81947 - WORLD HISTORY: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY (1) (LM)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

At the end of the course unit students will have acquired awareness of the concept of universal history centred around Europe and Western Civilization as well as with the ways through which this narrative has been deconstructed by means of alternative and peripheral critical stances. Students will be able to understand the relevance of different traditions of critical thought as cultural Marxism, anti-imperialist and Afro-American thought, cultural and postcolonial studies. At the end of the course students will demonstrate a sound theoretical framework within which specific research interests could be developed.

Contenuti

The course will be divided into two main parts.

The first part will be devoted to the critical analysis of narratives of the world history since antiquities:

• Narratives of the World History: classic, medieval, and early modern patterns
• From the Enlightenment philosophy of history to the 19th century imperial history
• The crisis of the western image of world history

The second part will focus on socialist and communist internationalism as actors of the world history and on the representation of world history and politics in 20th century marxist critical thought.

From the First to Third International: revolutionary strategies and visions of the world

Space, time, culture rethinking the socialist transition in Gramsci, Mariátegui, Benjamin

 

Attending students will write a brief paper (500 words) on the following texts. In this paper they to single out the main points of the chapter/article.

Students are expected to do class presentation of the texts they have read and actively participate to the discussion on them.

 

Texts have to be read and papers delivered according the following schedule.

 

27th September

Students will choose one of the following texts:

• Arnaldo Momigliano, The Origins of Universal History, in On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, 1987
• Arno Borst, Barbaren, Ketzer und Artisten. Welten des Mittelalters, Piper, München, 1988 (translated Medieval worlds. Barbarians, heretics and artists in the Middle Ages. Polity Press, Cambridge 1991) chapter 4
• Siep Stuurman, Common Humanity and Cultural Difference on the Sedentary–Nomadic Frontier. Herodotus, Sima Qian, and Ibn Khaldun, in Samuel Moyn & Andrew Sartori, Global Intellectual History, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013

 

3rd October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

• R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979 (translated Futures past. On the semantics of historical time, New York, Columbia University Press, 2004) – chapter 2 – Historia Magistra Vitae
• C.L. Hill, National Histories and World Systems. Writing Japan, France and the United States, in Q.E. Wang and G.G. Iggers (eds.), Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-cultural Perspective, Boydell and Brewer, 2002, pp. 163-84
• Arnaldo Momigliano, Two Types of Universal History: The Cases of E. A. Freeman and Max Weber, in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), pp. 235-246 - This text is available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1881571.pdf
• John Robert Seeley, The expansion of England, 1883, chapters: 3-4-5 (you can find the 1914 edition: online)

 

10th October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

• E. Said, Introduction to Culture and imperialism
• Walter Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America, chapter 1
• Dipesh Chakrabarty Introduction to Provincializing Europe

 

17th October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

Congress of the People of the East (Baku, 1920). Proceedings, New Park, 1977 - Fifth Session pp. 89-119

https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/baku/cpe-baku-pearce.pdf

A. Gramsci, Some Aspects of The Southern Question, 1926 (http://blogs.uoregon.edu/j610drstabile/files/2014/03/gramsci-southern-question1926-2jf8c5x.pdf)

J. Mariategui, Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana, Barcelona, 2009 - chapters 1 and 2 (there several editions, in Spanish and English)

 

 24th October

Students will choose one of the following texts:

 

B. Studer, The transnational World of the Cominenternians, Palgrave, 2015, chapter 1

W. McLellan, Africans and Black Americans in the Comintern schools, 1925-1934. International Journal of African Historical Studies. 26, 1993, pp. 371-390

Hakkim Adi, Pan-Africanism and communism: the Comintern, the ‘Negro Question’ and the First International Conference of Negro Workers, Hamburg 1930, in "African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal" Volume 1, 2008 - Issue 2 

Metodi didattici

The course is articulated through lectues and seminars discussions. Students are expected to participate actively by reading in due time the texts which are in the programme, writing papers as well as participating in class discussions. 

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

The following instructions on the final exams concern both modules (12CFU)

There are two alternative ways to take the exam:

 

attending students are required to attend and participate actively to all classes and are required to write a 500 words paper on the reading texts listed in the class programm in due time; they will further write a 4000 words final paper on one of the following areas:

 

• History of socialist and communist internationalism in the 19th and 20th century (Capuzzo)
   
• Global migrations (Tolomelli)
• Social movements (Tolomelli)

 

Attending students are required to decide a specific subject within one of this four areas with the advise of one of the two professors (Paolo Capuzzo and Marica Tolomelli).

Deadline for the submission of the final paper is 30th January.

 

Not attending students are required to pass a written text and a brief oral exams. This concerns this module (6CFU), look at the programme of Prof. Tolomelli for the second module.  

The written test (60 minutes) requires to answer to three questions on the following bibliography. An accurate studying of the following books is necessary in order to pass the written exam.

 

The following chapters of Jerry J. Bentley, The Oxford Handbook of World History:

Chapters 1-7; 10-12; 15-21

Part I: Concepts

1: Michael Bentley: Theories of World History since the Enlightenment

2: Martin W. Lewis: Geographies

3: Luiji Cajani: Periodization

4: Matthew Lauzon: Modernity

5: Jürgen Osterhammel: Globalization

6: Patrick Manning: Epistemology

Part II: Themes

7: David Christian: World Environmental History

10: Charles Tilly: States, State Formation, and War

11: Marnie Hughes-Warrington: Genders

12: Zvi Ben-Dor Benite: Religions and World History

Part III: Processes

15: Dirk Hoerder: Migrations

16: James D. Tracy: Trade across Eurasia to about 1750

17: Patrick Karl O'Brien: Industrialization

18: J. R. McNeill: Biological Exchanges in World History

19: Jerry H. Bentley: Cultural Exchanges

20: Thomas T. Allsen: Premodern Empires

21: Prasenjit Duara: Modern Imperialism

 

After having passed the written test non-attending students have to pass:

A brief oral exam with Prof. Capuzzo on one of the following books:

 

Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible empire. Americas advance through twentieth-century Europe, Cambridge (Mass.) ; London : The Belknap press of Harvard university press, 2005

Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Duke University Press, 1999

D. Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-class History, 2000 (1989)

Brigitte Studer, The transnational world of the Cominternians, Basingstoke - New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Edward W. Said, Culture and imperialism, London : Chatto & Windus, 1993

 

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Paolo Capuzzo