IE1000 Understanding Italy

General knowledge of the period shall be achieved through two means:
(1) lectures, in which the Professor shall discuss some of the main points of Italian Modern History, also showing part or entire movies by some of the most famous Italian directors. Issues, which will be covered: the process of Unification of Italy; Nation-building and Fascism; Resistance and Second World War; the Cold War in Italy; Social transformations since the 1950’s; present-time trends.
(2) a set of readings, including articles by John Davis, David Kertzer, Adrian Lyttelton, John Dickie, Gabriella Gribaudi, Paul Corner, Paul Ginsborg, Gianfranco Pasquino, Percy Allum and Perry Anderson and many others. These readings, which are dowloadable from one of the pages of the course website, provides a synthesis of XIXth and XXth Century Italian Social and Political History and an opportunity to develop specific themes. Three of the articles should be object of a short summary plus personal notes consisting of reactions, associations and/or questions, to be sent by e-mail in a .doc, .rtf or .pdf document (no .docx format, please!) to luca.pes@univiu.org.

Students are expected to submit a proposal for a theme of interest. The theme can range from Literature to Economics, from Religion to Law etc., even though obviously must remain related to issues raised in class or in the readings, and referred to the period of Italian History considered by the Seminar.
Such theme will be developed in two ways:
- producing an oral presentation of 15-20 minutes on April 15th; participants are divided into two groups, one meets in the morning, the other one in the afternoon; the idea is to listen and participate to the discussion of presentations of fellow students; attendance to the whole session of the group is compulsory;
- writing a final research paper to be handed in by May 7th. Papers should be based on multiple sources and contain footnotes, making the process of research transparent. Plagiarism will be a cause for failing the course.

Final versions of research paper will be sent via e-mail to the Professor (luca.pes@univiu.org) and in CC to Imma Flagiello (iflagiello@liuc.it).

Course-Webpage. A constantly updated webpage is available to students, providing course materials (course descriptions, chronologies, biographies, maps, articles). The page is shared with international students of Venice International University, attending a similar course taught by the Professor in Venice. Please see http://italianhistory.viublogs.org/