era (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing a good knowledge of contemporary political-institutional history, to enable students to read, in a European and non-European context, the great historical changes of contemporaneity, from the French Revolution to the Fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). Students will be able to analyze the connections between internal and foreign policy as well as to understand the most relevant international processes and their interconnection with national histories. The diachronic study of the main events of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries will allow students to acquire basic key interpretations for the analysis of current scenarios.

Course contents

The course will cover the main turns of contemporary political history (from the revolutions occurred in 1848 to the 1980s), through a comparative analysis of the most significant historical events that affected the European context and the main non-European areas. After an overview of the main political, economic and social processes that brought to the birth of the contemporary age and culminated in the First World War, the analysis will focus on European and extra-European political history from the interwar era to the global context of the bipolar system and the Cold War.

Readings/Bibliography

All students (both attending and non-attending the classes) must study the compulsory textbook and one monograph among those suggested.

Compulsory:

Giovanni Sabbatucci, Vittorio Vidotto, Il mondo contemporaneo, Laterza, Bari-Roma, 2019, fino a p. 614.

One of your choice:

Banti, Alberto Mario, Il Risorgimento italiano, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2008 (escluse le pagg. 145-222)

Cavazza, Stefano, Pombeni, Paolo (a cura), Introduzione alla Storia contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2020.

Corni, Gustavo, Breve storia del nazismo 1920-1945, Bologna, Il Mulino 2015.

Ertola, Emanuele, "Il colonialismo degli italiani. Storia di un'ideologia" Carocci, 2022.

Ferguson, Nial, Impero. Come la Gran Bretagna ha fatto il mondo moderno, Mondadori, Milano 2009

Goldstein, Erik, Gli accordi di pace dopo la Grande guerra (1919-1925), il Mulino, 2005

Judt, Tony La nostra storia (Dopoguerra. Come è cambiata l’Europa dal 1945 a oggi), Laterza 2017, disponibile anche in e-book (anche edizione Mondadori 2007)

Kennedy, Dane, Storia della decolonizzazione, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2016

Kennedy, Paul, Ascesa e declino delle grandi potenze, Garzanti, Milano 2016

Lupo, Salvatore, La mafia. Centosessant’anni di storia tra Sicilia e America, Roma, Donzelli

Perazzoli, Jacopo, “Per la pace del diritto". Woodrow Wilson e la sua eredità, dalla Grande Guerra allo shock della globalizzazione, Carocci, 2022.

Testi, Arnaldo, Il secolo degli Stati Uniti, Il Mulino, Bologna.

Teaching methods

International History in the Contemporary Era is conceived as a basic course at the beginning of first cycle degree and usually highly attended by students. The professor will take lectures also offering students the opportunity to interact by posing questions and asking for details. The professor will also use Power Point in order to outline key points of the historical analysis, as well as historical images and films. Moreover, guest professors will deliver some seminars.

Assessment methods

Attending students have to take three written tests in order to get evaluated for their work, both individual and in the classroom. Each of this three tests - that are reserved for students who have regularly attended (the teacher will collect students' signatures in the classroom) will be based on 10 semi-open questions to be completed in 45 minutes.

Evaluation criteria for the written tests: the tests will be evaluated out of thirty. Each test will be considered passed if the student achieves at least 18 points out of the total 30.

If the three written tests are successful, the student will have access to the final oral exam.

In the event of a negative result of one or more written tests, as well as in case of absence from one or more tests (to be justified), the student will have to recover those parts of the program taking a 10 questions test in 45 minutes before the oral exam (the same day of the oral exam)

The marks obtained in the tests remain valid up to and by September 2025.

The final exam will be oral and aimed at evaluting the acquired historical thinking skills as well as the critical reading skills of the chosen book.

The final grade of the exam will be the outcome of the mean between the mean of the three written tests and the final oral mark.

For the final oral exam, students are requested to bring the handbook and the reading.

Not-attending students:

The exam for non-attending students consists of an open-ended questionnaire of 10 questions on the manual/institutional part and an oral test aimed at verifying  the learning of the manual/institutional part. -

For the written test the time available is 45 minutes.

-The oral test takes place on the same day as the written one or the following day if those registered are an high figure.

-To pass the exam you must obtain a pass in both tests (access to the oral test is subject to passing the written test).

 

Teaching tools

Power Point presentations, historical images, movies and guest lecturers.

The Syllabus with the list of the themes, the calendar and the dates of the written text will be available on Virtuale by the first day of the course

Office hours

See the website of Angela Santese