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

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.

Attending students will prepare the readings following the schedule which will be distributed at the beginning of the course.

All the readings are uploaded in 'Materiale didattico/insegnamenti on line'.

The following reading list is divided into 15 parts, each corresponding to one lesson. All 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 list of presentations will be agreed during the first lesson.

Week 1: Framing Imperialism and Colonialism

1) 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) Knowledge and Power:

Richard C. Keller, Colonial Madness: Psychiatry in French North Africa, University of Chicago Press, 2007, Introduction and Chapter 1.

9) Citizenship and Legal Order:

Julia A. Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800 - 1900, University of California Press, 2004, Chapter 6.

Week 4: Muslim world, Ottoman Empire and Anti-colonialResistances

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, The Making of Modern Libya: State, formation, Colonization, and Resistance 1830 – 1932, Suny, 1994, Chapter 5.

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:

Mark I. Choate, “Identity Politics and Political Perception in the European Settlement of Tunisia: The French Colony versus the Italian Colony,” French Colonial History 8 (2007), 97–109.

15) Race, Identities, and Memories:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, Chapter 19.

--

Students not attending classwork must study the following 4 books to prepare their final oral exam:

- Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: a Global Intellectual History, Harvard University Press, 2017.

- Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial in a Bourgeois World, University of California Press, 1997, Part II: “Making Boundaries”.

- Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo, Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
- Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Mia Fuller, Italian Colonialism,Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

In addition to the oral exam, non-attending students are required to write a final paper of a length and on a topic to be agreed on with the professor before the beginning of the course.

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures, students' presentations, class discussion.

 

Assessment methods

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

The final exam is oral or a  paper. The length of the paper will be about 5000 words (ca 30.000 characters with spaces)

Office hours

See the website of Gabriele Montalbano [https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/gabriele.montalbano2/en]

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Gabriele Montalbano