B028236 - CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

Italian

How do we tell the lives of men and women that are marked by a national and international event that radically transforms them? The course addresses decisive methodological questions on history and memory, repression and false news, historical research and micro-history, context and individual cases, biographical genre and autobiography, focusing on the topic of intellectual emigration and exile from Fascist Italy for political and racial reasons.

a) General readings:
P. Burke, Strenghts and Weakness of Cultural History, Cultural History, 1, 1, 2012, pp. 1-13.
G. Levi, chp. V, in P. Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991
Carlo Ginzburg, Spie. Radici di un paradigma indiziario, in ID, Miti emblemi spie.Morfologia e storia, Torino: Einaudi, 1986, pp.158-209 oe Engl. ed. .
Marc Bloch, Riflessioni di uno storico sulle false notizie della guerra [1921], in Id., La guerra e le false notizie, Roma: Fazi ed. 2014, pp. 101-136.

b) Persecution and migration of intellectuals:
Gabriele Turi, L'Università di Firenze e la persecuzione razziale. "Italia contemporanea", 219, 2000, pp.227-247 (on line con SBART)
L’emigrazione intellettuale dall’Italia fascista. Studenti e studiosi ebrei dell'Università di Firenze in fuga all'estero, ed. by P. Guarnieri, Firenze, FUP, 2019 DOI: 10.36253/978-88-6453-874-7: pp. 3-13, 1 essay and pp. 137-145.
Patrizia Guarnieri , Quando il «cervello in fuga» è una donna. Renata Calabresi, displaced psychologist a New York dopo le leggi anti-ebraiche, "Contemporanea", 21, 2018, pp. 501-532, OR The Zionist Network and Enzo Bonaventura: from Florence to Jerusalem, in Ead, Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism. From Florence to Jerusalem and New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016, pp.113-153 e note (both open access on SBART)
Francesca Pelini e Ilaria Pavan, Il primato della continuità, in La doppia epurazione, Bologna: il Mulino 2009, pp. 119-131.
c) specific sources will be found for each biographical paper (see examples in http://intellettualinfuga.fupress.com/en , Intellectuals displaced from Fascist Italy, Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2019, DOI: 10.36253/978-88-6453-872-3, exp. alphabetical list)

The students who could not complete a biographical paper will have to study two more volumes, in addition to the above list a) e b) : Peter Burke, Espatriati ed esuli nella storia della conoscenza, Bologna, il Mulino 2019, e Giovanni Montroni, La continuità necessaria. Università e professori dal fascismo alla Repubblica, Firenze, Le Monnier 2016, oppure Annette Wieviorka, L'era del testimone, Milano, R. Cortina 199 (French or. ed., Paris 1998).

Knowledge and understanding: on cultural history and the specific subjet matters of this course, with special attention on methodology.
Ability: developing an autonomy of judgment and awareness. Skills: collecting and analyzing primary and secondary sources, writing a biographical paper

A good enough knowledge of modern history; partecipation to the seminar; the Erasmus students must have a good enough knowledge of Italian language.

Seminar with presentations and discussions that involve the active participation of students. If possible, visits and activities with the prof. in an historical archive.

Any changes will be communicated during the course. Students who have difficulties in attending the class, should contact the prof.
For questions beyond class time, please contact the prof. by e-mail

final oral examination, presentations and discussions during the course, in order to develop and verify the above aims. A biographical paper based on research in archive inder the prof. supervision is required

The course aims to address students to a concret experience of doing historical research: how to find sources ? how to structure a paper? how to make bibliographic and archival notes, how is a bibliography drawn up? The topic is the intellectual emigration from Italy in the Fascist period. Who were the scholars, students and professionals who decided to leave, among those affected by racial and political measures, and to look for a future elsewhere? And what did they do? How did both the expelling and the receiving institutions behave? Their names, their stories were deleted, or 'removed' and told with a lot of false news. If correctly reconstructed, following traces and clues, they speak of irreparable losses to the detriment of Italian science and culture, of responsibility and injustice, but also of resources and talents, of commitment and determination. There are many methodological issues on which this type of research gives us the opportunity to question ourselves: history and memory, witnesses and the desire to forget, oral sources, institutional and private sources, gender and generations. Some biographical cases will be selected from those proposed by the teacher.
False news is the mirror in which the collective conscience contemplates its own features: prejudices, fears, desires. It is especially after the Shoah that the silences, the "unspeakable" testimonies, and the impostures and denials have led to greater awareness of the problems of reconstruction of memory. Meetings with other memory and testimony experts are intended to open up to interdisciplinary discussions. It is a didactic experience linked to the research project promoted by the university and the Tuscany Region on Intellectuals fleeing from fascist Italy (scientific director P. Guarnieri) with important international sponsorships.