96456 - STORIA DELL'ALIMENTAZIONE

Course contents

1) General part of the course, teacher Francesco Casadei.

lIntroduction: the relationship between history of food and social and economic history

Living conditions of social classes in different historical periods

The history of the agrarian landscape

Agriculture and agronomy in XVIII and XIX centuries

Main problems of the Italian unification

Health and social emergencies in post-unification Italy: epidemics and social diseases, malnutrition, housing difficulties, illiteracy

Two important social surveys in late XIX century: «Inchiesta agraria Jacini» (1877-1884) and «Inchiesta sanitaria» (1885)

First development of the urban lifestyle: advertising of food products at the beginning of XX century

The dawn of food marketing in Italy: birth and achievement of products "for health"

The persistence of difficult living conditions of rural population before and after the Second World War

Economic development and social changes in urban areas during the 1950s and 1960s

 

2) Laboratory Part, teacher Massimo Montanari.

Lectures and documents will be presented, analysed and commented, particularly significant for food history, on a chronological lenght from Antiquity to Modern Age. Documents will be put on line but students are expected to frequent in order to be well evalued at the end of the course.

Readings/Bibliography

Textbooks:

Massimo Montanari, La fame e l’abbondanza. Storia dell’alimentazione in Europa, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1993

Emilio Sereni, Storia del paesaggio agrario in Italia, Laterza, Bari 1961

Supplementary texts:

Raffaele Romanelli, La nuova Italia e la misurazione dei fatti sociali. Una premessa, in R. Romanelli (a cura), L’indagine sociale nell’unificazione italiana, «Quaderni storici», a. XV, n. 45, 1980

Alberto De Bernardi, Luigi Ganapini, Società e vita materiale. 1. La popolazione, in Storia d’Italia 1860-1995, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 1996, pp. 229-256

Arturo Gazzoni, Vendere vendere vendere, Clueb, Bologna 2010 (reprint dell’edizione Mondadori, Milano 1928)

Francesco Casadei, «Volete la salute?». Bevande e alimenti per il benessere nelle campagne pubblicitarie italiane tra XIX e XX secolo, «Economia agro-alimentare/Food Economy», 2017, vol. 19, n. 1

Francesco Casadei, Agricoltura e agronomia a Bologna nel Settecento: note su didattica, ricerca e paesaggio urbano, in Gian Mario Anselmi, Gino Ruozzi, Stefano Scioli (a cura), Illuminismo e Settecento riformatore. Un lessico per la contemporaneità, Bononia University Press, Bologna 2020

Other articles, about historical topics of agriculture, agricultural policies and food marketing, will be discussed and made available to students during the course

Office hours

See the website of Massimo Montanari

See the website of Francesco Casadei