Communication Sciences (Academic Year 2019/2020) - Public Institutions and Digital Media

While making a chronological and, above all, critical outline of the period being studied, the course aims at following the phases that characterised the Contemporary Era including its contradictions and peculiarities. Specific objectives are: the ability to place events in time and space and to expose them clearly and distinctly; the understanding of the links between phenomena and their pluri/causal relations.

The program conceptually moves from the legacies of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, and than examine some of the conceptual and factual junctions: the concepts of freedom, individualism, rights; the centrality of the constitutions; the unification processes of the Regno d’Italia and the German Reich; the problems and developments of the nation-state in Italy and the transformations of European society; political evolution in the nation states; nineteenth-century imperialism and populisms; liberal Italy; the Great War; fascist Italy; the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Nazism; the crisis of the Thirties and the New Deal; World War II; the hegemony of the United States and the bipolar world; the collapse of the colonial system; the golden age and the welfare state; the formation of democratic Italy; the implosion of the communist world; the Islamic world; globalization; Gender issues: man – woman - family; questions of faith: Christian Europe and contemporary history; the Wars, the post-war period and the processes of decolonization; European and non-European political and economic institutions

A.M. Banti, L'età contemporanea. Dalle rivoluzioni settecentesche all'imperialismo, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2013, chapters 8-25

A.M Banti, L'età contemporanea. Dalla Grande Guerra a oggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2013, chapters 1-15

Or alternatively:

R. Romanelli, Ottocento. Lezioni di storia contemporanea, Bologna, il Mulino 2012, chapter 1, chapters 6-14

R. Romanelli, Novecento. Lezioni di storia contemporanea, Bologna, il Mulino, 2014, chapters 1-14

Or alternatively:

G. Sabbatucci - V. Vidotto, Il mondo contemporaneo dal 1848 a oggi, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2008 (and more recent editions).

At the end of the course, students will make a series of interactive exercises, useful for verifying the ability to place events in their time and to understand their meaning. These exercises are self-assessed, but they could be supported by oral presentations in interactive class and by specific posts on the forum.