81960 - HISTORY OF CULTURAL EXCHANGES IN THE MODERN AGE (1) (LM)

Anno Accademico 2022/2023

  • Docente: Chiara Petrolini
  • Crediti formativi: 6
  • SSD: M-STO/02
  • 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 demonstrate awareness of the cultural dimension of Modern economy and society. Special attention will be given to free and forced movements of people in relation to global phenomena such as geographical discoveries, colonialism, and capitalist expansion. At the end of the course students will have acquired a fundamental knowledge of the historical foundations of cultural interactions and conflicts typical of the global age.

Contenuti

Catastrophes, wars, revolutions. The early modern world was marked by profound and structural instabilities. Cultural exchanges occurred in a variety of contexts (trade, exploration, warfare, study, slavery, diplomacy) and evoked mixed reactions (excitement, interest, anxiety, hate, fear). This not only gives us a lens through which to look at the premodern world and how it confronted uncertainties, but also enables us to understand how these exchanges reshaped the deep structures of power and society and triggered profound changes in people’s mindsets.

The course is in three parts. Part 1 provides a clear definition and conceptualization of global history, plus a general survey of the field and its main topics. Through critical readings we will question the validity of these approaches to history and discuss claims that they are colonial history in disguise. We will see how applying the Italian method of micro-history to instances of global history can produce significant results.

Parts 2 and 3 are devoted to two global phenomena: religious conversions and Orientalism (understood as the acquisition of methodologically sound knowledge about different cultures). What was the interplay between beliefs, knowledge, power and violence?

The following issues will be addressed in the course:

· How conversions (forced and voluntary) reshaped whole areas of the world

· The different (and sometimes conflicting) rhetorical tools of global Catholic religious propaganda

· The conflict between churches and secular power, and between colonial powers and transnational institutions such as the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide

· Conflicts and agreements between different faith communities in Safavid Persia

· The case of Sri Lanka

· Slavery in Europe and Asia

· The link between the Habsburg–Ottoman wars in Hungary and the Balkans, and the acquisition of philological knowledge about texts and histories of Muslim-majority countries

· Trans-imperial circulation of people, objects and ideas in the early 1600s

· Critical examination of the concept of Ottoman toleration

· How slavery and conversion differed in the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe

· The spread of Italian as an imperial language outside Italy, and as pidgin (Ottoman Empire, India, North Africa)

· The "accommodation" strategy of the Society of Jesus in India and China

· Botanical studies between colonialism and missionary knowledge

· The quest for an ur-language

· Environmental impact of migration, slave trade and urbanization

· Mobility: trans-imperial networks, emigration, deportation, scholarly mobility, and how Muslims, Christians and Jews from outside Europe contributed to the development of Orientalism.

Testi/Bibliografia

  • E. Natalie Rothman, The Dragoman Renaissance, Ithaca, N Y , 2021

  • Osman of Timisoara, Prisoner of the Infedels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth- Century Europe, ed. and transl. by Giancarlo Casale, University of California Press, 2021

  • Ângela Barreto Xavier, Ines G. Županov, Catholic Orientalism. Portuguese Empire, Indian Knowledge (16th-18th Centuries, Oxford University Press, 2018

  • Zoltan Biedermann, (Dis)connected Empires Imperial Portugal, Sri Lankan Diplomacy, and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia, Oxford University Press, 2018

  • Nabil Matar, Mediterranean Captivity through Arab Eyes, 1517-1798 . Brill, 2021

  • Francesca Trivellato, Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History? California Italian Studies, 2 (1), 2011

  • Charles Parker, Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010

  • The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker, Cambridge University Press, 2018.

  • Zoltán Biedermann, «Querying the Origins of Orientalism: Recent Approaches to the History of Representations», Ler História, 74( 2019), pp. 261-275 https://doi.org/10.4000/lerhistoria.4964

  • Marisa J. fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016

  • William Dalrymple, The Anarchy, Penguin, 2019

  • Giuseppe Marcocci, The Globe on Paper Writing Histories of the World in Renaissance Europe and the Americas

  • Matthias van Rossum, "Slavery and Its Transformations: Prolegomena for a Global and Comparative Research Agenda", «Comparative Studies in Society and History» 63/3 (2021), pp. 566-598.

  • Tara Alberts, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700, Oxford University Press, 2013

Metodi didattici

• Face-to-face lectures and in-class discussion

• In-class analysis of images and primary sources

• PowerPoint presentations

• Digital humanities

• Short presentations by students on selected topics and texts.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Students who attend at least 75% of lessons are considered to be attending.

Students will be asked to participate actively in lessons.

During the course, students may voluntarily write a short paper (around 4,000–7000 words, including bibliography and footnotes) or prepare a short oral presentation on a selected text or topic, depending on their interest. This will receive a score of 0–3, to be added to their grade in the oral exam (expected learning results: ability to apply knowledge and understanding; judgement abilities; communicative abilities). But the main aim is to engage students and assess their in-progress understanding of some key concepts.

Final oral exam. The exam aims to assess students' critical understanding of the course content and their individual reflection on the assigned bibliography. It will take place in scheduled calls at the end of the course. Grading will be based on students' ability to master the course content, understand historical concepts, orient themselves in the bibliography, undertake critical analysis, formulate and test concepts and hypotheses, read a primary source, make connections between the information acquired, and present what they have learned concisely and in the appropriate language.

Students who meet these demands proficiently will have an excellent grade. Students who merely repeat the information mnemonically and in language that is not fully adequate will have a fair grade. Students who show a superficial and deficient knowledge of the topics and who use inappropriate language will have a passing grade. Students who are unprepared and unable to make their way through the subject will have a failing grade.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

All texts on the reading list (articles, book sections, images, maps) will be uploaded as PDFs to the course platform by the instructor. The instructor will also upload the slides used in class and links to online resources, digital humanities projects, etc. Interested students will have the opportunity to apply digital humanities to certain issues raised during the course (map-making, data visualization, digital editions of short texts, etc.).

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Chiara Petrolini