History

This course covers Africa's current international relations and provides a historical outlook on relations and connections between African societies or states and the world from the first Pan-African conference in 1900 until the end of the Cold War. Drawing on the global history approach, the course goes beyond the traditional imperial history that tends to focus exclusively on Euro-African exchanges and demonstrates how Africa became entwined with world politics, interacted with diversified actors across the world (in Asia, Middle East and Latin America), and tried to shape global affairs. The first part of the course focuses on Great Divergence and Atlantic revolutions to contextualize European colonial conquests. The second part considers the history of African resistance and struggles, anti-colonial and post-colonial solidarities across the world, Panafricanism(s), and African integration. The third part of the course addresses divergent paths of decolonization, Africa's role in the Third world setting, the role of technology, and the Cold War rivalries. More generally, this course combines the transnational, cultural, and diplomatic history of Africa. Each session consists of two parts: a short introduction by the seminar leader and academic discussion around required readings to analyze primary sources and documentaries.

This course surveys ancient and medieval Europe, from ancient Greece to the Reformation. The ancient and medieval world may seem to be a remote society, but there are many connections with and influences on the contemporary world. Thinking about democracy, politics, religion, liberty, and sciences, the past society gives us clues to see our contemporary world from different perspectives. This course analyzes various primary sources, such as the texts of Herodotus and Thucydides; Res Gestae Divi Augusti (The Deeds of Deified Augustus); Suetonius' Life of Roman Emperors; Pliny the Younger's Letters; Eusebius' Life of Constantine; the forged document of the Donation of Constantine; and the Travels of Ibn Jubayr, to understand how history has been made and interpreted. This process develops one's basic ability in historical study and source criticism. 

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course explores the history of the body through the study of the practice of anatomy as it emerged as a scientific discipline through a few key authors and themes. These include medieval medicine and the early anatomical school at Bologna; the role of gender and generation in the development of medieval and renaissance dissection as a university practice; the criminal and the saintly body; the spectacle of dissection; anatomical illustration from Leonardo to Hunter; and malleable bodies: ceroplastic and the tridimensional representation of the human body. The course aims to refine student’s analytical skills and abilities to interpret both the primary and secondary literature to contextualize the history of scientific thought in relation to the history of philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, social and political history, and the institutional history of the time.

This course examines the popular experience of life in 20th-century Ireland. Rather than seeing Irish culture in terms of elite experiences, this course explores life as it was lived by the majority of Irish people. To do this, the course broadly traces key experiences from birth to death, examining each experience from as many viewpoints as possible. Certain key themes run throughout the course such as the social and cultural effects of economic, political and demographic change, the evolving role of the state and legislation as it affected daily life, the process of secularization, changes in public and private morality, an increasing openness to international influence and the conflicts, and tensions that these various developments unleashed. The course examines the interpretative challenges of social and cultural history in an Irish context, and examines some of the new certainties that seem to be emerging in the growing literature on various aspects of Irish experience.

The course will deal with the involvement of Jews as a group and as individuals in the civic and political life of the United States, during the period since 1920. The course will be given in English. The students will learn about the complex character of civic participation in a changing American political landscape, in which Jews have expressed their interests and taken part in the discourse of political events and public affairs.