Università Roma Tre

The course is divided in two parts, the first basic, the second more advanced: 1) Introduction to the history of the contemporary world (4CFU) 2) Racism and anti-Semitism in contemporary history (4CFU).
PART ONE: This part introduces to the history of 19th and 20th Century, to methodological issues (periodization, political use of history, memory, sources), to the greatest phenomena (revolutions and political ideas, industrial development, mass society), and to the main historical interpretations of contemporary world.
Main topics: 1. Modernity and industrial development 2. The birth of modern “political sphere”: revolution, conservatism, liberalism, democracy, socialism, and nationalism 3. The social transformations: peasants, workers, middle class, and women 4. The role of religion: secularization 5. National unification in Germany and Italy 6. Europe and the world: Imperialism and colonialism 7. The second industrial revolution and mass society 8. The Great War 9. The Russian Revolution 10. The Interwar Age: Economic Crisis and Totalitarianism 11. World War II 12. Cold War 13. Decolonisation and Third World 14. Republican Italy 15. The Sixties: Affluent society, détente and protest 16. Globalisation, crisis of the Welfare State and the fall of Communism
PART TWO: The Age of democratic revolutions has been also the age of racial intolerance. This section will analyse the history of the formation of a racist view, of racists and anti-Semitist movements, looking for the main features, phases, decisive turns. Special attention will be devoted to the Holocaust and to the dramatic issue of the reaction of civil conscience, governments and in particular of the Catholic Church.
Main topics: 1. The birth of racism in the 18th Century 2. The origins of the Arian myth 3. Gobineau 4. Christian anti-Judaism 5. The scientific development of racism 6. The development of a religion of race 7. Catholic intransigent Anti-Semitism. 8. The birth of political anti-Semitism 9. The turn of the Great War 10. Hitler’s and Nazis’ ideas 10. German Jewry 12. Nazi legislation against the Jews 13. Emigration 14. Ghettos 15. From the “Madagascar project” to the Wansee Conference: When does the “final solution” begin? 16. Mass shooting 17. The industry of extermination 18. The Sinti and Rom extermination 19. The debate about the pope’s “silence” and the facts 20. Catholic and racist anti-Semitism 21. Catholicism and Nazism 22. The problem of information 23. Holy See’s impartiality 24. To keep silence in order to help? 25. The fruit of a mentality: Church and modernity

Lectures and multi-media presentation.

An obligatory written multiple choices test (30 questions) will verify the qualification on the first part. The test is based on Sabbatucci and Vidotto’s books and cannot be passed without a n in-depth knowledge of a good text-book about the history of the 19th and 20th Century.
Information on the second part will be object of an oral exam.

Part One
- G. SABBATUCCI – V. VIDOTTO, Storia contemporanea. L’Ottocento, Roma-Bari, Laterza,
2010, pp. 418 (esclusi i capitoli I-IV)
- G. SABBATUCCI – V. VIDOTTO, Storia contemporanea. Il Novecento, Roma-Bari, Laterza,
2010, pp. 488

Part Two
- G.L. MOSSE, Il razzismo in Europa dalle origini all’Olocausto, 4. ed., Roma-Bari, Laterza,
2008, pp. 302
- W. BENZ, L’Olocausto, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2006, pp. 128
- R. MORO, La Chiesa e lo sterminio degli ebrei, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2009, pp. 216