History

This course provides students with an understanding of the origins, main features, and impact of the Jacobite movement, and places Scotland’s experience of Jacobitism within its wider British and European context. It seeks to deepen historical and transferable skills already acquired or to assist students coming to history as a discipline for the first time. Students look at the societal changes that occurred in Scotland in the 18th century, the Jacobite rebellions and the Enlightenment period, and learn how to collect, evaluate, and use sources to support a historical case and evaluate conflicting historical interpretations.

This course is a survey of the history of Great Britain from the Revolution of 1688 to Brexit. The course seeks to understand how Britain and the British came to be the way they are at present-economy, society, politics, and culture. It covers the rise and fall of British power and influence; the expansion of English power within the British Isles; the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain; the transformation of a traditional society; the rise and decline of British industrial power; the development of a class society, and the rise and fall of Britain as a great power. 

Through an interdisciplinary theoretical, methodological and historiographical analysis, this course examines key issues and representative themes, problems, and events, relating to the history of culture and thought in Latin America. Topics covered include: meeting of cultures; culture of the Baroque; the Enlightenment; insurgency and independence; modernization and progress; new trends of the twentieth century; challenges of the twenty first century; models and case studies.

Along with an introductory survey of the most important art of the period, the course covers various controversies regarding the works' essence. The central aspects and artists of the period are introduced in the first seven weeks. Based on the textbook, lectures, and excursions, students are challenged to create a kind of survey for themselves. The second part of the course gives representative examples of the methods and fields of research that are central to the subject of seventeenth-century Dutch art. An attempt is made to offer a complete survey of the important painters from the seventeenth century, but of course a selection has to be made. There is an emphasis on Rembrandt, not only because he was the most important seventeenth-century Dutch artist, but also because his work has been researched in a number of ways. Additionally, there is an emphasis on painters and art historians from Utrecht, because their work is close at hand in the museums in this city, and because knowledge of Utrecht culture might contribute to a feeling of home. Prerequisites for this course include a course on art history or museum studies.

The early modern period saw considerable changes in the shape of warfare and in the nature of armed forces and the state, a process some historians have described as a military revolution. Yet the increasing pressures of war brought about considerable social, economic, and political breakdown, as rulers overburdened both their armed forces and their domestic subjects. This course examines how western European states organized and conducted war between the late 16th and the early 18th century, and consider what effects this had on political stability. The focus is not only on some of the great powers but also upon some minor states who punched above their weight on the international stage.

This course examines the history of the Graeco-Roman world during the first millennium BCE: from the Greek Early Iron Age to the rise of the Roman Empire. The main topics include material culture, the Greek city-states, the Persian Wars, Greek politics and theater, Athenian imperialism, ancient daily life, mythology and religion, Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic kingdoms, and the Roman Republic and Empire (about 70/30% Greece/Rome). While the focus is on Greece and Rome, attention will also be paid to their interaction with neighboring cultures such as Persia and Anatolia, as well as to the reception of the Classical world up until today.  

In this course, students study the defining features of British society, politics, and culture in the period 1880-1990; the dominant historiographical traditions defining this field; and the relevant and appropriate key primary sources.

This course introduces Asian, European, and American material from the late nineteenth century to nearly the present day, concentrating on social and cultural themes such as industrialization, colonialism, science and race, technology and war, computers and global telecommunications and biotechnology and the human genome project. It is taught as a series of cases illustrating important events and multiple themes. The proposition that modern science and technology have been 'socially constructed', reflecting political and cultural values as well as the state of nature, is examined closely. The course includes theoretical material and an empirical focus.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. The title of the course is "FEMMINISMS." Women’s thinking and movements, in Europe, in the Americas, in the Arab context, in southern Africa and in the Asian context are analysed in chronological order, but also showing the deep connections that were established between the various areas of the world. Alongside some thematic reconstructions, starting from the American Revolution and the French Revolution and the publication of the first "manifestos" of contemporary feminism, the lectures analyze particularly important texts and experiences still hard to define within the scope of “classical” history (centered upon the West and its successive “waves”) of the feminisms. At the end, the students understand the complexity of the females thinking and movements in their peculiarity and in a transnational and global perspective. Students acquire in-depth knowledge of the origins and development of women's movements in Italian Early Modern and Contemporary history, through methodological investigations which allow them to research autonomously.

This course surveys the history of Europe and the Mediterranean world from the 12th to the 15th centuries. The course takes thematic cross-sections which enable students to understand not just the crucial events that shaped the period (such as the Crusades, the fall of Constantinople, the Black Death, the threat of Mongol invasions and popular rebellions), but also the mentalities of the people who experienced them. The thematic structure of tutorials allows comparison within each theme, covering not just Europe but also the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Possible themes may include political structures, popular devotion, religious dissent, transmission of intellectual thought, violence and warfare, marriage, childhood, the persecution of minorities, assimilation and co-existence, and travel and exploration.