Università Roma Tre

The course aims at providing a basic understanding of the crucial turning points and most relevant processes of cultural, economic, institutional, political and social transformation of contemporary history. A section of the course will be devoted to the history of Postwar Italy since the end of Second World War to the present day.

Main contents: The First World War and its consequences; The Age of Totalitarianism; The Second World War; The Holocaust; The Cold War: main phases; The process of decolonization; The economic boom and the affluent society; Postwar Italy: centrismo, Center-Left, national solidarity and pentapartito; Terrorism in Italy: essential features, main phases, American analyses and reactions; The “Shock of the Global” and its effects on the political, economic, institutional, cultural and social sphere; The digital revolution; The collapse of Communism and the new international order after the Cold War; The evolution of the political system in Italy after the collapse of the “Republic of the parties”; Politics in the XX century and its evolution. The State, the parties and the Welfare State: apogee and crisis; New scenarios and challenges in the XXI century.

- Giovanni Sabbatucci, Vittorio Vidotto, Storia contemporanea. Dalla Grande Guerra a oggi, Laterza, nuova edizione del 2019
- Federico Romero, Storia globale dell'età contemporanea. Dal dominio occidentale all'insicurezza multipolare, Roma, Carocci, 2025
- Guido Formigoni, Storia essenziale dell'Italia repubblicana, Il Mulino, 2021

The course aims at providing a basic understanding of the history of the contemporary world, of the main processes of cultural, economic, institutional, political and social transformation and their essential turning points.
Adopting an historical perspective, the course will provide a critical understanding of the long-term roots of today's world, in order to allow students to deal with the complexity of our time.

1) L. Caracciolo-A. Roccucci, Storia contemporanea, Le Monnier Università, Milano 2017; 2) Marco Bresciani - Fulvio Conti (a cura di), L'età contemporanea. Prospettive di storia europea e globale, Roma, Carocci, 2023; 3) Mark Mazower, Le ombre dell'Europa. Democrazie e totalitarismi nel XX secolo, Milano, Garzanti, 2019.