28252 - Social History (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the lessons the student will acquire the ability to recognize the methodological and interpretative choices involved in a social-historical research, placing them in the historiographical tradition of this peculiar discipline. Through direct reading of documents and texts to investigate specific themes, he/she will have an adequate knowledge of the sources of social history. Finally, the student will know how to critically evaluate the historiography on social history by recognizing the different approaches used in research.

Course contents

The course includes two parts.

In the first we will define what is meant by social history, when it was born, how it has changed over the last fifty years and what are its most important fields of research. In particular, some lessons will be devoted to the concept of micro-history and to the history of the family; of birth, marriage and private life; of illness and medicine; of emotions and violence.

In the second part the course will focus on a specific theme: The history of the social experience of death in Christian Europe, from the late Middle Ages to the 18th century.

These are some of the topics that will be addressed:

- Death and the afterlife

- The living and the dead: Purgatory and its social implications

- Wills and the arts of well-dying

- Epidemics and the experience of death

- The corpse and burial rites

- Condemning to death, killing in war, extermination

- The living and the potential return of the dead

- Reformed and Catholic Europe: two models?

- The norms and debate over suicide and despair

- The glorification and sanctification of death

- Medicine: ascertaining the end of life, studying sudden deaths

- Death and cemeteries in the eighteenth century

- Narratives and representations of death.

Readings/Bibliography

All students, whether attending or not, should study three among the following texts:

Philippe Ariès, Storia della morte in Occidente, Milano, Rizzoli, 2019

Marzio Barbagli, Congedarsi dal mondo. Il suicidio in Occidente e in Oriente, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010

Diego Carnevale, L'affare dei morti. Mercato funerario, politica e gestione della sepoltura a Napoli (secoli XVII-XIX), Roma, École française de Rome, 2014

Maria Pia Donato, Morti improvvise. Medicina e religione nel Settecento, Roma, Carocci, 2010

Chiara Franceschini, Storia del limbo, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2017

William Naphy, Andrew Spicer, La peste in Europa, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2020

Adriano Prosperi, Delitto e perdono. La pena di morte nell'orizzonte mentale dell'Europa cristiana, Torino, Einaudi, 2016

Alberto Tenenti, Il senso della morte e l'amore della vita nel Rinascimento. Francia e Italia, Torino, Einaudi, 1989

Nicholas Terpstra, Ragazze perdute. Sesso e morte nella Firenze del Rinascimento, Roma, Carocci, 2015

Grazia Tomasi, Per salvare i viventi. Le origini settecentesche del cimitero extraurbano, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2001

Maria Antonietta Visceglia, Morte e elezione del papa. Norme, riti e conflitti. L'età moderna, Roma, Viella, 2013

Michel Vovelle, La morte e l'Occidente. Dal 1300 ai giorni nostri, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2009.

Students who do not attend should add the following text:

Claudia Pancino, Storia sociale. Metodi, esempi, strumenti, Venezia, Marsilio, 2003.

Teaching methods

The teacher will use texts and images to get the students able to reading the sources and to understanding the representations in social history. Any teaching materials will be made available online in the appropriate section of the University's website.

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending. The oral examination will take place in the exam sessions provided at the end of the course.To evaluate the exam, the teacher will take into account the student's ability to master the contents of the course, to understand the historical concepts, to orientate himself in the bibliography, to know how to read a source, to connect the informations acquired, to expose what he has learned in a synthetic way and with an appropriate language. The student who will meet these demands will have an excellent mark. The student who will simply repeat the informations acquired in a mnemonic way and with a language not entirely adequate will have a discreet evaluation. The student who will show that he knows the contents superficially and with some gaps, using an inappropriate language, will have a sufficient evaluation. The student unprepared and incapable of orientation in the subject will have a negative evaluation.

Instead of studying the texts adopted for the exam, attending students can choose to write a paper (max 5,000 words) on a topic covered in the course. The evaluation of the essay will depend on its originality and its critical depth.

Teaching tools

Attendance of the course may also include participation in seminars promoted by the teacher and visits to archives and libraries to contact the sources on the subject kept in the city of Bologna and its surroundings. The Internet will be used to access sites that contain manuscript sources, images, texts and materials of interest.

Office hours

See the website of Vincenzo Lavenia