29512 - Global History: Economy, Environment and Society (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the module, the student acquires the methodological principles of historiography on the global economy and is introduced to the latest trends in research on the global profile of material culture circuits and environmental change.

Course contents

The second module of the course aims to provide students with analytical tools to understand key themes in global history related to economic globalization, the environment, and migration.**
Particular attention will be given to interactions between humans and nature, with a specific focus on the consequences of wars on landscapes and on population movements; on the evolution of global post-imperial political visions; on flows of migrants and refugees in the contemporary era; and on the entry into what various scholars define as a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human action has become the main driver of Earth’s transformation.

The course is structured in five parts. The themes of the parts are as follows:

History of globalization and the global economy: approaches, methodologies, concepts: Lectures 1–3.

Contemporary migrations: population movements between the 20th and 21st centuries and the political use of migration: Lectures 4–7.

Global history of natural environments: Lectures 8–12.

The Anthropocene: Lectures 13–14.

Writing workshop: Lecture 15.

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Course Plan

Part I: The global economy

1. The global economy and globalization

* Jurgen Osterhammel, Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History, Introduction

2. Global capitalism

* Jamie Martin, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, Harvard University Press, 2022, Introduction

3. ‘Globalism’ and post-imperial neoliberalism

* Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (HUP 2018), Introduction
 or
* Tehila Sasson, 'Milking the Third World? Humanitarianism, Capitalism, and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott', The American Historical Review, Volume 121, Issue 4, October 2016, pp. 1196–1224, (https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.4.1196)

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Part II: Global migrations
4. Settler colonialism

Angelo Matteo Caglioti, “‘Natural’ disasters, ignorance, and the mirage of Italian settler colonialism in late nineteenth-century Africa,” Past & Present, Volume 266, Issue 1, February 2025, pp. 75–117

5. Mass migrations and European refugees

Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent, Penguin, 2020, Introduction

6. Migration and women

Frazier, J., & Leinonen, J. (2023). “Women’s Migration and Transnational Solidarity in the Twentieth Century,” in M. Borges & M. Hsu (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Global Migrations, pp. 381–400

7. Climate refugees

 Tim Soens, “Resilient Societies, Vulnerable People: Coping with North Sea Floods Before 1800,” Past & Present, Volume 241, Issue 1, November 2018, pp. 143–177, (https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gty018)



Part III: Natural environments
8. The sea

Surabhi Ranganathan, The Seabed and the South: From Stock Stories to New Histories of International Lawmaking, (2024), Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

9. Rivers

Joanne Yao, The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order. Manchester University Press, 2022, Introduction

10. Natural disasters

Elizabeth Chatterjee, Sachaet Pandey-Geeta Mantraraj, “Dams and the Deep Earth: The 1967 Koyna Earthquake and Human Agency in the Anthropocene,” Past & Present, 2025,(https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtae037)

11. Nuclear war and environmental destruction

J.R. McNeill, “The Biosphere and the Cold War,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 3, 2010

12. Indigenous and colonial environments

Reed, G., Brunet, N. D., McGregor, D., Scurr, C., Sadik, T., Lavigne, J., & Longboat, S. (2024). “There is no word for ‘nature’ in our language: rethinking nature-based solutions from the perspective of Indigenous Peoples located in Canada,” Climatic Change, 177(2), Article 32

Part IV: The Anthropocene 
13. The Anthropocene

Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene, Verso, 2018.
or
* Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016.

14. The Planet

Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category'(2019), [link](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/705298)

15. Writing workshop

Readings/Bibliography

Acker, Antoine, Laurent Warlouzet, Conversation with Debjani Bhattacharyya, Roberta Biasillo, Iris Borowy, Claudia Leal, Christof Mauch, Gregory Quenet, 'From the Globe to the Planet? New Challenges of Global and Environmental History', Monde(s), 21 (2022), pp. 21-46.

Adelman, Jeremy ‘What is Global History Now?' https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment

Armiero, Marco, Richard Tucker (eds.), Environmental History of Modern Migrations, New York: Routledge, 2017.

Audenino, Patrizia, La casa perduta: la memoria dei profughi nell'Europa del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2015.

Beckert, Sven and Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global history, globally: research and practice around the world (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), ‘Introduction’.

Beinart, William, and Lotte Hughes, Environment and Empire (Oxford, 2007)

Bonneuil, Christophe, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L'evento antropocene, Roma: Treccani, 2019

Borges M. & M. Hsu (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Global Migrations.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Castles, Stephen, Mark J. Miller, L'era delle migrazioni: popoli in movimento nel mondo contemporaneo, Bologna, Odoya, 2012.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh, La sfida del cambiamento climatico: globalizzazione e antropocene, Verona, Ombre Corte, 2021.

Colucci, Michele, Matteo Sanfilippo, Le migrazioni. Un'introduzione storica, Roma: Carocci, 2009.

Colucci, Michele, Storia dell'immigrazione straniera in Italia: dal 1945 ai nostri giorni, Roma: Carocci, 2018.

Corona, Giovanni Gozzini, Le migrazioni di ieri e di oggi. Una storia comparata, Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2005.

Drayton, Richard and David Motadel, 'Discussion: The Future of Global History', Journal of Global History, 13:1 (2018), pp. 1-21.

Edwards, Andrew David, Peter Hill, Juan Neves-Sarriegui, ’Capitalism in Global History’, Past & Present, 249 (2020), e1–e32.

Gabriella Breve, storia dell'ambiente in Italia, Bologna: il Mulino, 2015.

Gatrell, Peter, L’inquietudine dell’Europa: Come la migrazione ha rimodellato un continente, Einaudi, 2020.

Ghobrial, John-Paul A. ‘Introduction: Seeing the World like a Microhistorian’, Past & Present Special issue on ‘Global History and Microhistory’ 242, supplement 14 (2019), 1-22.

Gungwu Wang (ed.), Global History and Migrations, New York, Routledge, 1997.

Hetherington, Philippa and Julia Laite. "Editorial Note: Special Issue: Migration, Sex, and Intimate Labor." Journal of Women's History, vol. 33 no. 4, 2021, p. 7-39. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2021.0043 .

Hoerder, Dirk ‘Migration studies: deep time and global approaches’, Journal of Global History 11/3 (2016): 473-480 (review article)

Lazier, Benjamin, “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture.” The American Historical Review, vol. 116, no. 3, 2011, pp. 602–30.

Lewis, Simon L. Mark Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l'Antropocene, Torino: Einaudi, 2019.

Martiin, Carin, Juan Pan-Montojo, Paul Brassley (eds.), Agriculture in Capitalist Europe, 1945–1960: from food shortages to food surpluses, London:Taylor and Francis, 2016.

Martin, Jamie, The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, Harvard University Press, 2022.

McKeown, Adam “Global Migration, 1846-1940,” Journal of World History15, no. 2 (2004), 155-189.

McNeill, John R. and Corinna R. Unger, Environmental Histories of the Cold War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

McNeill, John R. Peter Engelke, La grande accelerazione. Una storia ambientale dell'Antropocene dopo il 1945, Torino: Einaudi, 2018

Neri Serneri, Simone Incorporare la natura. Storie ambientali del Novecento, Roma: Carocci, 2005.

Osterhammel, Jurgen, Niels P. Petersson, Storia della globalizzazione, Il Mulino, 2005.

Salvatici, Silvia, Senza casa e senza paese: profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008

Strangio, Donatella, Globalizzazione, diseguaglianze, migrazioni: introduzione alla storia economica contemporanea, Roma: Carocci, 2017.

Trischler, Helmuth The Anthropocene. A Challenge for the History of Science, Technology, and the Environment, «Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin», 24, 2016, pp. 309-335

Tucker, Richard P. Tait Keller, J. R. McNeill, Martin Schmid (eds.), Environmental Histories of the First World War,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Vecchio, Giorgio Gabriella Gotti (a cura di), Il paesaggio violentato. Le due guerre mondiali, le persone, la natura, Roma: Viella, 2020.

Vuorisalo, Timo Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, The Long Shadows A Global Environmental History of the Second World War, Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2017.

Zahra, Tara Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars, Norton, 2023.

Zinkina, Julia, David Christian, Leonid Grinin, et al., A Big History of Globalization: The Emergence of a Global World System (Cham: Springer International, 2019).

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures, discussions, analysis of sources.

Assessment methods

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

Attending students are required to produce a written paper on a topic related to one of the two modules, to be agreed upon with the respective module's teacher.

For a paper worth a total of 12 credits, a paper of approximately 7,500 words is required.

The paper will be evaluated both in terms of formal presentation and articulation of the work, presentation skills, and precision in the use of historiographic concepts and categories, as well as the critical elaboration of the bibliographic material used and its coherence in relation to the subject of the paper.

In the evaluation of attending students, consideration will also be given to their constancy and active participation in the lessons.

In addition to the final paper, non-attending students must take a written exam - valid for both modules of the integrated course - on the following two books:
- Sebastian Conrad, "Storia Globale. Un'introduzione," Carocci, Roma 2015.
- Christophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, "La Terra, la storia e noi: l'evento antropocene," Treccani, Roma 2019.

The exam, lasting 90 minutes, will consist of six open questions, three on each book.

The overall grade for non-attending students will result from the average between the oral exam and the final paper (to be agreed with one of the two teachers of the integrated course).

Based on the criteria above, the following grading scale will be followed:
- Excellent (30 e lode)
- Very Good (28-30)
- Good (25-27)
- Fair (22-24)
- Sufficient (18-21)

This course (6 credits) is part of the Integrated Course "Profiles of Global History C.I. (1) LM". If the student has the Integrated Course (12 credits) in their study plan, the final grade will be the arithmetic mean of the grades obtained in the two components ("Global History: Public Sphere and Mass Communications" and "Global History: Economy, Environment, Society").

 

Exam sessions for the submission of the final paper are scheduled for the following months of the academic year (exact dates are published on Alma Esami):

- May 2025

- July 2025

- September 2025

- October 2025

- November 2025

- January 2026

- March 2026

 

Teaching tools

The course is divided into 5 sections, each consisting of 3 lessons, and includes both lectures and seminars where active participation of students is required. Some readings for discussion in class will be assigned in the first week of lessons to small groups of students, who will then present and discuss them during the course. The texts for the reading groups will be available in the course's educational resources.

Students with disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD), must first contact the appropriate office:

[https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students]

 

Office hours

See the website of Or Rosenboim