29512 - Global History: Economy, Environment and Society (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the module, the student will have acquired a good understanding of the methodological principles of historiography regarding the global economic system, and will have been introduced to the most recent research trends on the global dimension of socio-ecological interdependencies.

Course contents

The second module of the integrated course aims to provide students with the analytical tools to understand the main themes of environmental history and migration history within a global perspective.

Particular attention will be devoted to the interactions between humankind and the rest of nature with a focus on the consequences of wars on environment and population; to agricultural transformations and the resulting phenomena of labor and natural resources exploitation; to contemporary migrations and the regulations of migration flows from European and extra-European states; to the entering, according to many scientists, in a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which human action has become the main cause of the Earth’s transformation.

The course will be organised around the following themes:
1.Introduction to environmental history and migration history (approaches, methodologies, concepts)
2.Consequences of wars. Environmental transformations caused by conflicts and refugees migrations in a global perspective.
3.Agricultural transformations: capitalism and intensive exploitation of resources and populations.
4. Contemporary migrations (XX-XXI centuries) and political rhetorics on migrations.
5.The current debate on the Anthropocene and its implications in the field of historiography.

Readings/Bibliography

The list is intended as reference for the topic that will be addressed in class and for the preparation of the final paper:

Salvatore Adorno, I limiti del pianeta. Note e appunti sull’Antropocene, in L. Scalisi - C.J. Hernando Sánchez (eds), Fra le mura della modernità. Le rappresentazioni del limite dal Cinquecento ad oggi, Roma: Viella, 2019, pp. 337-351.

Marco Armiero, Richard Tucker (eds.), Environmental History of Modern Migrations, New York: Routledge, 2017.

Patrizia Audenino, La casa perduta: la memoria dei profughi nell'Europa del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2015.

Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene, Roma: Treccani, 2019

Stephen Castles, Mark J. Miller, L'era delle migrazioni: popoli in movimento nel mondo contemporaneo, Bologna, Odoya, 2012.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, La sfida del cambiamento climatico: globalizzazione e antropocene, Verona, Ombre Corte, 2021.

Michele Colucci, Storia dell'immigrazione straniera in Italia: dal 1945 ai nostri giorni, Roma: Carocci, 2018.

Michele Colucci, Matteo Sanfilippo, Le migrazioni. Un'introduzione storica, Roma: Carocci, 2009.

Gabriella Corona, Breve storia dell'ambiente in Italia, Bologna: il Mulino, 2015.

Guido Fabiani, Agricoltura-mondo. La storia contemporanea e gli scenari futuri, Roma: Donzelli, 2015.

Giovanni Gozzini, Le migrazioni di ieri e di oggi. Una storia comparata, Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2005.

Maria Gemma Grillotti Di Giacomo, Pierluigi De Felice, I predatori della terra: land grabbing e land concentration tra neocolonialismo e crisi migratorie, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2019.

Wang Gungwu (ed.), Global History and Migrations, New York, Routledge, 1997.

Dirk Hoerder, ‘Migration studies: deep time and global approaches’, Journal of Global History 11/3 (2016): 473-480 (review article)

Simon L. Lewis, Mark Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l'Antropocene, Torino: Einaudi, 2019.

Carin Martiin, Juan Pan-Montojo, Paul Brassley (eds.), Agriculture in Capitalist Europe, 1945–1960: from food shortages to food surpluses, London:Taylor and Francis, 2016.

John R. McNeill, Corinna R. Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

John R. McNeill, Peter Engelke, La grande accelerazione. Una storia ambientale dell'Antropocene dopo il 1945, Torino: Einaudi, 2018

Simone Neri Serneri, Incorporare la natura. Storie ambientali del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2005.

Silvia Salvatici, Senza casa e senza paese: profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008

Donatella Strangio, Globalizzazione, diseguaglianze, migrazioni: introduzione alla storia economica contemporanea, Roma: Carocci, 2017.

Helmuth Trischler, The Anthropocene. A Challenge for the History of Science, Technology, and the Environment, «Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin», 24, 2016, pp. 309-335

Richard P. Tucker, Tait Keller, J. R. McNeill, Martin Schmid (eds.), Environmental Histories of the First World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Giorgio Vecchio, Gabriella Gotti (a cura di), Il paesaggio violentato. Le due guerre mondiali, le persone, la natura, Roma: Viella, 2020.

Timo Vuorisalo, Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, The Long Shadows A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, Corvallis : Oregon State University Press, 2017.

 

Teaching methods

The course includes lectures alternating with debates in which active participation of students is required. Some readings to be discussed in class will be assigned in the first week of lessons to small groups of students. This will be followed by teaching through seminars, in which the active participation of students is expected. For the preparation of class discussion, didactic materials will be uploaded; students will need to prepare and engage with these texts according to the reading schedule agreed at the start of the course.

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending.

Attending students are asked to produce a written paper on a theme pertaining to one of the two modules, to be agreed with the teacher of the respective module. For a 12-credit-essay it is required a length of about 15-18 pages (about 40,000 characters, notes and blank spaces included).

The paper will be evaluated both in terms formal aspects of presentation and articulation of the work, clarity of exposition, accuracy in the use of historiographic concepts and categories, and in terms of the ability of critical elaboration of the bibliographic material used and its coherence in relation to the subject of the paper. In the evaluation of attending students, systematic and active participation in class will also be taken into account.

In addition to the final exam, non-attending students must take an oral exam one of the following book:

Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene, Roma: Treccani, 2019

or

Stephen Castles, Mark J. Miller, L'era delle migrazioni: popoli in movimento nel mondo contemporaneo, Bologna: Odoya, 2012.

With regard to the outlined criteria the evalution will result from following assessment scale:

• Excellent (30 cum laude)
• Very Good (28-30)
• Good (25-27)
• Satisfactory (22-24)
• Sufficient (18-21)

This 6 CFU course can be chosen as a part of the 12 CFU Integrate course "Profili di storia globale (C.I.) (LM)". If the student has the Integrated Course (12 CFU) in his/her study plan, the final grade will result from the arithmetic average of the marks obtained in the two parts (“Global history: Public sphere and mass communication (1) (LM)" and “Global history: Economics, Environment, Society (1) (LM) “).

Teaching tools

During the introductory part, the teacher will use power point presentations and will make use of exemplar documents available online. For the seminars, material will be assigned for class discussion: this will be available online on the “teaching materials” page or via the university’s online resources (accessible using this link: https://sba.unibo.it/it ). At least a passive knowledge of English is required, since some key material will be in that language.

Office hours

See the website of Pietro Pinna