OVERVIEW

The course provides a critical introduction to the study of modern and contemporary history, from the 18th-century revolutions to today. Its main focus is on the history of Europe, with particular attention to issues of gender, class, "race", as well as to the history of intimacy and family.

AIMS AND CONTENT

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to offer basic knowledge, methodological and historiographical awareness in order to approach modern and contemporary history from a perspective that is aware of the innovations made, both in terms of method and content, by the history of gender, sexuality and the family.

Attendance, active participation and individual study of the course materials aim to promote the achievement of the following learning outcomes:
- To know, understand, critically discuss and with appropriate language some crucial caesuras that have characterised historiographical practice during the twentieth century, including in particular the development of the 'new history', the emergence in its wake of women's history, the cultural turn, the introduction of the analytical category of gender, the related debates and recent developments;
- To know, understand, discuss critically and with appropriate language some crucial socio-economic and political processes of contemporary European history reread in the light of a perspective sensitive to issues of gender, sexuality and family and the intersection between different socio-cultural constructs (gender, class, 'race', etc.);
- To develop an initial competence in the critical reading of a monograph chosen within the historiographic field explored in the course.

PREREQUISITES

None. For information support, I recommend consulting Alberto Banti, L'età contemporanea, vol. I (Dalle rivoluzioni settecentesche all'imperialismo), and vol. II (From the Great War to Today), Laterza 2012.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures will be in presence. Attendance is highly encouraged. Only for those who make an explicit and justified request to the lecturer at the beginning of the course, it will be possible to follow the lectures by streaming or using lecture recordings via the TEAMS platform. In this case, you will be considered a non-attending student. For mandatory readings see Recommended Reading, Section: NON-attending students.

For more information, please follow updates in Aulaweb 2022-2023.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course will mainly have a thematic structure, although it will follow, for many of the issues addressed, a chronological order in the exposition.

After having explained the birth of women's history, the further passage, between the 1980s and 1990s, to gender history and the more recent contribution of the intersectional perspective, the course will examine a set of fundamental themes and issues of the contemporary age, with particular reference to Europe: the processes of state-building, nineteenth and twentieth century nationalism and the contemporary characteristics of citizenship, with all its dilemmas, paradoxes, exclusions; the birth of "sexual dimorphism" in medical, legal, anthropological discourse, and the stigmatization of deviances in sexual orientations, in gender belonging, in the sexual configuration of bodies; the genesis between the 18th and 19th centuries of the first feminist movements and their issues (including the vote); the birth and development of industrial capitalism and the restructuring of the work-family relationship, production-reproduction nexus, together with the genesis of "modern" consumer cultures; the transformation of family, affective, sexual relationships and the affirmation of the model of the "intimate conjugal family" between the 19th and 20th centuries; European colonialism and imperialism and the various phases and strategies of sexual policy making at the heart of colonial rule; the experience of the Great War and the October Revolution, their impact and implications from the point of view of gender relations, the discipline of sexuality and policies of state intervention on the family, in the interwar period and in particular in dictatorial regimes; the anti-Jewish persecutions, the Second World War and the interweaving of sex/gender/race; the season of well-being, consumer cultures and the new centrality of family intimacy in the first thirty years after the Second World War; feminism, movements linked to sexual identities in the second half of the 20th century and the conflicting definitions of family and intimacy in the public discourse of contemporary democracies; gender, mobility, migration in a long-term perspective; intersectional conflicts in contemporary democracies.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

A. (mandatory)

• Joan W. Scott, Genere, politica, storia, a cura di Ida Fazio, Viella, Roma 2013: Joan W. Scott, Il “genere”: un’utile categoria di analisi storica, pp. 31-63.
• Two articles from: Silvia Salvatici (ed.), Storia delle donne nell'Italia contemporanea, Carocci, Roma, 2022.
• Maya De Leo, Queer. Storia culturale della comunità LGBT+, Einaudi, Torino 2021

B. (mandatory) Slides and materials uploaded on aulaweb/Teams.

C. Choose one book from the list below:

Enrica Asquer, Storia intima dei ceti medi. Una capitale e una periferia nell’Italia del miracolo economico, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2011;

Alberto Banti, L’onore della nazione. Identità sessuali e violenza nel nazionalismo europeo dal XVIII secolo alla Grande Guerra, Einaudi, Torino 2005;

Fiammetta Balestracci, La sessualità degli italiani. Politiche, consumi e culture dal 1945 ad oggi, Carocci, Roma 2020;

Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin. L’invenzione tedesca dell’omosessualità, Bompiani, Milano 2016;

Alessandro Bellassai, L’invenzione della virilità. Politica e immaginario maschile nell’Italia contemporanea, Carocci, Roma 2011.

Stefania Bernini, Marrying and Divorcing in Post-war Europe. Politics and Societies Across the Iron Curtain, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, Venezia 2020 (open access);

Elena Biagini, L’emersione imprevista. Il movimento delle lesbiche in Italia negli anni ’70 e ’80, ETS, Pisa 2018;

Joanna Bourke, Stupro. Storia della violenza sessuale dal 1860 a oggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2009;

Maud Bracke, La nuova politica delle donne. Il femminismo in Italia 1968-1983, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, Roma 2019;

Niamh Cullen, Love, Honour and Jealousy. An Intimate History of the Italian Economic Miracle, Oxford U.P., Oxford 2019;

Simona Feci e Laura Schettini (a cura di), La violenza contro le donne nella storia. Contesti, linguaggi, politiche del diritto (secoli XV-XXI), Viella, Roma 2017;

Vinzia Fiorino, Il genere della cittadinanza. Diritti civili e politici delle donne in Francia (1789-1915), Viella, Roma 2020;

Anna Frisone, Femminismo al lavoro. Come le donne hanno cambiato il sindacato in Italia e in Francia (1968-1983), Viella, Roma 2020;

Paul Ginsborg, Famiglia Novecento. Vita familiare, rivoluzione e dittature. 1900-1950, Einaudi 2013;

Thomas Laqueur, L’identità sessuale dai Greci a Freud, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1992;

Sabrina Marchetti, Le ragazze di Asmara. Lavoro domestico e migrazione post-coloniale, Ediesse, Roma 2011;

Alessandra Pescarolo, Il lavoro delle donne nell'Italia contemporanea, Viella, Roma 2019.

Erika Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure. Women in the Making of London’s West-End, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2000;

Domenico Rizzo, Gli spazi della morale. Buon costume e ordine delle famiglie nell’Italia liberale, Biblink 2004;

Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods. Gender and Class in Nineteenth-Century England, University of California Press, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1991;

Laura Schettini, Il gioco delle parti. Travestimenti e paure sociali tra Otto e Novecento, Le Monnier (Mondadori Education) 2011;

Laura Schettini, Turpi traffici. Prostituzione e migrazioni globali 1890-1940, Biblink, Roma 2019;

Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil, Princeton U.P., Princeton 2007;

Barbara Sorgoni, Parole e corpi. Antropologia, discorso giuridico e politiche sessuali interraziali nella colonia Eritrea (1890-1941), Liguori, Napoli 1998;

Giulietta Stefani, Colonia per maschi. Italiani in Africa Orientale, una storia di genere, Ombre Corte, Verona 2007;

Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market. Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin-de-Siècle France, University of California Press, 2001;

John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England, Yale University Press, New Haven (Conn) 1999.

Non-attending students (including those who attend on line classes via TEAMS) should add another book from the same list.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

ENRICA ASQUER (President)

GURI SCHWARZ

MATTEO CAPONI (Substitute)

FRANCESCO CASSATA (Substitute)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

The course will start on the 1st of March 2023

Class schedule

INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Oral exam.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Students will be asked to show their knowledge and critical awaeness of the issues treated in the course.

Exam schedule