81947 - World History: Theory and Methodology (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course unit students will have acquired awareness of the concept of universal history centred 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 will be able to understand the relevance of different traditions of critical thought as cultural Marxism, anti-imperialist and Afro-American thought, cultural and postcolonial studies. At the end of the course students will demonstrate a sound theoretical framework within which specific research interests could be developed.

Course contents

The course will be divided into two main parts.

The first part will be devoted to the critical analysis of narratives of the world history since ancient times:

• Narratives of Universal History: classic, medieval, and early modern patterns
• From the Enlightenment philosophy of history to the 19th century imperial history
• The crisis of the western image of world history

The second part will focus on socialist and communist internationalism as actors and networks of 19th and 20th century world history and will particularly focus on the first phase, the years of Comintern (1919-1943).

The following will be the main topics of the second part of the course.

• 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 20th century globalisation

Attending students will write a brief paper (500 words) according to the folloing schedule. In this brief paper they have to single out the main points of the chapter/article.

Students are expected to do class presentation of the texts they have read and actively participate to the discussion on them.

Texts have to be read and papers delivered according to the following schedule. Papers have to be sent to the following email address:

worldhistory.papers@gmail.com

1st October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

• Arnaldo Momigliano, The Origins of Universal History, in On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 1987
• Arno Borst, Barbaren, Ketzer und Artisten. Welten des Mittelalters, Piper, München, 1988 (translated Medieval worlds. Barbarians, heretics and artists in the Middle Ages. Polity Press, Cambridge 1991) chapter 4
• Siep Stuurman, Common Humanity and Cultural Difference on the Sedentary–Nomadic Frontier. Herodotus, Sima Qian, and Ibn Khaldun, in Samuel Moyn & Andrew Sartori, Global Intellectual History, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013
• C.L. Hill, National Histories and World Systems. Writing Japan, France and the United States, in Q.E. Wang and G.G. Iggers (eds.), Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-cultural Perspective, Boydell and Brewer, 2002, pp. 163-84

8th October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

• R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979 (translated Futures past. On the semantics of historical time, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004) – chapter 2 – Historia Magistra Vitae
• Arnaldo Momigliano, Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber, in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 235-246 - This text is available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1881571.pdf
• John Robert Seeley, The expansion of England, 1883, chapters: 3-4-5 (you can find the 1914 edition: online)

• E. Said, Introduction to Culture and imperialism
• Dipesh Chakrabarty Introduction to Provincializing Europe

21st October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

Congress of the People of the East (Baku, 1920). Proceedings, New Park, 1977 - Fifth Session pp. 89-119

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/cpe-baku-pearce.pdf

A. Gramsci, Some Aspects of The Southern Question, 1926 (http://blogs.uoregon.edu/j610drstabile/files/2014/03/gramsci-southern-question1926-2jf8c5x.pdf )

J. Mariategui, Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana, Barcelona, 2009 - chapters 1 and 2 (there several editions, in Spanish and English)

28th October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

B. Studer, The transnational World of the Cominternians, Palgrave, 2015, chapter 1

W. McLellan, Africans and Black Americans in the Comintern schools, 1925-1934. International Journal of African Historical Studies. 26, 1993, pp. 371-390

Hakkim Adi, Pan-Africanism and communism: the Comintern, the ‘Negro Question’ and the First International Conference of Negro Workers, Hamburg 1930, in "African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal" Volume 1, 2008 - Issue 2

Teaching methods

The course is articulated through lectures and seminar discussions. Students are expected to participate actively by reading in due time the texts which are in the programme, as well as participating in class discussions.

Assessment methods

Attending students are required to participate actively to all classes and must regularly write short papers (500 words) on the reading texts listed in the class programm in due time; they will further write a 4000 words final paper on one of the following areas:

• History of international communism in the 20th century (Capuzzo)
• Europe's changing place in the long 20th century (Tolomelli)

Students are required to choose a specific subject within one of this two areas with the advise of one of the two professors (Paolo Capuzzo and Marica Tolomelli).

Deadline for the submission of the final paper is 30th January.

The mark assigned to the paper will be based on the selection of the topic, its critical analysis based on bibliography and sources, clarity in structuring the paper, language proficiency.

Not attending students are required to pass a written test. This concerns this module (6CFU), look at the programme of Prof. Tolomelli for the second module.

The written test (60 minutes) requires to answer to three questions on the following bibliography. An accurate studying of the following books is necessary in order to pass the written exam.

The mark assigned to the paper will be based on the precision in anwering the question, the capacity to develop a critical analyis using an adequate scientific language.

The following chapters of Jerry J. Bentley, The Oxford Handbook of World History:

Chapters 1-7; 10-12; 15-21

Part I: Concepts

1: Michael Bentley: Theories of World History since the Enlightenment

2: Martin W. Lewis: Geographies

3: Luiji Cajani: Periodization

4: Matthew Lauzon: Modernity

5: Jürgen Osterhammel: Globalization

6: Patrick Manning: Epistemology

Part II: Themes

7: David Christian: World Environmental History

10: Charles Tilly: States, State Formation, and War

11: Marnie Hughes-Warrington: Genders

12: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite: Religions and World History

Part III: Processes

15: Dirk Hoerder: Migrations

16: James D. Tracy: Trade across Eurasia to about 1750

17: Patrick Karl O'Brien: Industrialization

18: J. R. McNeill: Biological Exchanges in World History

19: Jerry H. Bentley: Cultural Exchanges

20: Thomas T. Allsen: Premodern Empires

21: Prasenjit Duara: Modern Imperialism

Teaching tools

During frontal lessons the teacher will use power point presentations conaining text and visual sources.

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Capuzzo