B4804 - Transnational Social Movements and Political Cultures (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

Aim of the course is to provide a theoretical framework and methodological tools, which will enable students to acquire a sound understanding of the transnational approach to global history. The critical analysis of sources will be the object of collective discussion. At the end of the course students will be familiar with the main historiographical trends in the field of global and transnational history and they will develop a research experience on specific processes of social mobilization in relationship with the formation of transnational political cultures in the 19th and 20th century.

Course contents

The First World War and the Russian Revolution profoundly reshaped twentieth-century global politics. The collapse of the Russian, Ottoman and Habsburg empires created new political opportunities, while the Bolshevik Revolution emerged as a powerful source of inspiration, institutional innovation and geopolitical change far beyond Europe. Through the Soviet state, the Communist International and a wide range of transnational networks, the revolutionary experience opened a new global political space in which anti-colonial activists, intellectuals and political movements engaged with Marxism, communism and revolutionary internationalism.

This course examines how this global political space was continuously redefined through encounters, translations, negotiations, conflicts and disillusionments. Particular attention will be devoted to the interactions between Soviet internationalism and anti-colonial movements across Asia, Africa and Latin America, exploring how revolutionary ideas were appropriated, transformed and contested in different historical and cultural contexts.

Main topics will be:

1. The First World War, the Collapse of Empires and the Russian Revolution
2. Marxism, Internationalism and the Colonial Question
3. The Communist International and the Making of Global Anti-Colonial Networks
4. Race, Gender and Revolutionary Internationalism
5. Pan-Africanism and the Soviet Connection
6. Islam, Pan-Islamism and the Bolshevik Revolution
7. The Comintern Schools and the Formation of Anti-Colonial Elites
8. Oriental Studies, African Studies and the Soviet Discovery of the Colonial World
9. Language, Nationalities and Soviet Nationalities Policy
10. Soviet National Policies, the Comintern and the Fracturing of Anti-Colonial Internationalism

Readings/Bibliography

This bibliography provides general reference texts that will be used during the course. For the bibliography relating to the final exam, consult the appropriate section.

Anderson, Kevin B. 2020. Marx at the Margins. On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Jürgen Dinkel The Non-Aligned Movement: Genesis, Organization and Politics (1927-1992), Brill, 2019

Aydin, Cemil. The politics of anti-Westernism in Asia: visions of world order in pan-Islamic and pan-Asian thought. Columbia University Press, 2007.

Connor, Walker. 1984. The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Conrad, Sebastian, and Dominic Sachsenmaier. " Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s–1930s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2007.

Drachewych, Oleksa, and Ian McKay. 2019. Left Transnationalism: The Communist International and the National, Colonial and Racial Question. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Goebel, Michael. Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Keller, Shoshana. 2001. To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1917–1941. Westport, CT.: Praeger.

Louro, Michele L., Carolien Stolte, Heather Streets-Salter, and Sana Tannoury-Karam, eds. 2020. The League against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives. Leiden: Leiden University Press. Project MUSE.

Löwy, Michael. 2020. Fatherland or Mother Earth? Essays on the National Question. Amsterdam: International Institute for Research and Education.

Mahler, Anne Garland, and Paolo Capuzzo, eds. The Comintern and the Global South: Global Designs/Local Encounters. Taylor & Francis, 2022.

Martin, Terry. 2017. The Affrmative Action Empire. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Petersson, Fredrik. 2014. Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.

Pons, Silvio. 2014. The Global Revolution. A History of International Communism 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rees, Tim, and Andrew Thorpe, ed. 1998. International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

Studer, Brigitte. 2015. The Transnational World of the Cominternians. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

———. 2020. Reisende der Weltrevolution. Eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Young, Robert J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Wolikow, Serge. 2010. L’ Internationale communiste (1919–1943): le Komintern ou le rêve déchu du parti mondial de la révolution. Ivry-sur-Seine: Les Éditions de l’Atelier.

Teaching methods

Teaching method will be based on lectures and seminars.

The teacher will present the main historiographical positions on the course topics. Students will be asked to read essays and present them to the class and to participate to the collective discussions. Students are strongly encouraged to attend and actively participate in all classes, as this will help them prepare for the final assessment. However, attendance of at least 75% of the classes is required in order to be eligible for the assessment based on the programme for attending students.

 

Assessment methods

The following instructions refer to the final exam concerning both modules of the integrated course Global History (B4802 - 12 credits).

Attending students (12 ECTS): The assessment consists of a 2-hour written examination, divided into two parts.

• Part I (1 hour): students will answer four questions based on the readings listed below.

• Part II (1 hour): students will be given two topics drawn from those discussed during the course and will choose one. They will be asked to develop a critical discussion of the selected topic and explain how they would design a research project on it. The answer should demonstrate the ability to formulate a historical research question, place it in its historical context, identify the main historiographical issues involved, and indicate the types of sources and methodological approaches that would be appropriate for investigating the topic.

Bibliography to be prepared for the written exam:

G. Garavini, After empires. European integration, decolonization, and the challenge from the global south, 1957-1986, Oxford 2012

R. Adami, International welfare feminism: CSW navigating Cold War tensions 1949 in Ead. and Plesch, D. (eds.), Women and the UN: A New History of Women's International Human Rights, Routledge 2021, pp. 55-70.

S. Snyder, Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War. A Transnational History of the Helsinki Network, Cambridge University Press, 2011: Ch. 5, pp 115-134.

S. Federici, The Legacy of Maria Mies to the Feminist Movement and the Struggle for Human Liberation, Development and Change, 55, (2024): 878-91

D. Jain, Women, Development, and the UN, Indiana University Press 2005, Ch. 4, pp. 102-134.

Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Silvio Pons. The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chapters 1, 2 and 3

Paolo Capuzzo and Anne Garland Mahler, Introduction, in Anne Garland Mahler and Paolo Capuzzo (eds.), The Comintern and the Global South: Global Designs/Local Encounters, London and New York: Routledge, 2023, pp. 3–46

Michael Goebel, The Capital of the “Men without a Country": Migrants and Anticolonialism in Interwar Paris, in “American Historical Review”, 121, 5 (2016), pp. 1444–1467

Marc Becker, Mariátegui, the Comintern, and the Indigenous Question in Latin America, "Science & Society", 70 (2006), pp. 450–479

Kasper Braskén, ‘Whether Black or White – United in the Fight!’ Connecting the Resistance against Colonialism, Racism, and Fascism in the European Metropoles, 1926–1936, "Twentieth Century Communism", 18 (2020), pp. 118–145

Non-attending students (12 ECTS): The assessment consists of a 90-minute written examination, during which students will answer six questions based on the following readings:

- R. Dainotto, Europe (in theory), Durham 2007

- G. Garavini, After empires. European integration, decolonization, and the challenge from the global south, 1957-1986, Oxford 2012

Silvio Pons. The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chapters 1, 2 and 3

Adam Tooze, The Deluge. The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931, London, Allen Lane, 2014

Students taking one 6 ECTS module: The assessment will consists of a 45-minute written examination, during which students will answer three questions based on the readings listed below. The questions will deal with following books:

Silvio Pons. The Global Revolution: A History of International Communism, 1917–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Chapters 1, 2 and 3

Adam Tooze, The Deluge. The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931, London, Allen Lane, 2014

N.B.: The 6-ECTS option is available to Erasmus and Overseas students. Students enrolled in the GLOC programme are NOT allowed to take one module only!

 

The final grade will rbe based on:

• knowledge and critical understanding of the required readings;
• ability to analyse historical problems and formulate well-supported arguments;
• ability to connect different historical contexts and historiographical perspectives;
• clarity, coherence and conceptual precision in written exposition.

 

Students with learning disorders and\or temporary or permanent disabilities: please, contact the office responsible ( https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students ) as soon as possible so that they can propose acceptable adjustments. The request for adaptation must be submitted in advance (15 days before the exam date) to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of the adjustments, taking into account the teaching objectives.

Teaching tools

Lectures will be supported by power point presentations summarising the main points of the lecture as well as visual sources and maps.  

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students .

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Capuzzo