Università Roma Tre

Never as in recent years has Europe been at the center of public debate: for some the only lifeline against nationalisms and wars, for others the ultimate cause of all our problems and malaises, especially from an economic point of view. In the political discourse Europe is automatically identified with the community bodies; nevertheless, it is a concept which possesses an extraordinary historical depth, the knowledge of which imposes itself as an essential necessity in order to correctly insert the events of our continent in the framework of world history and also in order to avoid falling into clichés and generalizations deriving from the flattening of the perspective solely on the events of the last seventy years. The course aims to analyze the evolution of the notion of "Europe" over the very long period, by deepening on the one hand its role in global history (colonialism, decolonization, etc.), on the other the conceptualization of its internal articulations, and in particular the Mediterranean sector, traditional and fundamental area of ​​contact, communication and clash with the Arab and Ottoman world.

First unit: "History of Europe, World History" (6 ECTS)

Books:
Lucien Febvre, L’Europa. Storia di una civiltà, Roma, Donzelli.
Federico Chabod, Storia dell’Idea d’Europa, Roma-Bari, Laterza.
Serge Gruzinski, La macchina del tempo. Quando l’Europa ha iniziato a scrivere la storia del mondo, Milano, Raffaello Cortina Editore.

Second unit: "The Mediterranean: corsair wars, slavery, religious conversions"

Books:
Salvatore Bono, Guerre corsare nel Mediterraneo. Una storia di incursioni, arrembaggi, razzie, Bologna, Il Mulino.
Giovanna Fiume, Schiavitù mediterranee. Corsari, rinnegati e santi di età moderna, Milano, Mondadori.

Students not attending the course will have to study, for this unit, the following additional book:
Bruno Pomara Saverino, Rifugiati. I moriscos e l'Italia, Firenze, Firenze University Press, 2018 (Open Access, free download: https://www.fupress.com/catalogo/rifugiati/3516)