Suggested and optional readings:
E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, London, Michael Joseph, 1994
J. Osterhammel, N.P. Petersson, Globalization. A Short History, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009
Learning Objectives
- Knowledge and understanding:
The course aims at presenting the main issues and categories of the history of the Twentieth Century, trying to locate them in an European and global context. It therefore intends to stimulate the capacity to grasp the complexity of processes and their significance in order to understand the present.
- Applying knowledge and understanding:
The course intends to stimulate the students’ ability to distinguish the main phenomena and processes, to trace their connections in time and space, to move within the periodization, to use the main historiographical concepts applied to the Twentieth Century.
- Making judgments:
The course intends to improve the students’ ability to orient themselves in the present, through a more secure understanding and contextualization of the phenomena that surround us; main objectives are to promote an adequate critical capacity and the ability to decode messages and representations conveyed in the mass media.
- Communication skills:
This course aims at developing the communicative ability, focusing in particular on the basic historiographical vocabulary; reading a paper in the chosen language has the goal of enriching the lexical skills, by dealing with a specialist language level.
- Learning skills:
The cycle of lessons and the reference book, designed for university students, aim at fostering the ability to deal with complex texts, to organize contents, to grasp and synthesize the main issues.
Prerequisites
Basic knowledge of contemporary history
Teaching Methods
Lectures
Further information
Attendance is required for at least 2/3 of the course. No provisions and specific exams for non-attending students, except for part-time students (who must contact the professor at the beginning of the course in order to agree upon a specific program).
Type of Assessment
The exam is oral for all students, even those who do not attend lectures and exchange students (Erasmus and other programmes).
The test consists of three questions on the following specific parts of the course:
1) a question on one of the main issues addressed during the course
2) a question that intends to verify the level of knowledge acquired through the reading of the reference book
3) a question that will test the understanding of the main thesis and arguments put forward in the chosen short paper.
Students must demonstrate sufficient knowledge in all three parts to pass the exam.
The marks obtained in the three parts are totalled to yield the final mark.
The exam is designed to test:
- the understanding of the key processes that characterise the history of the twentieth century
- the understanding of the major categories proposed in order to define these processes
- the knowledge of the main events and periods that characterise the history of the twentieth century
- the ability of conceptual synthesis and to establish proper connections between different events
- the ability to properly use the terminology of the discipline.
Course program
The exam will be based on the topics covered in class and on two texts: a book chosen from the list A and a short paper chosen from the list B.
List A:
1. Giovanni Sabbatucci, Vittorio Vidotto, Storia contemporanea, II, Il Novecento, Roma-Bari, Laterza
2. Tommaso Detti, Giovanni Gozzini, Storia contemporanea, II, Il Novecento, Milano, Bruno Mondadori
3. Alberto M. Banti, L'età contemporanea. Dalla Grande guerra a oggi, Roma-Bari, Laterza
The list B will be distributed at the beginning of the course and uploaded in the Moodle platform.
The presentations used during the course will be available for students on Moodle platform and are part of the bibliography.