LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims to provide the student with knowledge for the study of the history of culture and society in the early modern age, understood as a fundamental period of historical evolution that marks contemporary society. The field of the course is social history understood in necessary relation to the history of culture in the anthropological perspective. During the course concepts, models, themes, interpretive lines, sources and method of the social-historical approach will be introduced, starting with the innovations introduced in historiography by the "Annales" school. The objective of the course is to train a student capable of understanding the close relationship between social, economic, political and cultural dynamics in the processes of historical becoming.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The objectives of the course are mainly twofold:

•     Understand the structural aspects of modern-age society in its various fields and problems
•     Master historiographical vocabulary and tools for analyzing and interpreting sources

At the end of the course the student

- will know how to use the most important tools for understanding historical processes in their social and cultural dimensions;

- will know how to interpret the links between institutional development, cultural development and social developments in the modern and early contemporary ages;

- will know how to interpret contemporary society in the light of the social, cultural, economic, political-institutional changes of previous centuries;

- will be familiar with the main forms of resistance to power that developed in the modern age and thus be able to better interpret the phenomena of social resistance in the contemporary age.

PREREQUISITES

General knowledge of early modern history

TEACHING METHODS

Lessons will be held in presence.

During the course, non-traditional forms of teaching will be tried out, with particular use of the "flipped class" model and possibly other innovative teaching tools such as game-based learning experiences based on examples of playful history teaching (role-playing and boardgames)

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Attempts to define social history

Social and cultural changes between the Middle Ages and the Ancien Régime

Scholarly and popular culture

The birth of the modern state

Revolts and revolutions (15th-18th centuries)

Some forms of resistance against power (cultural, political, religious):
- The situation of women: Boccaccio, Chaucester, Christine de Pizan, Agrippa of Nettesheim. Witch-hunting and witchcraft.
- The 'peasants' war.
- Banditism and brigandage.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Attending students prepare the exam on the topics covered during the lectures and complete the preparation on two books chosen among those indicated here.

Non-attending students prepare the exam on four books chosen among those indicated here.

C. Pancino, Storia sociale. Metodi, esempi, strumenti, Marsilio, Padova 2003

R. Repetti, Alle origini dei diritti dell'uomo. Cultura della dignità e dei diritti tra XV e XVI secolo, Genova, Ecig, 2010

R. Repetti, La nuova spiritualità dell'età moderna, Genova, Ecig, 2021, IV ed.

G. Romagnani, La società d'antico regime (XVI-XVIII sec.). Temi e problemi, Carocci, Roma 2010

C.M. Cipolla, Contro un nemico invisibile. Epidemie e strutture sanitarie nell'Italia del Rinascimento, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007

C. Ginzburg, I Benandanti, Adelphi, Milano, 2020

C. Ginzburg, Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba, Adelphi, Milano, 2017

E. J. Hobsbawm, I banditi. Il banditismo sociale nell'età moderna, Einaudi, Torino 2002