History

The course conveys broad factual knowledge on the military forces and infrastructure of some of the ancient world's largest, most powerful, and long-lived empires, those of Rome and Persia. Students acquire the skills to use all evidence at our disposal (material as well as written) for the topics under discussion. They gain deeper understanding how topography and geography influenced military strategy. The course provides students with the skills to assess the effectiveness of relevant military installations. Students learn to adopt a more nuanced approach to history and are encouraged to question Eurocentric worldviews.

This course examines French and Francophone cultural productions since the end of the Second World War, a traumatic event that transformed and deeply marked France’s society. It focuses on the evolutions of French national identity and diverse representations of it in a context of decolonization, European dynamics, and globalization. The concept of national identity is challenged by multicultural and immigrant populations that shift our understanding of “French” towards a transnational perspective. The critical urgency of this issue of definition is underlined by increasing political tensions in France that are also accentuated by the growing demands for new public commemorations that seek to acknowledge silenced, wounded memories and that, in doing so, may further divide society. The course examines how dissent about French identity revives democracy while paradoxically undoing national borders. It progresses chronologically, starting with post-War liberations from the margins: women (feminism), colonials (decolonization), youth, and other social identities (May 1968). It then analyzes how these forms of gender, ethnic, and social otherness persist or were dealt with in the 70s and 80s. The course also takes a close look at the geographical and spatial fractures that weigh upon French society. Finally, it addresses today’s issues concerning the education system, in particular the teaching of history, the unprecedented economic crisis, old age, climate change, Islam, Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, the attacks in Paris in 2015, and the refugee crisis.
 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. At the end of the course unit students have acquired awareness of the concept of universal history centered around Europe and Western Civilization as well as with the ways through which this narrative has been deconstructed by means of alternative and peripheral critical stances. Students are able to understand the relevance of different traditions of critical thought such as cultural Marxism, anti-imperialist and Afro-American thought, cultural and postcolonial studies. At the end of the course students demonstrate a sound theoretical framework within which specific research interests can be developed. The course is divided into two main parts. The first part is devoted to the critical analysis of narratives of the world history from ancient times: Narratives of Universal History: classic, medieval, and early modern patterns; From the Enlightenment philosophy of history to the nineteenth century imperial history; The crisis of the western image of world history. The second part focuses on socialist and communist internationalism as actors and networks of nineteenth and twentieth century world history and particularly focuses on the first phase, the years of Comintern (1919-1943). The second part focuses on the following topics: The First and the Second Internationals: revolutionary strategies, universalism and the colonial question; First World War, Soviet Revolution and the birth of the Comintern in 1919; Perspectives of internationalism after the First World War: Wilson vs Lenin; Revolutionary perspectives in the peripheries; Space, time, culture rethinking the socialist transition; Race, language, translation and socialist transition; The Second World War and beyond: communism as an actor of twentieth century globalization.

This course explores the major developments in United States history in the 20th century. The course examines general issues such as the cycles of conservatism and liberalism in the United States in the domestic front and the rise of the United States to superpower status. Topics include WWI, the Jazz Age, the New Deal, WWII, Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the Clinton presidency.

This course examines the development of social policy in Barbados since emancipation. It traces the transformation in government and popular approaches to education, health services, poverty alleviation, housing, community development, culture, and women's affairs from a laissez faire orientation to the birth and interventionism of the Welfare State.

This course examines the major problems and issues, both historiographical and historical, relating to women in 20th century Africa, including focusing on the changing status of women in Africa within the context of the efforts to extend capitalism and to democratize society across the continent. The course covers the following themes: the discourse on the impact of the emergence and operation of modern nation-states upon the status of African women; the pervasive role of traditional, Islamic and Western influences in African historical evolution tradition.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course analyzes different aspects of spatial imaginaries in the context of colonial and post-colonial history. The main focus of this course concerns visions of international order after empire in the twentieth century. The course is divided into five parts. The first part of the course concerns an introduction to the category of ‘space’ in historical studies in order to provide an analytical framework to imperialism and colonialism. The second part of the course focuses on the spatial dimensions of the colonial and imperial rule. In the third part, students discuss nationalist and federalist visions for post-colonial order, analyzing the relations between nationalist movements and supra-national political spaces. The topic of the fourth part is about the idea of pan-regionalisms, looking at three specific case studies. The last week is dedicated to the connections within and between the imperial and colonial spaces and visions of international and global order. At the end of the course students reach an understanding of the social and cultural history of areas of the world that have been subject to modern colonial rule and that, in most cases, experienced a subsequent phase of political decolonization. Students will be able to critically engage in the study of different kinds of sources, using a comparative perspective. They will acquire the analytical tools needed to properly investigate the complex social, cultural, and political realities of colonial and postcolonial spaces. At the end of the course, students will also be able to deploy their analytical skills in professional activities linked with the popularization and public use of historical knowledge.

This course examines the history of sexuality from the Ancient world, through the 18th and 19th centuries, ending up in the twentieth century.