Historians and false news from the Holocaust to the Twin Towers and other traumas of the '900. Looking for false news, false memories, and reconstructions of apparent objectivity, and by analyzing primary and secondary sources of various types, we'll select some cases (racial persecution; history of science, processes and heinous crimes, family violence) and other cases chosen by the students. A criminologist and a magistrate will be invited as experts of memory and witness
General readings and specific topics to be selected (a-d)
Cultural history :Strenghts and Weakness (50 pp
Peter Burke, Prologo. La nuova storia, passato e futuro , in Id (a cura di) La storiografia contemporanea [ ed.or. 1991], Roma- Bari: Laterza 2001, pp. 3-29.
Paula S. Fass, Cultural History/Social History: Some Reflections on a Continuing Dialogue', Journal of Social History, 37, 2003, pp. 39-46 (anche on line).
Peter Burke, Strenghts and Weakness of Cultural History, Cultural History, 1, 1, 2012, pp. 1-13.
False memory, false news and imposture (170+ 55 pp.)
Marc Bloch, Riflessioni di uno storico sulle false notizie della guerra [1921], in Id., La guerra e le false notizie, Roma: Fazi ed. 2014, pp. 101-136.
Primo Levi, La zona grigia in Id, I sommersi e i salvati [The Drowned and the Saved], Torino: Einaudi, 1986, pp. 24-52
Annette Wieviorka, L’era del testimone, Milano: R. Cortina, 1999.
[Il labirinto del silenzio, Giulio Ricciarelli 2014. http://www.panorama.it/cinema/labirinto-silenzio-auschwitz-giulio-ricciarelli-intervista/]
a) Racial persecution in the Italian universities: self defences during and after Fascism (71pp
Gabriele Turi, L’Università di Firenze e la persecuzione razziale. Italia contemporanea”, 219, 2000, pp.227-247.
Patrizia Guarnieri, The Zionist Network and Enzo Bonaventura: from Florence to Jerusalem, in Ead, Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism. From Florence to Jerusalem and New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2016, pp. 113-153 ( IV , also e-chpt. elettronico) oppure The anti-Fascist network and Renata Calabresi: from Florence to Rome and New York, cap. IV, pp. 155-198 ( V also e-chpt.)
Francesca Pelini e Ilaria Pavan, Il primato della continuità, in La doppia epurazione, Bologna: il Mulino 2009, pp. 119-131.
b) Partisanship and history of science: Lombroso case in the late 1970s (20+26+17= 65
Michele Nani, Lombroso e le razze, in Cesare Lombroso cento anni dopo, a cura di S. Montaldo e P. Tappero, Torino: Utet, 2009, pp. 165-174 e Francesco Cassata, Dall’uomo di genio all’eugenetica, ivi, pp. 175-184.
Intelligenza e pregiudizio di Stephen J. Gould, un dibattito a cura di Emmanuel Betta, “Contemporanea”, 13, 2010, pp. 343-369.
Patrizia Guarnieri, Caesar or Cesare? American and Italian images of Lombroso, in P. Knepper and P.J. Ystehede (eds.), The Cesare Lombroso handbook, New York: Routledge, 2013, pp. 113-130.
La faccia del cattivo, Davide Tosco 2005 (sul caso Bruno Lüdke 1908-1944)
c) Trials and crimes: witnesses, minutes and conflictual objectivities (180pp
Michel Foucault, About the concept of “dangerous individual “ on the 19th century legal psychiatry, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, I, 1978, pp. 1-18.
Patrizia Guarnieri, A Case of Child Murder, Law and Science in Nineteenth-Century Tuscany,Cambridge, Polity Press,1993
d) Sexual and psychological abuse: secrets, incredulity and disperception of reality (150)
Enzo Ciconte, “Mi riconobbe per ben due volte”. Storia dello stupro e di donne ribelli in Calabria, Alessandria, ed. dell’Orso 2001, pp.45-147
Istat 2006, Indagine multiscopo sulle famiglie. La Violenza contro le donne (on line)
Sandra Filippini, Quando la coppia non funziona. Conflitto o violenza 2007 http://www.spi-firenze.it/it/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=565:filippini-s-2007-quando-la-coppia-non-funziona-conflitto-o-violenza&catid=83&Itemid=499
[Ti do i miei occhi Icìar Bollain 2003 ;
Spotlight Tom Mccarthy 2015]
False antagonisms in history and medicine: subjectivity and objectivity / conscience and science (75)
George Canguilhelm, Il normale e il patologico [1943], postfazione di M.Foucault, Torino: Einaudi 1998 (ed or., 1966 e 1994), pp. 65-74 e 95-110.
Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues. Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, in Clues, Myths,
and the Historical Method, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1989, p. 96-125.
Learning Objectives
knowledge and understandings: main perspectives on cultural history and some
models and subjet matter related to the contemporary age with special attention on methodology.
skills: developing an appropriate independent judgment and awareness in
the variety of approaches and making path of research.
skills: critical thinking skills in the analysis and presentation of secondary
and primary sources
Prerequisites
partecipation to the corse and at least a passive knowledge of Italian
Teaching Methods
Readings are some compulsive some optional. Seminar with presentations and discussions that involve the active
participation of students
Further information
Any changes will be communicated during the course and on moodle (the elearning course).
For questions beyond class time, please contact the prof. via e-mail
Type of Assessment
final oral examination, presentations and discussions during the course, in order to develop and verify the above aims
Course program
Historians and false news from the Holocaust to the Twin Towers and other traumas of the '900.
Why do false news, false memories or unreliable stories spread and transmit as real? The false news is the mirror in which the collective consciousness contemplates its prejudices, fears, desires. So the historian Marc Bloch after his experience of the Great War. But it is chiefly after the Shoah, which silences, "unspeakable" testimonies, and the imposture of false survivors led to an increased awareness on the problems of reconstruction of memory and past, by silence, by having to remember, to reinvent itself. This awareness also it applies to the reconstruction of other events, especially the most traumatic ones. The course goes to search fake news, false memories, and 'objectiv' reconstructions of
specific case histories, analyzing primary and secondary sources of various types, from institutional minutes to films. We will select some cases among those offered by the list of readings (racial persecution; history of science, processes and heinous crimes; violence
familiar). Other cases will be proposed by the students. The meetings with a psychiatrist - criminologist and a magistrate, as experts of memory and witness intend to open up towards an interdisciplinary dialogue.