The 150th anniversary of the Italian Unification (1861 - 2011), along with the effects of European integration, globalization, and political change, have spurred a new debate about the birth of unitary Italy and the process of Nation-building (the “making of Italians” in Massimo D'Azeglio's words). New perspectives grounded in the “revisionist” scholarship grown on both sides of the Atlantic since the mid-1980s are challenging the classic narrative, dating to the post-Unification decades.
The course introduces students to the history of the Italian peninsula from 1750 to today with an eye to old and new interpretations of Italy’s national development. The emergence of the “national project,” the crafting of the modern Italian language, the rise of the “Southern Question,” the evolution of national party politics, and the recent crisis of national integration are among the subjects discussed. Special focus will be given to the city of Milan as the place where most of the forces that have shaped modern Italy originated. Field studies will include a walking tour of the downtown areas which were reshaped during the post-Unification decades and, when possible, attendance at a Risorgimento historical reenactment such as the patriots’ attack on the Sforza Castle during the Cinque Giornate di Milano or the Battle of Magenta.
Prerequisites:
No previous background is necessary. More advanced students can receive assignments personally tailored to their level and interests.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the course students will:
Graso basic facts about the historical development of Italian state, economy and culture from 1800 to date
Be able to identify the impact of the North/South polarity on post-Unification Italian history
Understand major historical debates on the economic weakness of the Mezzogiorno, the rise of Fascism, the place of Italy vis-a-vis the West and the “Third World”, and the malfunctioning of the Italian state
Gain awareness of some of the recent developments and debates in comparative historical research
Understand key-issues in the current debate on the future of the Italian state and nationhood
Method of presentation:
Lectures, class discussion, and field studies.
Required work and form of assessment:
Active participation through discussion, reading and writing (10%)
Writing assignments (10%)
Midterm exam (25%)
Term paper project (25%)
Final exam (30%)
content:
Class 1
Introduction
Class 2
Italy’s National Development and Modernization: In Search of a New Paradigm? Required reading: Agnew; Petrusewicz
Class 3
From Enlightened Absolutism to Unification
Required reading: Grab
Class 4
Field Trip 1: Museo del Risorgimento
Required reading: Cardoza
Class 5
The Shaping of Modern Milan
Required reading: Tucci et al. (part I)
Class 6
Field Trip 2: The Layers of Downtown Milan
Required reading: Tucci et al. (part II)
Class 7
Manzoni, the Dialects, and the Making of the Modern Italian
Required reading: Ives; Lepschy et al.
Class 8
The Liberal Revolutions: Italy's Risorgimento in Global perspective
Required reading: Greenfield; Del Lago
Class 9
The Mezzogiorno and the “Southern Question” (1) Required reading: Davis; Dickie
Class 10
The Mezzogiorno and the “Southern Question” (2); Review Class
Required reading: Verdicchio
Class 11 MIDTERM EXAM Class 12
Party Systems, Political Regimes, and Nation-Building in Western Europe: A Comparative Perspective
Required reading: Ertman
Class 13
Liberals, Marxists, Catholics, and Fascists: Parties and Party Systems from 1861 to 1992
Required reading: Luebbert; Arrighi
Class 14
Nation, Race and Civilization: Defining Italy’s “Place” in the World
Required reading: Gibson; Sorgoni
Class 15
Not European Enough? The Construction of the Italian ‘National Character’ from Lombroso to Sordi
Required reading: Patriarca, “Italian Vices”, Ch.5 and 8
Class 16
Industrialization, Urbanization, and the Italianization of Post-war Italy: the case of Milan
Required reading: Foot, “Migration and the Miracle”
Class 17
Movie: “Rocco and His Brothers” (L.Visconti, 1960) Required reading: Foot, “Cinema and the City”
Class 18
Class Discussion: Southern Italians in Milan
Class 19
The Crisis of the Nation-Building Project
Required reading: Cento Bull-Gilbert, Ch.5.
Class 20
Field Trip 3: Visit to the Northern League’s HQ Required reading: Cento Bull-Gilbert, Ch.4.
Class 21
Class Discussion: The Italian National Project at 150: Does an Italian Nation (Really) Exist? Required reading: Patriarca, “Italian Neo-patriotism”.
Class 22
Review Class
Class 23
Field Trip 4: Battle Re-enactment / the ‘Cinque Giornate’ di Milano
FINAL EXAM – TERM PAPER DUE
Required readings:
A course pack will be provided with excerpts from:
Agnew, John. “The Myth of Backward Italy in Modern Europe”, in Revisioning Italy. National Identity and
Global Culture, Eds. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997. Pp.23-42.
Arrighi, Giovanni. “Fascism to Democratic Socialism: Logic and Limits of a Transition,” in Semiperipheral Development. The Politics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Giovanni Arrighi. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985. Pp.243-279.
Cardoza, Anthony. “Cavour and Piedmont”, in Italy in the Nineteenth Century 1796-1900. Ed. John A.
Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.108-131.
Cento Bull, Anna, and Mark Gilbert. The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics, New
Dal Lago, Enrico. “Radicalism and Nationalism: Northern ‘Liberators’ and Southern Labourers in the USA and in Italy, 1830-60”, in The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History. Ed. Enrico Dal Lago and Rick Helpern. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Pp. 197-214.
Davis, John A.. “Casting Off the ‘Southern Problem’. Or the Peculiarities of the South Reconsidered”, in Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country. Ed. Jane Schneider. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Pp.205-224.
Dickie, John. “A Word at War. The Italian Army and Brigandage, 1860-1870”, History Workshop Journal, No.33 (1992), pp.1-24.
Ertman, Thomas. “Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage”, in Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States. Ed. Kees van Kersbergen and Philip Manow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. pp.39-55.
Foot, John M.. “Cinema and the City: Milan and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960)”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol.4, No.2 (1999), pp.209-235
---. “Migration and the ‘Miracle’ at Milan. The Neighbourhoods of Baggio, Barona, Bovisa and Comasina in the 1950s and 1960s”, Journal of Historical
Sociology, Vol.10, No.2 (1997), pp.184–213.
Gibson, Mary. “Biology or Environment? Race and Souther ‘Deviancy’ in the Writings of Italian
Criminologists, 1880-1920”, in Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country. Ed. Jane
Schneider. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Pp.99-116.
Grab, Alexander. “From the French Revolution to Napoleon”, in Italy in the Nineteenth Century 1796-
1900, ed. John A. Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.25-50.
Greenberg, Kent Roberts. Economics and Liberalism in the Risorgimento. A Study of Nationalism in
Lombardy 1814-1848, Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1934 (pp.221-265)
Ives, Peter. “The Grammar of Hegemony, Left History, Vol.5, No. 1 (1997), pp.85-103.
Lepschy, Anna L., Giulio Lepschy, and Miriam Voghera. “Linguistic Variety in Italy”, in Italian
Regionalism. Ed. Carl Levy, Oxford: Berg, 1996. Pp.69-80.
Luebber, Gregory M. "Social Foudnations of Political Order in Interware Europe," World Politics, Vol. 39, No. 4 (1987), pp. 449-47
Patriarca, Silvana. “National Identity or National Character? New Vocabolaries and Old Paradigms” in
Making and Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento. Ed. Albert R. Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Pp.299-319.
---. Italian Vices. Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010 (Ch.5 pp.133-160 and Ch.8 pp.214-240).
---. “Italian Neo-patriotism: Debating National Identity in the 1990s”, Modern Italy, Vol.6, No.1 (2001), pp.21-34.
Petrusewicz, Marta. “The Modernization of the European Periphery; Ireland, Poland and the Two Sicilies,
1820-1870; Parallel and Connected, Distinct and Comparable”, in: Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective. Ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor. London & New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. 145-163.
Tucci, Michele, Rocco W. Ronza, and Alberto Giordano. “Fragments of Many Pasts: Layering the
Toponymic Tapestry of Milan”, Journal of Historical Geography, Vol.30 (2011), pp.1-15. Verdicchio, Pasquale. “The Preclusion of Postcolonial Discourse in Southern Italy”, in Revisioning Italy.National Identity and Global Culture, Ed. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1997. Pp.191-212.
Recommended readings:
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth and Mia Fuller (eds.). Italian Colonialism. New York: Palgrave, 2008.
Biocca Dario. “Has the Nation Died? The Debate Over Italy’s Identity (and Future)”, Daedalus, Vol.126, No.3 (1997), pp.223-239.
Broers, Michael. "The Myth and Reality of Italian Regionalism: A Historical Geography of Napoleonic Italy,
1801–1814", American Historical Review, Vol.108, No.3 (2003), pp.688-709.
Brustein, Wililam and Barry Markovsky. “The Rational Fascist: Interwar Fascist Party Membership in Italy and Germany.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol.17 (1989), pp.177-202.
Gregor, A. James. Interpretations of Fascism, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1974.
Klang, Daniel M.. "Reform and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy", Canadian Journal of
History, Vol.19 (1984), pp.39-70.
Moe, Nelson. “‘This is Africa’: Ruling and Representing Southern Italy, 1860-61,” in Making and
Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento. Ed. Albert R. Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg. Oxford: Berg. Pp.119-154.
Reynolds, Barbara. “W.E. Gladstone and Alessandro Manzoni”, Italian Studies, Vol. 6 (1951), pp.63-69.
---. The Linguistic Writings of Alessandro Manzoni, Cambridge: W.Heffer and sons, 1950
Tilly, Lousie A. Politics and Class in Milan 1881-1901, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 21-77.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Rocco W. Ronza earned a laurea degree in Political Studies and History (scienze politiche a indirizzo storico) from the Università Cattolica S.C. di Milano (UCSC) and a doctorate in Sociology and Social Research from the Università di Trento. He teaches courses in Geo-economics and Language and Politics at UCSC. He has taught seminars and lectures at the Università di Milano – Bicocca, the Pazmany Péter Catholic University Budapest (Hungary), and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). His current research interests include language planning and language politics, and the comparative history of Italy and South Africa.
Making Italians: Politics, Culture And Nation-Building From Unification To The Present
The 150th anniversary of the Italian Unification (1861 - 2011), along with the effects of European integration, globalization, and political change, have spurred a new debate about the birth of unitary Italy and the process of Nation-building (the “making of Italians” in Massimo D'Azeglio's words). New perspectives grounded in the “revisionist” scholarship grown on both sides of the Atlantic since the mid-1980s are challenging the classic narrative, dating to the post-Unification decades.
The course introduces students to the history of the Italian peninsula from 1750 to today with an eye to old and new interpretations of Italy’s national development. The emergence of the “national project,” the crafting of the modern Italian language, the rise of the “Southern Question,” the evolution of national party politics, and the recent crisis of national integration are among the subjects discussed. Special focus will be given to the city of Milan as the place where most of the forces that have shaped modern Italy originated. Field studies will include a walking tour of the downtown areas which were reshaped during the post-Unification decades and, when possible, attendance at a Risorgimento historical reenactment such as the patriots’ attack on the Sforza Castle during the Cinque Giornate di Milano or the Battle of Magenta.
No previous background is necessary. More advanced students can receive assignments personally tailored to their level and interests.
By the end of the course students will:
Lectures, class discussion, and field studies.
Class 1
Introduction
Class 2
Italy’s National Development and Modernization: In Search of a New Paradigm? Required reading: Agnew; Petrusewicz
Class 3
From Enlightened Absolutism to Unification
Required reading: Grab
Class 4
Field Trip 1: Museo del Risorgimento
Required reading: Cardoza
Class 5
The Shaping of Modern Milan
Required reading: Tucci et al. (part I)
Class 6
Field Trip 2: The Layers of Downtown Milan
Required reading: Tucci et al. (part II)
Class 7
Manzoni, the Dialects, and the Making of the Modern Italian
Required reading: Ives; Lepschy et al.
Class 8
The Liberal Revolutions: Italy's Risorgimento in Global perspective
Required reading: Greenfield; Del Lago
Class 9
The Mezzogiorno and the “Southern Question” (1) Required reading: Davis; Dickie
Class 10
The Mezzogiorno and the “Southern Question” (2); Review Class
Required reading: Verdicchio
Class 11 MIDTERM EXAM Class 12
Party Systems, Political Regimes, and Nation-Building in Western Europe: A Comparative Perspective
Required reading: Ertman
Class 13
Liberals, Marxists, Catholics, and Fascists: Parties and Party Systems from 1861 to 1992
Required reading: Luebbert; Arrighi
Class 14
Nation, Race and Civilization: Defining Italy’s “Place” in the World
Required reading: Gibson; Sorgoni
Class 15
Not European Enough? The Construction of the Italian ‘National Character’ from Lombroso to Sordi
Required reading: Patriarca, “Italian Vices”, Ch.5 and 8
Class 16
Industrialization, Urbanization, and the Italianization of Post-war Italy: the case of Milan
Required reading: Foot, “Migration and the Miracle”
Class 17
Movie: “Rocco and His Brothers” (L.Visconti, 1960) Required reading: Foot, “Cinema and the City”
Class 18
Class Discussion: Southern Italians in Milan
Class 19
The Crisis of the Nation-Building Project
Required reading: Cento Bull-Gilbert, Ch.5.
Class 20
Field Trip 3: Visit to the Northern League’s HQ Required reading: Cento Bull-Gilbert, Ch.4.
Class 21
Class Discussion: The Italian National Project at 150: Does an Italian Nation (Really) Exist? Required reading: Patriarca, “Italian Neo-patriotism”.
Class 22
Review Class
Class 23
Field Trip 4: Battle Re-enactment / the ‘Cinque Giornate’ di Milano
FINAL EXAM – TERM PAPER DUE
A course pack will be provided with excerpts from:
Agnew, John. “The Myth of Backward Italy in Modern Europe”, in Revisioning Italy. National Identity and
Global Culture, Eds. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1997. Pp.23-42.
Arrighi, Giovanni. “Fascism to Democratic Socialism: Logic and Limits of a Transition,” in Semiperipheral Development. The Politics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Giovanni Arrighi. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985. Pp.243-279.
Cardoza, Anthony. “Cavour and Piedmont”, in Italy in the Nineteenth Century 1796-1900. Ed. John A.
Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.108-131.
Cento Bull, Anna, and Mark Gilbert. The Lega Nord and the Northern Question in Italian Politics, New
York: Palgrave, 2001 (Ch.4 pp.105-138; Ch.5 pp.139-172).
Dal Lago, Enrico. “Radicalism and Nationalism: Northern ‘Liberators’ and Southern Labourers in the USA and in Italy, 1830-60”, in The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History. Ed. Enrico Dal Lago and Rick Helpern. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Pp. 197-214.
Davis, John A.. “Casting Off the ‘Southern Problem’. Or the Peculiarities of the South Reconsidered”, in Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country. Ed. Jane Schneider. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Pp.205-224.
Dickie, John. “A Word at War. The Italian Army and Brigandage, 1860-1870”, History Workshop Journal, No.33 (1992), pp.1-24.
Ertman, Thomas. “Western European Party Systems and the Religious Cleavage”, in Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States. Ed. Kees van Kersbergen and Philip Manow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. pp.39-55.
Foot, John M.. “Cinema and the City: Milan and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers (1960)”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Vol.4, No.2 (1999), pp.209-235
---. “Migration and the ‘Miracle’ at Milan. The Neighbourhoods of Baggio, Barona, Bovisa and Comasina in the 1950s and 1960s”, Journal of Historical
Sociology, Vol.10, No.2 (1997), pp.184–213.
Gibson, Mary. “Biology or Environment? Race and Souther ‘Deviancy’ in the Writings of Italian
Criminologists, 1880-1920”, in Italy’s “Southern Question”. Orientalism in One Country. Ed. Jane
Schneider. Oxford: Berg, 1998. Pp.99-116.
Grab, Alexander. “From the French Revolution to Napoleon”, in Italy in the Nineteenth Century 1796-
1900, ed. John A. Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp.25-50.
Greenberg, Kent Roberts. Economics and Liberalism in the Risorgimento. A Study of Nationalism in
Lombardy 1814-1848, Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1934 (pp.221-265)
Ives, Peter. “The Grammar of Hegemony, Left History, Vol.5, No. 1 (1997), pp.85-103.
Lepschy, Anna L., Giulio Lepschy, and Miriam Voghera. “Linguistic Variety in Italy”, in Italian
Regionalism. Ed. Carl Levy, Oxford: Berg, 1996. Pp.69-80.
Luebber, Gregory M. "Social Foudnations of Political Order in Interware Europe," World Politics, Vol. 39, No. 4 (1987), pp. 449-47
Patriarca, Silvana. “National Identity or National Character? New Vocabolaries and Old Paradigms” in
Making and Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento. Ed. Albert R. Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Pp.299-319.
---. Italian Vices. Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010 (Ch.5 pp.133-160 and Ch.8 pp.214-240).
---. “Italian Neo-patriotism: Debating National Identity in the 1990s”, Modern Italy, Vol.6, No.1 (2001), pp.21-34.
Petrusewicz, Marta. “The Modernization of the European Periphery; Ireland, Poland and the Two Sicilies,
1820-1870; Parallel and Connected, Distinct and Comparable”, in: Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective. Ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor. London & New York: Routledge, 2004. Pp. 145-163.
Tucci, Michele, Rocco W. Ronza, and Alberto Giordano. “Fragments of Many Pasts: Layering the
Toponymic Tapestry of Milan”, Journal of Historical Geography, Vol.30 (2011), pp.1-15. Verdicchio, Pasquale. “The Preclusion of Postcolonial Discourse in Southern Italy”, in Revisioning Italy.National Identity and Global Culture, Ed. Beverly Allen and Mary Russo. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1997. Pp.191-212.
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth and Mia Fuller (eds.). Italian Colonialism. New York: Palgrave, 2008.
Biocca Dario. “Has the Nation Died? The Debate Over Italy’s Identity (and Future)”, Daedalus, Vol.126, No.3 (1997), pp.223-239.
Broers, Michael. "The Myth and Reality of Italian Regionalism: A Historical Geography of Napoleonic Italy,
1801–1814", American Historical Review, Vol.108, No.3 (2003), pp.688-709.
Brustein, Wililam and Barry Markovsky. “The Rational Fascist: Interwar Fascist Party Membership in Italy and Germany.” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol.17 (1989), pp.177-202.
Gregor, A. James. Interpretations of Fascism, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1974.
Klang, Daniel M.. "Reform and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Lombardy", Canadian Journal of
History, Vol.19 (1984), pp.39-70.
Moe, Nelson. “‘This is Africa’: Ruling and Representing Southern Italy, 1860-61,” in Making and
Remaking Italy. The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento. Ed. Albert R. Ascoli and Krystyna von Henneberg. Oxford: Berg. Pp.119-154.
Reynolds, Barbara. “W.E. Gladstone and Alessandro Manzoni”, Italian Studies, Vol. 6 (1951), pp.63-69.
---. The Linguistic Writings of Alessandro Manzoni, Cambridge: W.Heffer and sons, 1950
Tilly, Lousie A. Politics and Class in Milan 1881-1901, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 21-77.
Rocco W. Ronza earned a laurea degree in Political Studies and History (scienze politiche a indirizzo storico) from the Università Cattolica S.C. di Milano (UCSC) and a doctorate in Sociology and Social Research from the Università di Trento. He teaches courses in Geo-economics and Language and Politics at UCSC. He has taught seminars and lectures at the Università di Milano – Bicocca, the Pazmany Péter Catholic University Budapest (Hungary), and the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa). His current research interests include language planning and language politics, and the comparative history of Italy and South Africa.