Checking date: 19/05/2023


Course: 2023/2024

Contemporary History
(13804)
Bachelor in Humanities (Plan: 407 - Estudio: 213)


Coordinating teacher: BRANCIFORTE MAZZOLA, LAURA MARIA

Department assigned to the subject: Humanities: History, Geography and Art Department

Type: Compulsory
ECTS Credits: 6.0 ECTS

Course:
Semester:




Requirements (Subjects that are assumed to be known)
medieval and modern history
Objectives
1. Acquisition by students of the instruments needed to know, understand and appreciate critically the processes of change and continuity in society and contemporary politics. 2. Obtaining a critical awareness of the relationship between current events and processes and the past 3. Awareness of respect for points of view deriving from other national or cultural backgrounds 4. Ability to communicate orally using the terminology and techniques accepted in the historiographical profession 5. Ability to identify and appropriately use sources of information for historical research 6. Knowledge and ability to use the instruments of information gathering, such as bibliographical catalogs, file inventories and electronic references 7. Ability to organize complex historical information in a consistent way 8. Awareness of the differences in historiographical outlooks in various periods and contexts 9. Awareness of the debate and historical research are constantly under construction.
Skills and learning outcomes
Description of contents: programme
In this course we will study changes in the world over the past two centuries. The central problems of the contemporary world setting events in the coordinates of space and time will be presented. The course starts from a Eurocentric perspective, in addressing the nineteenth century, which is global in the approach to the problems of the twentieth century. Contents: XIX century: 1815-1945 1. The beginning of the contemporary age 2. The age of the liberal revolution 3. Socialism and labor movement 4. Feminisms 5. Nationalisms 6. Tha antisemitism en Europe 7. Toward the war Twentieth Century: 1914-1945 6. The First World War 7. Communism and the Soviet Union 8. The european civil war 9. Fascism 10. Nazism 10. The Second World War and its consequences 11. Consequencies of the Second World War in the recent world
Learning activities and methodology
The course is developed through theoretical and practical classes. In the first case, classes are held in the form of master classes, while the practical classes will be based on the reading and commentary of selected texts significant for the time and circumstances under study. In addition, students shall be asked questions and problems about the texts and other sources whose resolution will have to implement the competencies to be developed: ability to summarize, critical analysis, ability to understand the complexity of historical phenomena and to know recognize the local and global nature of the processes studied. Therefore, in the case of practical classes, you are looking for an active learning method, in which the student is involved in their own learning and participate in it. Students receive information, but should also look for it, and so we will provide the resources and sources where to find it, study independently and use it to solve the problems. The lectures organized materials to adapt to the knowledge that is intended to get students and their expectations, transmit structured information and provide pupils with skills which will be difficult to obtain from other sources. For its part, the practical classes alternate short activities of classroom work (lectures and short exercises and discussions) with larger tasks which require a work also outside the classroom: tutoring assistance, use of resources library and reference search. In support, in practical classes visual resources and other forms of exposure, both by teachers and pupils they will be used.
Assessment System
  • % end-of-term-examination 60
  • % of continuous assessment (assigments, laboratory, practicals...) 40
Calendar of Continuous assessment
Basic Bibliography
  • Brian Brivati (Editor), Julia Buxton (Editor), Anthony Seldon (Editor). The Contemporary History Handbook . Manchester University Press . First Edition edition 1996
Additional Bibliography
  • Vasily Grossman,. Life and Fate. Paperback. 2006

The course syllabus may change due academic events or other reasons.