B4957 - Sciences, Bodies, Environments (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

This course provides the tools to analyze the historical relationships among natural landscapes, technical infrastructures, and human and animal bodies, and the forms of scientific knowledge mediating these relationships. The course intends to put together global and local perspectives, as well as theoretical reflections on the categories used today to describe such relationships and the analysis of specific historical cases. Specific topics include: the history of the modification of landscapes between science, politics and climate change; the history of the peasant and scientific knowledge as they relate to food; the history of the opposition between urban and rural landscapes as it relates to human health; the history of the relationships between tourism and the sciences; the gendered history of the representations of nature; the development of archival research skills.

Course contents

THE ALPS: HISTORY, KNOWLEDGE, POLITICAL ECOLOGY

In his great book on the Mediterranean (1949), Fernand Braudel wrote: «The traveler used to remain above all the prisoner of the plains, of the gardens, of the dazzling shores, of the abundant life of the sea... The historian is somewhat like that traveler. He lingers in the plain, the stage where the powerful act, and does not seem at all curious to venture into the high and nearby mountains. Several of them would certainly be astonished to discover them, never having left the cities and their archives. Yet, how can one not see these cumbersome actors of history, these poor, wild mountains, but where man grows like a plant, and always half-deserted, because man abandons them constantly?"

Taking up the suggestions of the French historian, the course weaves together the history of knowledge with environmental history to offer a series of observation points on the Alps (with some forays into other mountains) within the events of European history, from the early modern to modern period. Alternating the reading of secondary literature with some primary sources, the course intends to focus particularly on these points:

the history of the relationships between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge

the cultural construction of the Alps

the interweaving between material history and the history of discourses, between the history of nature and the history of humans

the ways in which Alpine experience contributed to shaping gender identities

the exploitation (economic, tourist, etc.) of the Alpine environment and related resistance.

Finally, we will examine in depth the case of the Vajont disaster (1963).

Classes will begin February 19, 2025 with the following hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 11am-1pm, aula IV (Mon-Tue Aula IV, Via Zamboni 38; Wed Aula C, Via Centotrecento).

Readings/Bibliography

Part 1

• Jon Mathieu, The Alps. An Environmental History (Polity Press, 2019)

• Marco Armiero, Le montagne della patria. Natura e Nazione nella storia d'Italia (secoli XIX e XX) (Einaudi, 2013) [capp. I, III, IV, V]

• Tina Merlin, Sulla pelle viva. Come si costruisce una catastrofe. Il caso del Vajont (Cierre, 2001)

 

 

Part 2

2.1.Mountain knowledge

• Kathleen Kete, The Alpine Enlightenment. Horace-Bénédict de Saussure and Nature's Sensorium (The University of Chicago Press, 2024)

• Franco Brevini, L'invenzione della natura selvaggia (Bollati Boringhieri, 2013)

• Bernard Debarbieux and Gilles Rudaz, The Mountain. A Political History from the Enlightenment to the Present (The University of Chicago Press, 2015) [ed. or. Les faiseurs de montagne (CNRS Éditions, 2010)]

• Marc Landry, Mountain Battery. The Alps, Water, and Power in the Fossil Fuel Age (Stanford University Press, 2025)

• AA.VV., Disastri e comunità alpine. Storia e antropologia della catastrofe (Incontri per lo studio dei territori alpini, 2019

• Pierpaolo Viazzo, Comunità alpine. Ambiente, popolazione, struttura sociale nelle Alpi dal XVI secolo a oggi (Carocci, 2001)

• Massimo Centini, L'uomo selvatico. Dalla creatura silvestre dei miti alpini allo Yeti nepalese (Mondadori, 1992)

• Alberto Conte (a cura di), Le Alpi. dalla riscoperta alla conquista. Scienziati, alpinisti e l'Accademia delle Scienze di Torino nell'Ottocento (Il Mulino, 2014)

• AA.VV., L'homme et l'animal sauvage/Mensch und Wildtiere, "Histoire des Alpes", anno 2010/numero 15

• Riccardo Rao, Il tempo dei lupi. Storia e luoghi di un animale favoloso (UTET, 2018)

 

2.2.Mountains and modernity

• Peter H. Hansen, The Summits of Modern Man. Mountaneering after the Enlightenment (Harvard University Press, 2013)

• Andrew Denning, Skiing into Modernity. A Cultural and Environmental History (University of California Press, 2015)

• Andrea Zannini, Controstoria dell'alpinismo (Laterza, 2024)

• Alessandro Pastore, Alpinismo e storia d'Italia. Dall'Unità alla Resistenza (Il Mulino, 2003)

• Simona Boscani Leoni, Sarah Baumgartner, Meike Knittel, (ed.), Connecting Territories. Exploring People and Nature, 1700–1850 (Brill, 2022)

• Clare A. Roche, The Ascent of Women: How Female Mountaineers Explored the Alps 1850-1900 (University of Birkbeck, tesi di dottorato, 2015)

• John R. Mcneill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean. An Environmental History (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

• Fergus Fleming, Killing Dragons. The Conquest of the Alps (Granta Books, 2001)

 

2.3 Crises, Tourism, and climate change

• Maurizio Dematteis, Michele Nardelli, Inverno liquido. La crisi climatica, le terre alte e la fine della stagione dello sci di massa (DeriveApprodi, 2022)

• Marco Albino Ferrari, Assalto alle Alpi (Einaudi, 2023)

• Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasquali, Andrea Bagnato (ed.), A Moving Border. Alpine cartographies of climate change (Columbia University Press, 2018)

• Eric G. E. Zuelow, Kevin J. James (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tourism History (Oxford University Press, 2022) [selezione di capitoli]

• Annibale Salsa (a cura di), Viaggio alle Alpi. Alle origini del turismo alpino (Museo della Montagna, 2005)

• Luciano Maffi, Martino Lorenzo Fagnani, Disability and Tourism in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy (Routledge, 2021)

• Alberto Di Monte, Sentieri proletari. Storia dell'Associazione Proletaria Escursionisti (Mursia, 2015)

• AA.VV., Tourisme et changements culturels/Tourismus und kultureller Wandel, "Histoire des Alpes", anno 2004/numero 9

 

 

Teaching methods

Lectures.

Texts and primary sources that will be discussed in class will be added to the bibliography for those interested in them. To encourage class participation, each lecture will be followed by a session of questions and comments. I will provide in advance the calendar with all the topics for each lecture. One meeting will be devoted to the screening and discussion of the documentary The Last Skiers with the author, Veronica Ciceri. 

The second part of the course (the remaining meetings) will be devoted to students' presentations, individually or in group. The dates and contents of the presentations will be decided during the first classes.

Assessment methods

Oral exam (on part 1) and class presentation.

In the second part of the course students will choose one text to present in class with the help of slides, either individually or in group following common threads. Slides will be circulated with the whole group 24 hours in advance of the presentation in order to make discussions more precise and lively. This presentation is part of the evaluation.

As an alternative to class presentation, students attending classes can choose to write a review of one of the texts of part 2 (max. 1500 words), to be delivered 24 hours before the oral exam.

In any case, all the slots for class presentations must be filled.

Students not attending classes must prepare all the texts from part 1 and one of the texts from part 2.

Top marks (28-30) will be given to students who demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the material discussed in class and contained in the texts, critical and analytical skills, and the ability to express ideas and concepts clearly and cogently. Those students who will demonstrate a good knowledge of the material but tend to repeat it mechanically rather than demonstrate full understanding and the ability to build connections and present an argument will be rewarded with average to high marks (23-27). Students who demonstrate superficial knowledge, gaps in preparation, poor critical and analytical skills and difficulties of expression will receive average to low marks (18-22). Severe lacunae in one or more areas listed above could lead to the student repeating the exam.

Exam sessions

During the 2025/26 academic year, exam sessions are scheduled for the following months: March, April, May, June, July, September.

 

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)
Students with disabilities or Specific Learning Disorders have the right to special adjustments according to their condition, following an assessment by the Service for Students with Disabilities and SLD. Please do not contact the instructor but get in touch with the Service directly to schedule an appointment. It will be the responsibility of the Service to determine the appropriate adjustments. For more information, visit the page: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students

It is recommended that students contact the University office in advance. Any proposed adjustments must be submitted at least 15 days in advance for the instructor’s approval, who will evaluate their appropriateness in relation to the learning objectives of the course.

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Savoia