Università Roma Tre

The course will address the main turning points, issues and processes in contemporary history, from 1860 to 2001. With respect to the themes present in the texts, the following issues will be selected and dealt with:
Italy and Germany after unification. Europe after the war of 1870: development of political systems and international relations. Italian unification. Imperialism. The birth of a power: the United States. The “second” industrial revolution. The advent of mass society and mass politics: political parties. The labour movement and Marxism. Nationalism.
The Great War: contingent and long-term causes, effects. The revolution in Russia. The advent of fascism in Italy and its institutionalisation. The Great Crisis of 1929 and F. D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The advent of Nazism and the Third Reich. Stalinism. Totalitarianism and democracy. The Second World War and the Shoah.
The Cold War: origins and developments. Decolonisation: overview and basic features. The development of European integration. Communisms: the People's Republic of China and “destalinisation” in the Soviet Union. The “affluent society”: new kinds of consumption and customs. The United States as a world power: from Eisenhower to Kennedy’s New Frontier to the war in Vietnam. The new youth culture and 1968; the movements of the 1960s and 1970s; terrorism, feminism, environmentalism. International détente. The 1973 oil crisis and the so-called “neo-liberal” turn of the 1980s. The crisis of communism and the end of the Cold War. “Globalisation” and the 1990s. Terrorism and the Twin towers attack.

The title of the texts selected by the lecturer will be indicated at the beginning of the course.