02052 - Social History

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will have acquired an in-depth knowledge of the main schools and traditions of social history, from its emergence between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the present day, in an international perspective.

A solid understanding of the key problems addressed by social historians and of the methods developed over time will provide students with a practical analytical toolkit for social research and for understanding contemporary society.

The interdisciplinary approach of social history, together with its close historical relationship with the social sciences, will help students to question and relativise disciplinary boundaries, understood as historically constructed rather than natural divisions, and will encourage the development of a critical and reflexive approach.

Course contents

The course will address the question: what is social history?

To answer it, the course will reconstruct the development of social history from its emergence between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in opposition to traditional political and diplomatic history, to its most recent transformations and branches.

It will show how social history developed through the progressive opening of historical research to other social sciences and humanities – especially sociology, anthropology, economics, statistics, demography, philosophy, and literary studies – and how this interdisciplinary exchange gradually transformed the objects, methods, categories, and practices of historical research.

The course will examine the main schools and traditions of social history, their relationship with social theory and critical theory, the transformation of research practices, and the major methodological and epistemological debates that have shaped the field.

Particular attention will be devoted to the ways in which, throughout the twentieth century and up to the present, social history has redefined the relationship between structures and actors, explanation and understanding, practices and representations, micro and macro, analytical categories and actors’ categories, and national frameworks and transnational and global perspectives.

Topics will include:

Les Annales (M. Bloch, L. Fevbre, F. Braudel, R. Chartier, B. Lepetit). From structural history to the History of mentality and representations.

The english Labour history (E. Hobsbawm, E. Thompson, The History Horkshop Journal).The History of the “total institutions” (prisons, mental asylums), History of marginality and Knowledge history (M. Foucault)

Race, culture and “style” of the subultern classes (Cultural studies, S. Hall)

The scales of analysis, the agency, the norm and the anomaly (Microhistory, C. Ginzburg, G. Levi, E. Grendi, J. Revel)

History and sociology, the Socio-histoire (P. Bourdieu)

Readings/Bibliography

The literature for attending students will be communicate at the beginning of the class.

Students who are not able to attend face-to-face lectures will have to study the following literature:

Carlotta Sorba, Federico Mazzini, La svolta culturale. Come è cambiata la pratica storiografica, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2021 (capitoli: 1, 3, 4, 5)

Marco Santoro, Pierre Bourdieu in pratica. Guida all'uso di un'opera sociologica, il Mulino, Bologna, 2025.

I seguenti articoli:

Marc Bloch, La nomenclatura, in Apologia della storia o il mestiere di storico, Einaudi, Torino, 1968, pp. 136-160 (available on Virtuale).

Fernand Braudel, La lunga durata, in Scritti sulla storia Mondadori, Milano, 1980, pp. 57-92 (available on Virtuale).

Edward P. Thompson, Rivoluzione industriale e classe operaia, Mondadori, Milano, 1969 (Introduzione e Primo capitolo. Soci illimitati. Available on Virtuale).

Stuart Hall, Whose Heritage? Un-settling 'The Heritage', Re-imagining the Post-nation, in Whose Heritage? Challenging Race and Identity in Stuart Hall’s Post-nation Britain, Edited By Susan L.T. Ashley, Degna Stone, Routledge, London 2023, pp. 13-25 (Available on Virtuale).

Michel Foucault, Sorvegliare e punire. Nascita della prigione, Einaudi, Torino, 2014 (Paragrafi: I corpi docili; L’arte delle ripartizioni; Il controllo dell’attività; La sorveglianza gerarchica; La sanzione normalizzatrice; L’esame; Panoptismo).

Carlo Ginzburg, Microstoria: due o tre cose che so di lei, in Quaderni storici, agosto 1994, vol. 29, n. 86 (2), pp. 511-539 (available on Virtuale).

Teaching methods

The course is designed in a workshop-based format. It combines lectures with collective discussions based on primary sources and scholarly articles distributed in advance.

Teaching will be conducted in Italian. Attendance is compulsory and will be recorded through signed attendance sheets. Students must attend at least 80% of classes in order to be considered attending students. Students who do not meet the attendance requirement will take the exam on the basis of a separate ad hoc syllabus.

Assessment methods

For attending students, assessment will take place throughout the course, on the basis of participation in the seminar- and workshop-based activities.

The final grade will be based on:

• individual or group presentations of assigned materials – primary sources, scholarly articles, book chapters, or excerpts: 60%;
• active and informed participation in class discussions and activities: 40%.

Presentations will be assessed on the basis of students’ understanding of the assigned texts, their ability to identify the main theoretical, methodological, and historiographical issues, to contextualise the materials and relate them to the broader themes of the course, as well as the clarity and effectiveness of the presentation. Particular attention will be paid to the ability to connect the materials discussed to the principles, problems, and analytical categories through which social history is defined in the course, showing how each text or case study helps to clarify, problematise, or redefine its main features.

Participation will be assessed on the basis of the regularity and quality of contributions, the ability to discuss assigned materials critically, formulate relevant questions, establish connections between readings and lectures, and contribute constructively to collective discussion.

Mere attendance does not in itself constitute an element of assessment, but is a necessary requirement for taking part in the activities through which learning is evaluated.

With regard to assessment, the use of AI tools is permitted, subject to the instructor’s supervision and verification.

Teaching tools

Audiovisual materials, PowerPoint presentations, video clips.

Office hours

See the website of Andrea Rapini