88018 - Critical Reading Laboratory (A)

Learning outcomes

The workshop aims at introducing participants to critical reading and understanding of texts (pertaining to political and social sciences), starting with an initial theoretical foundation and subsequent examination of significant cases. At the end of the lab, the student has acquired the skills necessary to synthesize, schematize (including in written form), contextualize, and critically analyze theoretical, empirical, and methodological aspects of the text being examined (volume, journal essay, research report, short article)

Course contents

Crisis of the middle classes between history and contemporaneity

Workshop of analysis and commentary of case studies on the crisis of the middle classes in the United States and Europe. The objective is to enable students to analyze and comment on historical, sociological and political essays, statistical material, sources of public and political debate through the acquisition of conceptual and methodological skills to understand and evaluate the contemporary crisis of the American and European middle classes.

Readings/Bibliography

For a general overview of the theme of the workshop we recommend reading:

- M. Battistini, Storia di un feticcio. La classe media americana dalle origini alla globalizzazione, Milano, Mimesis, 2020.

The case study material (the study of the crisis of the middle classes in the United States and in different European countries) will focus on historical, sociological and political essays, statistical research and public opinion surveys, newspaper and magazine articles, and will be made available online after the beginning of the laboratory meetings.

Teaching methods

In the first meetings, students will be introduced to the study of the middle classes on the basis of a historical, conceptual and methodological framework concerning the role of social sciences - economics, statistics, sociology, political science and history - in the theoretical definition and empirical research on middle classes.

Students, divided into groups, will then have to study in depth the different historical and scientific issues raised with reference to the history and present of the middle classes in the different countries. Each group will report the outcome of the work in a classroom discussion, during which active participation and confrontation will be stimulated, in order to bring out temporal continuity and discontinuity, spatial differences and convergences in the crisis of the middle classes.

Assessment methods

The assessment will take into account the exposure made in the classroom and the active participation in the meetings. 

Teaching tools

Historical and scientific sources, statistical materials, newspapers and magazines.

Office hours

See the website of Matteo Battistini