92919 - Culture, Science and History (1)

Learning outcomes

The aim of this course is to provide the students the tools for understanding the historical relations between scientific activities and their wide and layered cultural contexts. These contexts include: popular cultures, intellectual traditions, social interactions, the relationships between politics and scientific authority, the influence of gender on science, and the interpretation of non-written sources.

Course contents

NATURAL HISTORIES: MOUNTAINS, MUSHROOMS, AND POLITICS

This course analyzes the mutual relationships between history and nature. While nature and history are often conceived as opposed, in this course we will study an wholly historical nature and a history which is crossed by nature in specific social and cultural contexts. We will focus on two cases: the transformation of the Italian Alps between the 19th and the 20th century, and the global ecology of the matsutake mushroom in the 20th century. To do so, we will refer to the genre of "natural history", a old tradition that come from Greco-Roman antiquity, moves to the early modern period and somehow is blooming anew today. Natural history connects local and scientific knowledge, the human and the non-human, colonial politics ad naturalistic collections, natural landscapes and technology, nature and culture.

Here are some of the questions that we will address by following the two books in the syllabus: how a natural landscape can be politically and historically constituted? how can we say that the Alps are a historical outcome? How is possible to live among the environmental damage linked to capitalism? what are the social, political, historical and environmental dimensions of the formal and informal economy of the matsutake mushroom? How can a global history be linked to a micro-history?

Lectures will be devoted to a contextual reading of the two books in the syllabus and to the history of natural history, the history of ecology, and the history of the anthropocene. 

Classes will start on November 8. They will be on Monday Aula I (Via Zamboni 38), Tuesday and Wednesday Aula Iv (Via Zamboni 38), 9-11.

Readings/Bibliography

• Marco Armiero, Le montagne della patria. Natura e nazione nella storia d'Italia (secoli XIX e XX), Einaudi, 2013.

• Anna L. Tsing, Il fungo alla fine del mondo. La possibilità della vita nelle rovine del capitalismo, Keller, 2021

 

Suggested readings (students not attending lectures will have to study one additional book from this list).

• Brian W. Ogilvie, “La storia naturale tra libro ed esperienza”, in Il Rinascimento italiano e l’Europa, vol. 5: Le scienze (Vicenza, 2008), pp. 163-178 + James Poskett, “Nuovi Mondi”, in Id., Orizzonti. Una storia globale della scienza (Torino, 2022), pp. 13-54

• Robert Lenoble, Storia dell'idea di natura (Napoli, 1974)

• Donald Worster, Storia delle idee ecologiche (Bologna, 1994)

• Carolyn Merchant, La morte della natura. Donne, ecologia e rivoluzione scientifica (Milano, 2022)

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

• Alessandro Pastore, Alpinismo e storia d’Italia (Bologna, 2003)

• Alberto Conte (a cura di), Le Alpi: dalla riscoperta alla conquista (Bologna, 2015)

• Merlin Sheldrake, L’ordine nascosto. La vita segreta dei funghi (Venezia, 2020)

• Simon L. Lewis, Mark A. Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l'Antropocene (Torino, 2019)

• Dipesh Chakrabarty, Clima, storia e capitale (Milano, 2021)

• Cristophe Bonneuil e Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L’evento antropocene (Roma, 2016)

 

Teaching methods

Lectures; participation will be encouraged.

Assessment methods

Oral exam.

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.

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

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Savoia