History

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 provides theoretical knowledge on museum studies, as well as the necessary practical skills to work with or in the museum sector. It is designed to prepare students both to the responsibilities they will overtake or/and to the academic work they will produce during their professional career. The course is divided into three modules. The first module provides a theory-based introduction to the museum sector and the research field of critical museology. The second module is dedicated to the new stakes and challenges of the museum in the 21st century. The last part of the course is conceived to provide concrete tools to think specifically about the publics of museums, and to implement adapted strategies to relevantly interact with them inside and outside of the museum. The course covers museum history from being an institutional container for a collection up to the idea of the modern archaeological museum with its complex organization; the rudiments of museum theory, legislation, and marketing; the application of the theoretical-scientific concept of Museology, in its various meanings and multi-functional sense, to the complex problems related to public enjoyment of the Archaeological Cultural Heritage.

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 course focuses on the main theoretical and methodological tools of global and intercultural perspectives for the study of the medieval world including religious phenomena and dynamics. This course shows how to critically identify the socio-cultural matrix of religions, as well as connections, developments, persistence, and transformations of religious phenomena with a critical approach to periodization and can address and solve issues related to the management of cultural and religious pluralism. With a focus on the medieval Mediterranean and the routes to Asia from 1000 to 1500, this course analyzes patterns of religious, commercial, and intellectual communication between Latins, Eastern Christians, Arabs, and Mongols, with attention to the sociopolitical implications of interaction between groups in complex societies. The first part of the course provides the main theoretical tools for a history of cross-cultural encounters in pre-modern times, looking in particular at the Mongol Empire and the Mediterranean Sea as connecting spaces. Afterwards, the focus is on a series of case studies, based on which the class empirically observes patterns of interaction, representation of otherness, and circulation of goods, peoples, and ideas across linguistic, religious, and cultural boundaries and on different scales. Specific attention is devoted to the plurality of representations of the “Orient” produced or circulating in late medieval Europe, regarding them as crucial objects of cultural and religious history. The course discusses how non-Latin and non-Christian peoples fit into Western categories of representations, and what knowledge about Near- and Far-Eastern regions was actually available in the West. By examining specific cases, based on Eastern and Western sources, the course explores the different ways in which medieval travelers took otherness into account, whether internal or external to Christianity, and examines how these accounts fit into precise intellectual schemes and political and religious agendas.

This course offers students a perspective into the contemporary history of science while presenting topics that the history of science has generally marginalized and that are becoming more and more relevant: anatomy studies, the medicine of emotions, the relationship between medical knowledge and experimental science, the conceptions of what is normal and what is pathological through an analysis of monstrosity and the development of theories of contagion. 

This course examines the idea of the communication revolution from two perspectives. First, how have changes in communications technology altered the speed and nature of communication between individuals and societies? The course explores how inventions such as the printing press, the camera and the radio helped connect Latin Americans to national and international networks and gave rise to new political and cultural identities. Second, how have individuals and groups used mass communication to both push for and resist revolutionary change? Examples include the role of print culture in the Atlantic Revolutions, printmaking in the Mexican Revolution and the pioneering use of radio education in the Andean countryside during the 1960s. 

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 course provides information, in the fields of Indology, history, religious studies, and anthropology, indispensable for critically analyzing South Asian intellectual history in colonial and post-colonial times. The course provides in-depth analysis to the following themes: Discourse on religion and religious conflicts in colonial and postcolonial India; the debate on historiography in post-colonial India; the criticism of "secularism" in postcolonial India; representations of social marginality in contemporary South Asia. The course also provides high-level knowledge of intellectual transformations and history of thought in modern and contemporary South Asia, specifically during the colonial and post-colonial period. The course covers in depth the issue of religious and social reforms and the main theoretical positions emerged in the current debate on the historiographical and anthropological representation of the development of South Asian society. 

What is at stake in reading, writing, depicting and telling the histories of Berlin’s architectural and urban landscape? How do historical and analytical frameworks shape scholarly understandings of the city? How does the architecture of Berlin shape its history and theory? Conducted as a discussion seminar, this course uses recent architectural and urban histories of 20th century Berlin to explore different ways of narrating the city’s history. Each week, students will approach Berlin’s urbanity through different textual and visual media to discuss the themes and methods—from femininity to migration, politics to privatization—by which they narrate the entanglement of Berlin’s physical and social landscape. Over the course of the semester, students will develop their scholarly reading techniques, and their fluency in the multipolar and manifold circumstances of the city. The premise of the course is that engaging the narrative can lead to ‘changing the narrative,’ thereby opening the door for students to develop an original final project, situating their worldly experience in the past, present and future of Berlin.

In this course, students examine the origins of the idea of human rights, how it became institutionalized in law and international politics, and how its history and prospects have become so fiercely contested today. Students reflect on the history of abolitionism, human rights, and humanitarianism in a global setting, and analyze the impact of modern international and multi-cultural perspectives on the evolution of human rights history.

The course explores beliefs in witches, demons, and magic, and phenomena such as angels, ghosts, dreams, and miracles using case studies from a range of European countries across the period 1450 - 1750. It investigate the interplay between popular and elite ideas about witchcraft and magic and how these changed over the course of the period. Topics include: witchcraft, sabbats, the diabolic pact, and black magic; witch trials, torture, and execution; demonic possession and exorcism; angels, ghosts, and fairies; and monsters and miracles. Students discuss a range of textual and visual primary sources including woodcuts, witchcraft trials, popular pamphlets, and official treatises (all in translation). 

This course compares and contrasts pre-colonial, colonial and 'post-colonial' experiences of eastern and western Polynesian societies. Students are introduced to a range of sources for historical research, including indigenous sources.

This course investigates the nineteenth-century roots of contemporary issues in the middle east. It introduces the issues, actors, and processes that have shaped the post-Ottoman region and its neighbors during the past two centuries. The course surveys broad trends in the evolution of the Ottoman Sultanate during the nineteenth century, then focus on themes for discussion and analysis. It also examines the Ottoman state, the diverse communities that made up the empire, and the great powers that surrounded it. The course attends to political, military, economic, social, and cultural developments, attempting to understand historical breaks and continuities that continue to affect the region today. Finally, it critiques analytical categories (nation, class, faith, and gender) while relating them to concrete case studies and asking whether they are relevant to different societies.