History

This class deals with various global historical issues ranging from politics to culture, sometimes using basic IR (International Relations) theories. The course covers such current issues as US foreign policy, Middle Eastern questions, Russian invasion of Ukraine, conflicts in Africa, re-surging nationalism and gender and minority questions from global historical perspectives.

In this course, students analyze the main physical and human characteristics of the continent and of contemporary Chile. Students gain a critical understanding of the changes and permanences in the geographical and physical and humane spaces of the continent and the conceptual grounds of the geographical spaces (landscape, territory, place, region, localization and scale) for its application into interdisciplinary research. Topics includes the physical geographical space of the Americas, regional synthesis of Chile, and the regional development of the country. 

The course covers the history of media in the period 1600 – 1850. Major emphasis is placed on the media system concept and material aspects of early modern print. The course focuses on the breadth in early modern media systems and the interplay between different media such such as rumours, sermons, newspapers and pamphlets. Other themes that are examined are censorship and the emergence of a mediated public sphere. 

This lecture-based course addresses some of the major themes which have characterized Irish history since 1750 – the rise of nationalism and campaigns for Home Rule and independence; the establishment of the new state; Irish engagement with Britain, Europe and the world; religious and ethnic divisions within Ireland; impact of gender and age on life experiences; socio-economic events and developments like the famine in the 19th century and economic planning in the twentieth. The particular range of themes to be addressed may change from year to year and will be announced by the Department at the start of the year.

This course provides an extended overview of American cultural history ranging from the period of British settlement in the 17th century to contemporary issues in US society. Students read influential texts (speeches, legal documents, essays, etc.) by authors such as John Cotton, Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Betty Friedan, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Throughout the readings, the class explores public rhetoric as a key factor shaping the cultural trajectory of the United States. After a brief introduction to basic methodologies of cultural analysis, students investigate the rhetorical, structural, and discursive features of the primary texts through close readings. The course explores select representations from the fields of visual culture, art, and film, and a selection of key terms that are essential for understanding the evolution of American public discourse and intellectual 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. At the end of the course, students have the methodological and theoretical tools of 'Atlantic History,' which redefines the spatial limits of modern politics, considering Europe, Africa, and the Americas as part of one and the same global experience. This perspective, well-developed in North American universities, is extended to the history of political concepts, with a special attention to antagonistic political cultures and resistance movements, but also to the colonial dimension embedded in the great classics of modern and contemporary political thought. The course deals with the history of modern political thought, with a special focus on the development of fundamental concepts such as sovereignty, state, rights, property and war, in a global perspective, which assumes the opening of the new Atlantic political space and the problems involved in European expansion overseas as a crucial background for understanding the emergence of new discursive strategies and new political categories in the early modern age.

After an initial lecture designed to provide a general overview of the methodology, the subsequent weeks of classes are divided into three distinct but interconnected units. The first unit deals with the theoretical and methodological tools of conceptual history and its redefinition from a global and oceanic perspective. It is argued that the history of concepts has provided an essential framework for understanding and criticizing the foundations of modern politics, but the Eurocentric coordinates underlying the traditional versions of this approach must be radically revised in order to grasp the genealogy of our global present. The second unit addresses the emergence of the Atlantic space and its distinctive phenomena and actors as a decisive factor of historical transformation that radically displaced the traditional coordinates of politics. On this basis, the development of a new political framework and the modern theory of state sovereignty is understood as a response to this crucial challenge. This is illustrated through a close reading and discussion of relevant passages from classical thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Thomas Paine. The third unit offers a spatial reading of the work of the legal scholar Hugo Grotius in the light of the perspective outlined in the first two units. Grotius – who has been traditionally considered one of the founding fathers of modern international law and modern maritime law, but who was also a crucial figure in the context of the creation of the Dutch "seaborne" empire in the East and West Indies – constitutes a compelling case study because his legal and political theory can be situated in a transitional moment between the medieval and humanist tradition on the one hand and the emergence of a modern outlook on the other, while reflecting the entanglements between states and colonies, land and sea, the territorialized order of sovereignty, and the fluid power of commercial empires and trading companies. An analysis of his work can therefore allow us both to grasp the complex origins and characteristics of modern political space and to elucidate the global genealogy of European modernity.

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 students with notions of comparative grammar, which allows them to recognize the main differences between east-Slavic (Russian in particular), west-Slavic (Polish) and south-Slavic (Bulgarian) languages. The course also provides an accurate knowledge of Slavic medieval history, within the broader context of European and Mediterranean culture and civilization. Students will acquire the knowledge and skills to read and comprehend short Slavonic texts.

In Fall 2025, the course concerns the figure of Michael Trivolis, a Greek monk who lived between the end of the 15th and the middle of the 16th century, known in Russia as ‘Maximus the Greek’ (Maksim Grek). Born in Arta, in the Epirus region of Greece, pupil of John Lascaris in Corfù and Florence, collaborator of Aldo Manuzio in Venice, at the service of the court of Mirandola, once again in Florence as Dominican monk, Michael Trivolis trained at the school of Italian humanism. When he was about 35 years old, he returned to his fatherland and entered the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos. After 12 years, in 1518, he was sent to Muscovy with the task of correcting the church-Slavonic translations which were in use there (with particular reference to the Psalter). In the Rus’, the first half of the 16th century was a time characterized by the struggle against heresies on one hand, and by an harsh debate on church properties on the other. Maximus the Greek’s friction with the political and ecclesiastical power earned him imprisonment and ostracism: up until the moment of his death, which took place almost 40 years later, he has never been allowed to leave the Rus’. It’s been written that Maximus “had been prepared for a mission to Muscovy, but Muscovy was not yet ready for him”. Nevertheless, besides being one of the most prolific writers in the entire Slavic Middle Ages, Maximus the Greek has been read and loved by many people, to the point that he became very soon worthy of veneration (but the Russian Church canonized him only in 1988).

This course offers an introduction to the history of modern Eastern Europe, with a focus on the region’s politics, society, and culture, from the late 19th century to the present. It traces the collapse of the Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian empires; the rise of nationalism and creation of nation-states; the impact of the world wars; the establishment and evolution of communist regimes; and the region’s transition to democracy after the fall of communism in 1989. Through engagement with primary sources, memoirs, literature, artistic works, and major historiographical debates, the course explores how the countries of the region continue to grapple with the questions of identity, memory, power, and belonging raised during Europe’s tumultuous twentieth century.

This course is a shared exploration of the history of relations between the United States and China from the 1770s to the present.  The course begins with the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), through the Republican period (1911-1949), and through the current era (1949-present).  

The course also explores cultural history – examining the dominant national mythologies of the United States and China, and how these have developed since the respective nations’ beginnings, including mythologies in popular culture and more official national mythologies. It examines the layers of national narratives in different periods both in terms of how the two powers perceived and depicted themselves, and how they perceived and depicted each other. This theme concludes with an exploration of the most recent national narratives, incorporating popular and official voices in Beijing and Taipei, Hollywood and Washington, and more.