81718 - Europe in World History (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

Through direct contact with some specific research paths students will be able to apply research techniques and methodologies, as well as to show capacity of a critical use of sources and literature. Students will show awareness of the research problems in a wide series of topics drawn from migration history, history of ideas circulation, material exchange and consumption patterns, global labour history, social protests, transnational mobilizations processes, power forms and resistance strategies.

Course contents

Europe and the World: between inward and outward views along the 20^th century

The course will focus on narratives and representations of European contemporary history drawing on cultural, political and economic developments on the one side, on practices, agency and policies on the other one.

Moving from peripheral or external points of view on European 20^th century history part of the course will be devoted to the analysis of how the moral demise Europe underwent in the period of the ’30-years-war’ (Traverso) and culminated in the Holocaust impacted worldwide. Attention will be drawn to how this demise was perceived both inside and outside Europe particularly in the years after the end of WWII and the effects it unleashed.

A second part of the course will deal with recovery strategies and the building of a European Utopia aiming at establishing a new kind of power at a global scale, a power basing much more upon multilateral support, collaboration and the expansion of social rights than on military force. The concrete building of the European Utopia will be considered from below, i.e. through the agency of collective subjects determined to implement the principles of a revised democracy in the daily life of ‘ordinary peoples’ in the ‘golden age’ (Hobsbawm) of post-war history. Nonetheless, postcolonial legacies and the decline of the Cold-War-order 1989 raised new questions over the place of Europe in the World (and in World history). Whether is Europe to be understood as a ‘province’ (Chakrabarty) or as a ‘dwarfing’ continent and when not, how is it to be conceived, is one of the main questions the course intends to address.

Readings/Bibliography

Included in the bibliography list students find all texts considered or quoted during the course.

Roberto M. Dainotto, Europe (in theory), Durham, Duke University Press, 2007

Dan Diner, Cataclysms. A history of the twentieth century from Europe's edge, Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press 2008

Tony Judt, Postwar. A history of Europe since 1945, New York : Penguin Press, 2005

Antonio Costa Pinto, Aristotle Kallis (eds.), Rethinking fascism and dictatorship in Europe, Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

Michael Goebel, Anti-imperial metropolis. Interwar Paris and the seeds of Third World nationalism, Cambridge university press, New York 2015

Christoph Kalter, The discovery of the Third World. Decolonization and the rise of the New Left in France,1950-1976, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2016

Jeffrey J. Byrne, Mecca of revolution: Algeria, decolonization, and the Third World order, New York, Oxford University Press 2016

Samantha Christiansen, Zachary A. Scarlett (eds.), The Third World in the global 1960s, New York, Berghahn Books, 2015

Martin Klimke,Jacco Pekelder, Joachim Scharloth (eds.), Between Prague Spring and French May : opposition and revolt in Europe, 1960-1980, New York-Oxford 2011

Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s. A new global history from civil rights to economic inequality, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2011

Jacques Rupnik (ed.), 1989 as a political world event. Democracy, Europe and the new international system in the age of globalization, Verso, London-New York 2014.

Following book is mandatory literature for not-attending students:

Dan Diner, Cataclysms. A history of the twentieth century from Europe's edge, Madison, Wis. : University of Wisconsin Press 2008

Teaching methods

The course is organized in a mixed form consisting of lectures and seminar moments. Students are asked to participate actively by reading regularly the articles, essays or book chapters to be discussed in class, as well as writing writing short papers and preparing class presentations.

Short papers - to be sent to: worldhistory.papers@gmail.com - are scheduled as follows:

19.11 Discussion about R. Dainotto, Europe (in Theory), Chapter 1. Short paper to be delivered by 21.11.

26.11 Discussion on D. Diner, Cataclysms, Chapter 1. Short paper to be delivered by 28.11.

3.12 Presentation of following documents (small working groups will be organized in the first week of the course)

- Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism

- Simone Weil, On Colonialism

- Altiero Spinelli, Manifesto of Ventotene, https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1997/10/13/316aa96c-e7ff-4b9e-b43a-958e96afbecc/publishable_en.pdf

- Robert Schuman, Declaration of 9th May 1950, https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/doc/questions-d-europe/qe-204-en.pdf

Written presentation (in form of a short paper) to be delivered by 5.12

10.12 Discussion on Kalter, The Discovery of the Third World, Chapter 2, 34-65. Papers to be delivered by 12.12

18.12 Discussion on chapters taken from The Dwarfing of Europe? edited by the European Cultural Foundation, Vol. 1 and 2, Amsterdam 2013 and 2014 (to be assigned in class).

http://www.culturalfoundation.eu/library/dwarfing-1 http://www.culturalfoundation.eu/library/dwarfing-2.

Paper to be delivered by 19.12.

Assessment methods

Following instructions on the final exams concern both modules (12 CFU). There are two alternative ways to take the exam:

1. 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)
• History of the changing place of Europe in the 20th century (Tolomelli)

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

2. Not-attending students are required to pass a written test and an oral exam with prof. Capuzzo (first module of the course). To accomplish the exam for the second module of the course (prof. Tolomelli) they have to pass a written exam on Dan Diner, Cataclysms. A history of the twentieth century from Europe's edge, Madison, Wis. 2008, and a short oral exam on two of the documents presented in class (to be selected in accordance with the teacher).

They also have to write a final paper (4,000 words) on one of the topics handled with during the course. The subject of the final paper should be decided in accordance with the teacher.

The final mark will result from the evaluation of all aspects concerning the course: active participation in class; accuracy and punctuality in delivering the due papers; accuracy in oral presentation and academic writing; capability to deepen and master topics addressed during the course.

Teaching tools

Pc; uploaded texts; power point presentations. 

Office hours

See the website of Marica Tolomelli