81961 - HISTORY OF COLONIAL AND POST-COLONIAL SPACES (1) (LM)

Anno Accademico 2020/2021

  • Docente: Gabriele Montalbano
  • Crediti formativi: 6
  • SSD: M-STO/04
  • Lingua di insegnamento: Inglese
  • Modalità didattica: Convenzionale - Lezioni in presenza
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Laurea Magistrale in Scienze storiche e orientalistiche (cod. 8845)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

At the end of the course students will reach an understanding of the social and cultural history of areas of the world that have been subject to modern colonial rule and that, in most cases, experienced a subsequent phase of political decolonization. Students will be able to critically engage in the study of different kinds of sources, using a comparative perspective. They will acquire the analytical tools needed to properly investigate the complex social, cultural, and political realities of colonial and postcolonial spaces. At the end of the course, students will also be able to deploy their analytical skills in professional activities linked with the popularization and public use of historical knowledge.

Contenuti

This course aims to analyze different aspects of colonial societies in order to problematize social relations within colonial spaces. The main focus of this course concerns the social and the cultural history of African and Indian colonial areas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The five modules deal with: 1) Framing Imperialism, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism; 2) Colonial Spaces; 3) Bodies and Minds in Colonial Context; 4) Islam and the Ottoman Empire; 5) Trans-imperial Connections and Italian Colonialism.

The first part of the course concerns an introduction to post-colonial studies in order to provide an analytical framework to imperialism and colonialism.

The second module of the course will focus on the spatial dimensions of the colonial rule by observing, through concrete case studies, how this phenomenon influenced and involved urban and rural areas.

In the third module, we will discuss gendered relationships in colonial context, scientific knowledge as a tool to legitimize colonial rule over the colonized people, and the formation and circulation of the elites.

The topic of the fourth module will be about the relations between Islam and “modernities,” the Ottoman Empire, the “Arab world,” and pan-islamist and anti-colonial movements.

The last week will be dedicated to the connections within and between the imperial and colonial spaces focusing particularly on radical movements on the Eastern Mediterranean shore, bio-politics on colonial minorities and migrant communities, and, finally, on Italian colonial practices.

All attending students are requested to prepare the required readings carefully, in order to be able to participate in class discussions.

Each week, one student (in turn) will be asked to prepare a short oral presentation (no longer than 15 minutes) on one of the required readings.

The presenting students must register in one slot of this list:

https://liveunibo-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/gabriele_montalbano2_unibo_it/EbotGXtGZ-tAkMeU4gPog9kBoYyINaZwLUMei-NRK2lrzg?e=SEM4CQ

In case the number of attending students exceeds the number of presentations available, then the students can present one of the papers in the list in an online meeting with the professor.

All the readings are uploaded in 'Virtuale'.

 

 

Week 1: Framing Imperialism and Colonialism

1) Presentation of the course and definitions:

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference, Princeton University Press, 2011, Chapter 10.

 

2) Theory:

Edward Said, Orientalism, Pantheon books, 1978, Introduction.

 

3) Historiography and Postcolonial Studies:

Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton University Press, 2000, Introduction.

 

Week 2: Colonial Spaces

4) Urban Areas:

Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule, University of California Press, 1997, Chapter 1.

 

5) People and Settlement:

Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen (eds.), Settler Colonialism in Twentieth Century: Projects, Practices, Legacies, Routledge, 2005, Chapter 10.

 

6) Lands and Agriculture:

Sandip Hazareesingh and Harro Mat (eds.), Local Subversion of Colonial Cultures, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, Chapter 8.



Week 3: Bodies and Colonial Rule

7) Sexual Relationships and Gender in Colonial Societies:

Giovanna Trento, “Madamato and Colonial Concubinage in Ethiopia: A Comparative Perspective,” Aethiopica, 14 (2011), 184–205.

 

8) Colonial Medicine:

Invited lecturer: Costanza Bonelli ( "La Sapienza" University of Rome, PhD)

David Arnold, Imperial medicine and indigenous societies, Manchester University Press, 1988 - Introduction: disease, medicine and empire, 1-26.

 

9) Citizenship and Legal Order:

Elisabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, Columbia University Press, 2000, chapter 4.



Week 4: Muslim world, Ottoman Empire and Anti-colonial Resistances

10) Muslim world:

 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, 1983, Introduction and Chapter 6.

 

11) Ottoman Empire:

Cemil Aydin, "Imperial paradoxes: a Caliphate for subaltern muslims", ReOrient, vol. 1, n.2 (spring 2016), 171-191.

 

12) Anti-colonial Resistance:

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, "From Tribe to Class: the Origins and the Politics of Resistance in Colonial Libya", Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell'Istituto italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 63, N.2 (2009), p. 297-310.



Week 5: Trans-imperial connections

13) Radical movements:

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism (1860 – 1914), University of California Press, 2010, Chapter 1.

 

14) Migration and colonial mobility:

Andrew Arsan, Interlopers of Empire: The Lebanese Diaspora in Colonial French West Africa, Oxford University Press 2014 – chapter 3 “Fears of a ‘Syrian Guinea’: Commerce, Contagion and Race in French West Africa (1898-1914).

 

15) Race, Identities, and Memories:

Nicolas Doumanis “Italians as ‘Good Colonizers’: Speaking Subalterns and the Politics of Memory in the Dodecanese” in Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, Chapter 19.

 

Metodi didattici

Frontal lectures (online), slides, students' presentations, class discussion.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

È considerato frequentante lo studente che partecipa almeno al 75% delle lezioni.
Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending

Attending students will be evaluated through their participation at class discussion (25%) , their individual presentations (25%) and the final examination (50%).

The presentation of the reading (10 min) includes: a brief presentation of the nature of the reading ( paper, chapter of a book and so on) and of the author; then the students have to describe the main issues of the reading; in conclusion, it is asked a critique of the reading in order to stimulate the following debate.

The presenting students must register in one slot of this list:

https://liveunibo-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/gabriele_montalbano2_unibo_it/EQFYj3OpyA9LjzGVqucw2V0BcwnoUeHhy8r6HIDV5DjmGw?e=t7oKoz

In case the number of attending students exceeds the number of presentations available, then the students can present one of the papers in the list in an online meeting with the professor.

All the readings are uploaded in 'Virtuale'.

The final exam is a paper on a topic to be agreed with the professor. The length of the paper will be about 5000 words (ca 30.000 characters with spaces)

 

Non-attending students are required to write a final paper on a topic to be agreed with the professor. The length will be about 9000 words (ca 60.000 characters with spaces).

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Proper language and the ability to critically analyze relevant topics will lead to a good/excellent final grade (27-30L)

Acceptable language and the ability to resume relevant topics will lead to a sufficient/fair grade (22-26)

poor language and a superficial knowledge of relevant topics will lead to the minimum grade to pass the exam (18-21)

Insufficient linguistic proficiency and fragmentary knowledge of relevant topics will lead to a failure in passing the exam

 

 


Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Gabriele Montalbano