Dottorato in Studi Storici
PhD of Historical Studies

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Ancient History Curriculum

The curriculum aims at giving the PhD students thematic and methodological skills related to the Ancient World’s political, economic, social, cultural and religious aspects. The Ancient World’s internal dynamics and the interactions between people are observed from a global and interdisciplinary perspective. The curriculum covers a long period, from the archaic-classic age to the late-ancient eve, and the students are offered a solid philological and historiographic basis to specialize in Greek History, Roman History, and Christianity’s History (especially Ancient Christianity). 
The teaching methods include lessons, workshops and regular meetings; moreover, individual researches are constantly discussed and checked. Sources are critically reviewed and literary and historiographic texts are analysed. Students learn how to deal with epigraphy, numismatics, and papyrology; they are taught how to examine archaeological, geographic and linguistic elements, and to study holy texts and religious traditions.

Students

Ciclo	Nome	Anno
XXIV	Stefania Caporali	2012
XXIV	Francesca Rocca	2012

Medieval History curriculum

The Curriculum gives the PhD students all the basic elements of professional research, regarding two different levels of activity: on the one hand, the necessary tools for critically interpreting cultural and narrative sources, as well as private and public documents (particularly, notary and chancellery deeds), and municipal texts (statutes and cadastres); on the other hand, the methodological and historiographic knowledge needed to understand the interaction between institutions and the society as a whole, but also the recent development in political history.
As far as the aims of the program are concerned, the main focus of the educational activity is on the history of Power: in the context of the Regnum Italicum and the Regnum Burgundiae, Power will be deeply analysed through a comparison among different institutional frameworks. Readings and seminars will regard the different cultures of Power, interpreted by scholars from different backgrounds who operated – at different extents – in the various stages of Public bureaucracies.

Students

Ciclo	Nome	Anno
XXIV	Denise Bezzina	2012
XXIV	Luigi Tufano	2012

Modern History Curriculum

The curriculum gives the PhD students the thematic and methodological competences necessary for the development of high-profile historic researches. The program includes many aspects of the political, economic, social, cultural and religious history of the modern age, focusing on the relations between history and social sciences and taking into account the most updated historiographic perspectives. Lessons, seminars, and regular meetings are organized, individual researches are constantly discussed, and the first-year students are required to elaborate a historiographic essay. Students learn to interpret critically the sources and the literature, and refer to elaborate historic and historiographic contexts.

Students

Ciclo	Nome	Anno	Sbocco professionale
IV	Barbara Maffiodo	1993	insegnante di scuola media superiore
IV	Anna Paola Montanari	1993
IV	Silvio Leydi	1993
V	Patrizia Delpiano	1994	ricercatrice di Storia Moderna presso l’Università di Torino (dal 2001)
V	Raffaella Sarti	1994	ricercatrice di Storia Moderna presso l’Università di Perugia (dal 2000)
V	Emanuela Verzella	1994	insegnante di scuola media superiore
VI	Pietro Adamo	1995	prof. a contratto Università di Sassari titolare di assegno Università di Milano
VI	Roberto Festa	1995	giornalista pubblicista
VI	Maria Teresa Silvestrini	1995	collaboratrice editoriale insegnante di scuola media superiore
VI	Elisa Strumia	1995	insegnante di scuola media superiore
VII	Elena Bonora	1996	ricercatrice di Storia Moderna presso l’Università di Parma (dal 1998)
VII	Laura Megna	1998	insegnante di scuola media superiore
VII	Francesca Rocci	1996	segretaria presso l’Accademia delle Scienze di Torino
VIII	Paola Bianchi	1997
VIII	Antonio Trampus	1997	Prof. associato di Storia Moderna presso l’Università di Venezia (Cà Foscari)
IX	Andrea Merlotti	1998
IX	Michele Simonetto	1998	Insegnante di scuola media superiore
IX	Lorella Lazzaretti	1999
X	Silvia Bobbi	2000
X	Silvia Bourlot	2000	Bibliotecaria dell’Università di Pavia
X	Davide Maffi	2000
XI	Manca	2001
XI	Motta	2001
XII	Georgia Arrivo	2001
XII	Paolo Bianchini	2001	Ricercatore di Storia della Pedagogia presso l’Università di Torino (dal 2001)
XIII	Raffaella Buoso	2002
XIII	Alice Blithe Raviola	2002	Titolare di assegno di ricerca presso l’Università di Torino
XIV	Filippo Maria Paladini	2003	Ricercatore di Storia Moderna presso l’Università di Torino
XIV	Chiara Povero	2003	Insegnante di ruolo di Scuola Media Superiore
XV	Ugo Zuccarello	2004	Bibliotecario presso la Biblioteca del Senato – Roma
XV	Barbara Revelli		Dottoranda presso l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes di Parigi e insegnante in Francia
XVI	Vincenzo Sorella	2005	Borsista Fondazione Einaudi di Torino
XVI	Marcella Maritano	2005
XVII	Luca Prestia	2006
XVII	Beatrice Zucca Micheletto	2006	Borsista Fondazione Einaudi di Torino
XVII	Igor Melani	2006
XVII	Sabrina Contini	2006
XVIII	Eleonora Canepari	2006
XVIII	Paolo Palumbo	2006
XXI	Yannick Fonteneau	2011
XXI	Walter Tucci	2011
XXII	Martino Laurenti	2011
XXII	Agnese Cuccia	2011
XXIII	Alessandro Bianchi	2011
XXIII	Cecilia Carnino	2012
XXIII	Luciano Cumino	2012

Contemporary History Curriculum

The curriculum aims at supporting the PhD students’ scientific training through the elaboration of a documentation-based dissertation. The individual work is based on archival research in Italian and international institutions, but students constantly discuss their researches with tutors. Furthermore, during lessons and workshops, researches are debated with other professors and colleagues, and students deepen their capabilities to use the sources, improve their methodology and are enabled to connect with historiography the issues they deal with.

Students

 

 

Ciclo	Nome
IV	Renato Camurri
IV	Stefano Cavazza
IV	Emma Mana
V	Vincenzo Caciulli
V	Marco Fincardi
VI	Lorenzo Bertucelli
VI	Stefano Magagnoli
VI	Paolo Soddu
VII	Marco Di Giovanni
VII	Marco Scavino
VIII	Daniela Adorni
VIII	Enrico Francia
VIII	Bruno Maida
IX	Piero Nicola Di Girolamo
IX	Carla Tonini
IX	Andrea Romano
X	Filippo Focardi
X	Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi
X	Alessandro Bellassai
XI	Leonardo Casalino
XI	Andrea Di Michele
XI	Helga Dittrich Johansen
XII	Liliana Ellena
XIII	Mauro Forno
XIII	Enrica Brichetto
XIV	Raffaele Liucci
XIV	Vicenzo Pinto
XV	Davide Artico
XV	Ivan Balbo
XVI	Mara Anastasia
XVI	Alessio Gagliardi
XVI	Marialuisa Tornesello
XVI	Michelangelo Casasanta
XVI	Manuela Lanari
XVII	Francesco Cassata
XVII	Massimiliano Franco
XVII	Gianluigi Gatti
XVII	Stefano Lusa
XVIII	Eva Cecchinato
XVIII	Matteo Dominioni
XVIII	Silvia Inaudi
XVIII	Barbara Costamagna
XIX	Mario Ivani
XIX	Cesare Panizza
XIX	Davide Tabor
XIX	Daniele Pipitone
XX	Sabina Cerato
XX	Pierangelo Gentile
XX	Pierluigi Scolè
XXI	Nino De Amicis
XXI	Diego Giachetti
XXI	Davide M. Lasagno
XXI	Mkendi Ngandu
XXII	Nicola Adduci
XXII	Alessandra Chiappano
XXII	Daniela Orta
XXII	Dario Pasquini
XXII	Luciano Villani
XXII	Leslie Nancy Hernandez Nova
XXIII	Giulia La Mattina
XXIII	Valentina Colombi
XXIV	Giulia Strippoli
XXIV	Marco Albertaro
XXIV	Ugo Pavan Della Torre
XXIV	Emiliano Berchio

 

Branch A: Ancient History

XXII cycle:

• Edoardo Bianchi - Rex sacrorum in Rome and in Ancient Italy
• Giulia Masci - Theorical Elaborations of Romanisation in Ancient Literary Sources

XXIII cycle:

• Riccardo Ampio - Victricius of Rouen’s De laude sanctorum
• Alessandro Rossi - Donatist Ecclesiology
• Eliana Stori - Thomas in Syria. The Gospel of Thomas in Ancient Syriac Literature
• Emilano Urciuoli - Foreigners in Homeland. Social Identity of the Christian Groups, 50-200 B.C.

XXIV cycle:

• Giuseppe Renato Saverio Cilenti - Geopolitical Thought in IV Century B.C. Greece
• Francesca Rocca - Slaves Manumissions in the Greek World

XXV cycle:

• Anna Cau - Athenians Areas outside Attica from Classical to the Hellenistic Age
• Barbara Maduli - For a History of Greek and Eastern Associations in the Hellenistic and Roman Age: Historical and Juridical Perspectives in the Light of Epigraphical and Papyrological Sources

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Branch B: Medieval History

XXII cycle: (consegna prorogata di un anno)

• Andrea Cognata - The Franciscans and pilgrimage to the Holy Land from 1342 to 1517

XXIII cycle:

• Ezio Claudio Pia - The justice of the Asti’s bishop, XIIIth-XIVth centuries
• Marco Carion - Teutonic Order in Northern Italy and especially in South Tyrol (Alto Adige) till the end of the XIVth century

XXIV cycle:

• Denise Bezzina - Craftsmen in Genua, XIIth-XIIIth centuries
• Rosa Canosa - Space and royal political projects in non-narrative sources of Norman Europe
• Luigi Tufano - Social and politics dynamics of a Neapolitan family of the XVth century: the Caracciolo

XXV cycle:

• Paolo Buffo - The prince, the “dominatus loci” and the rural communities: documents for the study of territorial reorganisation in the Early State of Savoy

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Branch C: Modern History

XXII cycle:

• Martino Laurenti - Borderlands. Political and religious Boundaries in Western Alps (16^th-17^th Century)

XXIII cycle:

• Luciano Cumino - Criminal Justice in Ancien Regime. Judicial Norms and Practices in the Savoy Outskirts (late 18^th Century
• Cecilia Carnino - The Debate about Consumption in 18^th Century Italy
(1665-1708)

XXIV cycle:

• Valerio Peverelli - Factions conflicts in the italian wars. The case of the Marquisate of Musso between XV and XVI century
• Cinzia Bonato - Much more than patients. Pammatone and 18 Century Genoa

XXV cycle:

• Gabriele Natta - Entre cristãos e especiarias. Forms, Meanings and Outcomes of the Portuguese Expansion in the Red Sea Area (1497-1580)
• Marco Mana - Roman Empire and the domaine of Savoy: the case of Cuneo
• Marco Cassioli - A Border Valley between Provence and Liguria: the Nervia Valley in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern Age (XI^th - XVI^th Century)

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Branch D: Contemporary History

XXII cycle:

• Leonardo Gambino - Birth control among lower classes between 19^th and 20^th century: the case of Turin
• Daniela Orta - Building and diffusion of the memory of the five Days of Milan and of the Roman Republic
• Dario Pasquini - Desire of Purity. The image of Fascism an Nazism in Post-war italian and German Satirical Press (1944-1963)

XXIII cycle:

• Valentina Colombi - The restless age. Student agitations in liberal Italy 1862-1915.
• Maria D'Amuri - The municipalization of working housing in Italy during Giolitti's age
• Giulia La Mattina - National and supranational Identity Issues during the Austrian Vormärz
• Marco Novarino - Relationships between Fremasonry and the workers' movement in Italy and France (1870-1925)
• Antonio Soggia - Political Struggle, Race, and Health care Reforms in the US from Truman to Johnson. The National Medical Association, 1945-1968

XXIV cycle:

• Marco Albeltaro - Pietro Secchia. A biography.
• Emiliano Berchio - Suffrage issue and european lefts (1957-1979): socialist and communist parliamentary Groups
• Rosa Corbelletto - Civil Internment and Deportation from Italy of Rom and Sinti People 1940-1945
• Ugo Pavan Dalla Torre - The National Association of War Crippled and Disabled People
• Vincenzo Santangelo - The Cultural Policy of the Communist Party in Turin 1945-1975
• Giulia Strippoli - The attitude of Portuguese, Italian and French Communist Parties towards 1968

XXV cycle:

• Luisa Renzo - The representation of Risorgimento in Italy since 1884 to 1970
• Daniele Cardetta - Justice and Resistance: Partisans Courts, Courts of Assise and extraordinary military tribunals from Liberation to postwar
• Federico Goddi - Revolutionary syndicalism and Italian trade union action (1930-1915)

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XXVI cycle

Leonardo Ambasciano
Costruzione dell'identità femminile, temi iniziatici e questioni di "substrato" nella religione romana. Un'analisi storico-religiosa del caso di Bona Dea.

Mauro Belcastro
Un osservatorio comunitario: il proorizein divino nell'epistolario paolino.

Joanna Benedyktowicz
Identità di gruppo e rapporto con gli spazi nelle comunità claustrali del medioevo: uno studio comparato sulle abbazie di Novalesa e di Benediktbeuern.

Alberto D'Incà
"Io vi darò lingua e sapienza". La cifra carismatica del martirio dai loghia gesuani alla lettura patristica (I-III secolo).

Pasquale Gaglione
Comunità arabe in Sicilia: la percezione della conflittualità etnica e socioculturale nelle fonti narrative e documentarie.

Carlo Greppi
Gli "spettatori" tra occupazione e collaborazionismo. Strategie di soccorso e costruzione della memoria sociale nella deportazione dall'Italia e dalla Francia.

Simone Maghenzani
The protestant propaganda in Counter-Reformation Italy (1560-1650).

Edoardo Manarini
Gli Hucpoldingi: una parentela marchionale del regno italico (sec. IX-XI).

Vittore Pizzone
Memorie d'ambasciata sulla Germania nazionalsocialista.

Proglio Gabriele
Memoria rimossa, memoria ereditata: comparazione degli immaginari coloniali e postcoloniali italiani.

Address A: Ancient History

XXI^st Cycle

• Giordana Di Ermenegildo - La metamorfosi della storiografia cristiana in Spagna tra V e VII secolo

The thesis is proposed to delineate the metamorphosis of the Christian historiography in Spain between V and VII century through the works of four authors: Idazio of Chaves, Giovanni of Biclaro, Isidoro of Seville and Giuliano of Toledo. In the undertaken analysis four aspects are valorized held useful with the purpose to define how the authors, with their writings, they compete to the change. The first aspect pertains to the back-ground of compilation, the reconstruction of the historical-political climate and, above all, the intents of the wish to write history. The purpose is reached through biographical signs of the protagonists and the specifications of their qualities of intellectuals, the propensities and the political beliefs, the possible relationships with the power and the roles assigned to these characters by the events. The second aspect shown concerns the typology of the analyzed works and their lead back to two different historical categories: the chronaca and the historia. The third one is inherent to the intents that animate the writers as men of church: which eschatological component, if it foresees, is it traceable in their vision of the world? The literary and linguistic-grammatical forms of the communication are finally examined.

• Nicoletta Bonansea - SIMBOLO E NARRAZIONE: Linee di sviluppo formali e ideologiche dell’iconografia di Giona tra III e VI secolo

The thesis aims to analyse the formal and ideological development of the iconography of Jonah in Christian art between the Third and Fourth centuries, in order to highlight social and political features of the Christinization process in Rome. The iconography of Jonah appears in Roman catacombs at the beginning of the Third century as a narrative cycle that shows the prophet swallowed and rejected by the sea monster, and reclining under the gourd. These three scenes are chosen for two reasons: their symbolic value – death and resurrection of Christ and importance of the repentant's forgiveness – and their formal analogies with some Late-Hellenistic funerary iconographies presenting death as a passage to a condition of beatification. Between the Third and Fourth centuries this iconography undergoes formal changes intended to stress the narrative and descriptive aspects of the image and its relationship with the biblical text. During the Constantinian era, Jonah’s iconography on Roman frescoes and sarcophagus occurs more frequently but without any formal changes. By the second half of the century and especially during the Fifth and Sixth centuries, the diminution of its diffusion is sensibly evident. The biblical development of the image can be explained as an affirmation of the cultural and religious identity by Christian groups, that thanks to the Diocletian's administrative reforms, emerged on the social and political scene between the Third and Fourth centuries. The boom of the funerary production under Constantine reflects the enlargement, but also the enrichment of these Christian groups. His policy favourable to Christians could therefore have been also a way to get the support of these new social forces.

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XXII^nd Cycle

• Giulia Masci - Theoretical formulations of "Romanization" in ancient literary sources

 

• Edoardo Bianchi - Rex sacrorum at Rome and in Ancient Italy

 

This study concerns the functions of the rex sacrorum, one of the members of the Roman college of pontifices, as they emerge from the Early Republic to the Late Antiquity. Secondly it analyses all the inscriptions that show reges sacrorum in other cities of ancient Latium and Etruria, i.e. Bovillae, Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, Fundi, Formiae, Tarquinia and Faesulae.

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XXIII^rd Cycle

• Riccardo Ampio - Victricius of Rouen’s De laude sanctorum within the debate over the cult of relics and asceticism in the West at the close of the 4^th century. 

Victricius (ca. 330/340-ante 409), bishop of Ratomagus (Rouen), is the author of a short work dating back to between 395 and 397/8, commonly referred to as De laude sanctorum as its most prominent feature is the eulogy of the saints and the joy for the arrival of their relics, the latter having been provided by Ambrose and three other bishops. Of particular interest are chapters 7-11, where Victricius works out a complete theology of relics, with the obvious intention of transposing their thaumaturgic virtue into an ontological dimension. The first step of my work has been the translation – the first into Italian – of the De laude sanctorum, which has enabled me to detect the genuine elements – as far as both text interpretation and constitution are concerned – with regard to the French translation by R. Herval and the English one by G. Clark. In consequence, an historical and philological commentary of the work, in the absence of significant precedents, has proved inevitable. Victricius’ dossier has been completed with a careful study of Paulinus of Nola’s epistles 18 and 37, and of Innocent I’s decretal: these have made it possible to cast light on some aspects of the author’s personality, as well as bring up to date his biography through plausible conjectures. These two stages have been propaedeutic to the actual survey of the contents, from which some themes emerged that are of considerable interest – also owing to their innovativeness within martyrological theology – as regards the history of ideas. Such themes represent the first half of the work, which is divided into three chapters, respectively the author’s biography (I.1 The sources; I.2 The Victricius of the De Laude Sanctorum; I.3 Paulinus’ Victricius), his cultural outline (II.1 The De laude Sanctorum; II.2 Victricius’ library), and Victricius as a witness of the theology and the cult of saints in late-4th century Gaul ( III.1 The debate over the translation of relics in the West; III.2 Ambrosius, builder of churches and primate of the Italia annonaria; III.3 Victricius as promoter of the cult of saints; III.4 The adventus reliquiarum; III.5 The bishop of Rouen; III.6 The theology of relics; III.7 The De laude sanctorum within the frame of religious arguments in Gaul). The Latin text – with the variants suggested by me –, the Italian translation and the commentary follow.

 

• Alessandro Rossi - Muscae moriturae Donatistae circumvolant: identità “plurali” nel cristianesimo dell’Africa Romana e loro dialettica interna

In my research I have explored the possibility, consulting the latest acquistions of historical and economical, archaelogical and linguistic disciplines, of de-constructing the ideological construction of the ancient sources about Donatism; I also tried to recognize the attribution of sense and meaning given to the events by the direct protagonists, going over the perspective deformation made by Optatus and Augustine. This path brought me to acknowledgde some elements of Donatist's self-identity construction that until now had remained in the margins of historiographical reconstruction and also to a deeper knowledge of the “normalization” methods used by the catholica after the Carthaginian Conlatio of 411.

 

• Eliana Stori - Thomas in Syria: the Reception of the Gospel of Thomas in the Syriac Christian Literature (Second – Fifth centuries)

The main aim of my PhD thesis is to investigate the relationships of the Gospel of Thomas with the first Christian literature in Syria. I first analyze the figure of Thomas as Apostle, he is in fact extremely important for Syriac Christianity because he is traditionally considered the founder of Christian faith in this land. In the second part of my thesis I studied the parallels between the Coptic text of Gospel of Thomas (and also the Greek text if available) and some work belonging to the Syriac literature. This study is the original core of my thesis: an exhaustive analysis of these relationships was in fact lacking. This work of analysis is moreover important for a better comprehension of the Gospel of Thomas as well as of the first Syriac Christianity. My study took into consideration four texts belonging to the ancient Syriac Christianity which have many parallels in the Gospel of Thomas: the Diatessaron, gospel harmony composed by Tatian, the Odes of Solomon, the Acts of Thomas and the Liber Graduum. The conclusions that emerge in the majority of the cases examined do not allow us to grant a secure knowledge of the Gospel of Thomas by the examined works, but in any way close connections come into light, which may be due to common traditions.

 

 

Address B: Medieval History

XXI^nd Cycle

• Serena Viel - The circulation of fine goods in twelfth and thirteenth century Genoa 

This research focuses on the relationship between demand and consumption of fine goods related to clothing within the social and economic context of communal Genoa. The aim is to understand not only the commercial, but also the symbolic and cultural significance of the circulation of such products. The study had been conducted through the analysis of literary and documentary sources, with particular relevance given to the data collected from unpublished sources preserved in the Archivio di Stato in Genoa.

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XXII^nd Cycle

• Matteo Francesco Joachim Magnani - Justice and the settlement of disputes in Turin in late Middle Ages

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XXIII^rd Cycle

• Ezio Claudio Pia - The justice of the Asti's bishop. Society, economy and civic church: XIII^th-XIV^th centuries

This work is an analysis of forms of social control by Church and Ecclesiastical Court together with political and economic languages as recorded by priests notaries. The work is based on contributions concerning chapters - and their sphere of activity - considered as bodies in a dynamic relation with society. A further main point of this work tackles the view connected to researches about ecclesiastical documentation, starting from the opposition of the activity of Italian priest notaries against the European registrar. These studies are the basis for the analysis of 4000 documents dating back to the XIII and XIV century and recorded in ecclesiastical registri where priest notaries were the chancellors of Curia and at the same time depositary of publica fides. From the analysis of the documentation there is a clear reference to two different competences of the Ecclesiastical offices, that is the activity of Bishop’s Court together with a control over economic relations, strictly connected to the social and financial networks, and not only connected to the Church. Around the Ecclesiastical Court, complex proceedings, settlements of economic relations and regulation of usury represent altogether a part of a process that identifies the criteria of economic and social credibility. These criteria mark the border – that does not excludes ambiguity and uncertainty - between social inclusion and social exclusion.

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XXIV^th Cycle

• Rosa Canosa - An experiment to contextualize the count title during the first Norman age
  
  Historiography about Italian Normans has always been related to a problem of identity. Actually, the Norman occupancy introduced brand new protagonists in the political situation of Southern Italy, which was already very varied. So it has been necessary to investigate about continuity and change in the political and institutional scene and in the meanwhile also to examine the connecting elements between the conquerors and the local elites. This thesis takes a position between the two investigative traditions, in order to examine again the issue of the elements of continuity among the ruling classes after the conquest (mid-eleventh century – beginning of twelfth century) through the investigation of the titling, especially the count title; this has been chosen as main theme because it is the point of convergence of three different dimensions: the function and the social status of the titled subjects, the nature of the wielded power and the territorial dimension of the office. The investigations have been conducted in the ancient Lombard principalities, especially the Principalities of Capua and Benevento, and in the ancient Tema di Longobardia. Some meaningful changes emerged. In the first place, after the conquest, the most part of the counts were Normans; the rare cases of Longobard counts (in tenth century the title “comes” replaced the title “gastaldus” among Southern Lombards) who maintained the title under the Norman dominance showed a substantial adaptation to the new way to execute the power diffused by the Normans. Some important changes have been found also in the territorial organization, which showed the inadequacy of the definition of “Norman County” as a notion of widely defined models: the territorial explanations and definitions used instead of the expression “comitatus” are various and refer to the different structures that every count gave to his territorial area. So it has been possible to fade an opposition, frequently proposed by historians, between the survival and integration skills of the old Lombard nobility of the principalities with the new rulers, especially through intermarriages, and the break caused by the Norman occupancy in the ancient Tema of Longobardia, where the lack of a pre-existing Latin speaking and Christian count class made the change more evident. During this work it has been possible to observe that also in the old Lombard principalities, where this class was present and dominant when the Normans arrived, a change emerged, much wider as thought until now. Furthermore, if we assume that Normans took inspiration from the public power traditions of Lombard princes and kings, it is also evident that they built their power through an empiric way using heterogeneous material and, above all, using a political superiority, which made them the new public power holders.

Address C: Modern History

XXI^st Cycle

• Yannick Fonteneau - Early developments of the concept of mechanical work (late 17th century –early 18th century): quantification, optimisation and profit of the effect of productive agents.

Taking the early 19th century concept of mechanical work in theoretical physics (popular among such engineers as Coriolis and Navier) as the point of reference, this essay draws a connection between this concept and similar reasoning occurring at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris at the turn of the 18th century, especially evident in the works of Amontons and Parent. The essay then demonstrates how and why this concept begins to develop in this academic environment, and how it is then adopted, enhanced and modified by Pitot Bélidor, Désaguliers, and D. Bernoulli while seemingly ignored by theorists such as D’Alembert. The role of the breakdown of the conceptualisation of machines as static agents seems decisive. What follows is a strong dependence on the concept of mechanical work for its ability to problem solve and in pursuit of economic gain, particularly as pertains to quantification, optimisation and the comparative labour productivity of men, animals and machines. The concept’s history suggests a permanent interplay between theoretical mechanics, practical mechanics and productivity, thus indicating that the legitimacy of the concept lies in its ability to represent the work of producing agents. Finally, the essay attempts to recreate in practical terms the reality behind the concepts and problems, showing what they owe to government strategies and what to the practices of engineers.

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XXII^nd Cycle

• Agnese Cuccia - The family treasure chest – dowries in eighteenth-century Torino

Throughout the ancien régime a bride’s dowry consisted of inalienable capital, a sort of trust that the husband could enjoy, while the property remained with the woman. It could be utilized only in exceptional situations, which Savoy jurisprudence limited to abject poverty of the family, the need to provide a dowry for daughters, to free the husband from prison, or finally, the wish to “substitute” the dowry, that is to alter the assets that the husbands, when accepting their wives’ dowries had offered as a guarantee for the women. This work derives from the discovery of a considerable corpus of applications that the families living in eighteenth-century Piemonte sent to the supreme court of the state, the Senate, asking for the right to alienate their dowries. These documents describe not only the difficult circumstances in which they find themselves at the time of the application, they also explain the thousands of ways in which the dowry capital has been used. This information is precious if we consider that in general historiography has adopted the legal formula of the dowry conceived ad sustinenda onera matrimonii, without, however, being able to understand exactly how the dowry could “support the burdens of the marriage”. When studying this corpus it becomes evident that the dowry represented a substantial part of the family finances: it was decisive both in the early years of the union, except in exceptional cases, and as an integration to the family income, also as a source of reassurance for the members of the family. The dowry represented a “treasure chest” which was opened in case of need. But that is not all. The heart of this work lies in seeing the dowry as a powerful key to interpreting the gender roles within the family. Instead of the stereotypical family divisions of the work and the tasks and the net separation of the respective spheres of influence, this research serves to show a different distribution of the decision-making powers between the spouses and it does so beginning with an analysis of the use of the dowry capital during the marriage. In order to comprehensively evaluate the decisional power of each member of the couple, I decided to extend the field of investigation and to examine in depth the life of the individuals through a biographical approach. The reconstruction of tranches de vie of some Torino families has made it possible to evaluate the role that the capital provided by the wives played, at the time of the wedding, but above all in the life of the couples after the celebration of their union. The portrait that emerges shows its crucial function, not only in economic terms, but also in more general terms of the power relationships within the family, of the relationships in general and the behaviour of all the members of the extended family.

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XXIII^rd Cycle

• Alessandro Bianchi - Diplomacy at the Court. Men and Government System in the Duchy of Mantua (1665-1708)

A well-established tradition of studies and researches has always emphasized the efficiency and capillarity of Gonzaga of Mantua diplomacy between XVI and XVII Century. On the contrary, up till now the events during the last fifty years of the small Duchy have enjoyed little historiographic interest. For many historians the glorious events during Mantuan Renaissance and the Succession War’s tragedy (1628-1631) overshadowed the need of a better understanding of the XVII second half in Mantua. This part of the Century has been depicted as a inescapable decadent age, owing to the governmental poor abilities of the latest Duchy of Mantua and Monferrato, Ferdinando Carlo Gonzaga-Nevers (1652-1708). In his study, Alessandro Bianchi tried to overturn this drift. He reconsider and better explores the power evolution within the small Po Valley’s State. He analyses the Gonzaga’s diplomacy focusing his attention on the Duchy institutions and on the diplomatic activities which were carried out by the Mantuan Ambassadors in last part of the Seventieth Century. Doing so, Bianchi redefined not only the so called “Gonzaga’s decadence” (an historiographic creation with tiny bases), but also the continuity of the Mantuan institutions and their efficiency. Finally, the paper well-analyzed the family strategies, the class connection and the ennobling processes that tied the local élites and the Prince between the Seventieth and Eightieth Century.

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XXIV^th Cycle

• Rosa Canosa - An experiment to contextualize the count title during the first Norman age
  
  Historiography about Italian Normans has always been related to a problem of identity. Actually, the Norman occupancy introduced brand new protagonists in the political situation of Southern Italy, which was already very varied. So it has been necessary to investigate about continuity and change in the political and institutional scene and in the meanwhile also to examine the connecting elements between the conquerors and the local elites. This thesis takes a position between the two investigative traditions, in order to examine again the issue of the elements of continuity among the ruling classes after the conquest (mid-eleventh century – beginning of twelfth century) through the investigation of the titling, especially the count title; this has been chosen as main theme because it is the point of convergence of three different dimensions: the function and the social status of the titled subjects, the nature of the wielded power and the territorial dimension of the office. The investigations have been conducted in the ancient Lombard principalities, especially the Principalities of Capua and Benevento, and in the ancient Tema di Longobardia. Some meaningful changes emerged. In the first place, after the conquest, the most part of the counts were Normans; the rare cases of Longobard counts (in tenth century the title “comes” replaced the title “gastaldus” among Southern Lombards) who maintained the title under the Norman dominance showed a substantial adaptation to the new way to execute the power diffused by the Normans. Some important changes have been found also in the territorial organization, which showed the inadequacy of the definition of “Norman County” as a notion of widely defined models: the territorial explanations and definitions used instead of the expression “comitatus” are various and refer to the different structures that every count gave to his territorial area. So it has been possible to fade an opposition, frequently proposed by historians, between the survival and integration skills of the old Lombard nobility of the principalities with the new rulers, especially through intermarriages, and the break caused by the Norman occupancy in the ancient Tema of Longobardia, where the lack of a pre-existing Latin speaking and Christian count class made the change more evident. During this work it has been possible to observe that also in the old Lombard principalities, where this class was present and dominant when the Normans arrived, a change emerged, much wider as thought until now. Furthermore, if we assume that Normans took inspiration from the public power traditions of Lombard princes and kings, it is also evident that they built their power through an empiric way using heterogeneous material and, above all, using a political superiority, which made them the new public power holders.

• Cecilia Carnino - From luxury to consumption. Political implications of economic language in Italy between old regime and revolution. 1751-1799.
  
  The aim of this thesis is to explore the intellectual implications of the discussion on luxury and consumption in Italy during the second half of the eighteenth century, paying particular attention to the move from the old regime to the revolutionary period. This goal is pursued through different levels of investigation: from economic theory to political considerations, from social implications to political practices. This research highlights the strong value, both economically and politically, that reflection on the consumption had in Italy in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the one hand, the consumption and the dynamics of desire were assumed by Italian authors as an important factor in the growth of wealth, on the other hand, the discussion on luxury and consumption conveyed a radical critique of the hierarchies of the old regime and allowed to propose a new model of society, more egalitarian and able to harmonize private interest, social justice and public prosperity. This topic constitutes also a new path through which to shed light on the complex phase that marks the move from reforms to revolution and to reconstruct the political and economic culture of the Italian revolutionary period. The Italian patriots, placing themselves within the framework of the economic thinking that had characterized the Italian reflection since the Sixties, although fully aware of the necessity of a radical political rupture, identified in the consumption the privileged instrument by which to ensure not only the public prosperity, but also the equality between individuals, based on the egalitarianism of opportunity.

 

Address D: Contemporary History

XXI^st Cycle

• Diego Giachetti - Il Sessantotto e la Resistenza negli studi e nella militanza di Guido Quazza

My research digs into an important Guido Quazza’s thesis: The partisan war and 1968 protest movement are two significant breaking points in the italian history of the XXth Century. He picks out connections between the two events. a. The irruption of politics in everyday life, experienced as the same moral and physical strain of the partisan fighting: a “complete participation”. b. The single/collective relationship as partisan/band relationship. c. The characteristics of being “a down starting initiative”. d. The “sense of completeness as a consequence of the collective responsibility”, a very real feeling shared both by the young activists in the 1968 protest movement and the young partisans of ’43-’45. In the “students rebellion there were clear method features reminding of the Resistance: a down starting initiative, the participation, the refusal of any authority and of any delegation”.

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XXII^nd Cycle

• Nicola Adduci - Il fascismo repubblicano a Torino (1943-1945)

 

• Alessandra Chiappano - The deportation of women from Italy in history and memory

The following study is meant to sketch out a picture as full as possible of deportations of women from Italy between 1943 and 1945, assuming there is a specificity in the way women lived and then recounted the concentration camps. It is essentially a study based on quality and not on quantity, considering that the information we have on the deportations from Italy have only been recently published by Mursia, thanks to the work of professors Mantelli and Tranfaglia. My intention is to show a general picture, without forgetting the differences among each personal destiny, of the events which took place to those women who were arrested either because of their race or for political reasons, to avoid making the great distinction that is usually made between racial and political deportation. This work is divided into five chapters. The first, an introduction describing the national and international context in which the problems of deportation and the history of gender took place, and discusses the most interesting contributions of women's memoirs. The second chapter presents the sources I've used. These are approximately 120 verbal testimonies collected by different interviewers mainly in Turin, Milan and Trieste. Although I do not wish to reopen the huge discussion into the use of verbal sources, I need to explain how particular verbal sources are. They can be subjective, partial, influenced by the voice of the interviewer, as has already been wisely explained in studies of verbal history, especially those by Alessandro Portelli. The huge differences among the many collections of testimonies give us nevertheless an incredibly rich and multi-faceted picture. Even though gender studies were not among the intentions of the interviewers, I found that these interviews contained enough material for a deep analysis into the deportation of women. In the third chapter, "The universe of female concentration camps", I describe the historical context in which the deportations of women from Italy took place. Without mentioning the complex events occurred after the truce on the 8th September 1943, I focus on the actions that lead to the arrest and deportation of women and on the reactions and impressions they lived through first in the Italian repressive facilities and then in the German concentration camps. The essay is mainly based on the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbruck, because this is where most Italian women were deported. The fourth chapter is the heart of the research, where the testimonies are read and analysed. At the centre of the research there are interviews belonging to the Archive of deportation of Piedmont, collected at the beginning of the 80s and now deposited at the Piedmontese Institute of History of the Resistance and the contemporary society of Turin. There are 29 interviews collected by several different researchers. The testimonies have been analysed considering the historical discussions around many important topics, such as the link between war and deportation, the human body and the relationship with inmates, sex and prostitution, and the return home. The testimonies from the Archive of Piedmont are the centre of my analysis, but I also used them as a dialectical instrument to confront them with those from other foundations. What emerges is that there is a specific way women lived the camp experience and then retold it and thought about it. The fifth chapter could seem far from the subject I've been analysing. However, studying the unpublished documents from the archive of Luciana Nissim Momigliano, I was able to describe the biography of a woman who not only lived the experience of being deported to Auschwitz, but also wrote one of the first memoirs about Auschwitz, "Memories from the house of the dead". She appeared later to have moved on, as if the deportation experience was forgotten. In fact, after the death of Primo Levi, who was arrested and deported with her and was also a close friend, she continued her mission telling her camp experience, in order to come to terms with her painful past. Hers has been a life that started and ended with Auschwitz, and we can analyse it not only through the limited moment of an interview, but with a number of documents which give us the opportunity to think thoroughly of a life that was marked by deportation.

 

• Daniela Orta - Building up and spreading out the memory of the Five Days of Milan and Roman Republic (1848-1898)

This dissertation attentively examines how the memory of The Five Days of Milan and The Roman Republic, two crucial events for the foundation of the national State, took shape, was built and spread out. The topic is part of well spread studies that focus on rites, ceremonies, symbolic languages that generate politics of memories and are subordinated to the nation building process. The two events are both democratic as origin, both “centers of symbolic energies and ritual spaces”, and both underwent to political treatment of memory that radically changed, or even manipulated, the original perspective as years went by. Within a chronological arch that goes from the event in fieri till the 1898 crisis, the dissertation casts a light upon the complex path made of removals and approvals that always went along the memory of the two events, clarifying specific singularities, divergences, and possibilities of internal and external contamination. The double path of the two events with their space-temporal peculiarities shows the restless redefinition of democratic forces, namely the building process of the identity of a divided and fragmented minority. The precise thermometer of the political use of memory and the fast formation of an autonomous patrimony of traditions alternative to monarchical and moderate ones measures crises and moments of awareness of this important minority, above all in the crucial episodes as Mentana and Aspromonte. In Rome and in Milan the uninterrupted and massive effort to build new representations of democratic memories by different tools at different levels (i.e. official ceremonies, diaries, celebrations of anniversaries, monuments) was also a meeting point among different exigencies and a synthesis of a clear democratic identity opposed to the official one. This persistent dialectic is the sign of the complex political use of memories and, at the same time, the index of problems that marked the history of unified Italy.

 

• Dario Pasquini - Longing for purity. Fascism and nazism in post-war italian and german satirical press (1944-1963)

The research is one of the first attempts to compare the “cultures of memory” regarding the Nazi-past in Germany and the Fascist-past in Italy. Object of the research are verbal and visual texts of around forty satirical periodicals, published between 1944 and 1963 in Italy, East and West Germany. The first chapter is addressed to the analysis of some methodological questions. Particularly a charachteristic of the sources is discussed: the numerous references, in images regarding Nazism and Fascism, to the sphere of contamination. In the second chapter it has been attempted to reconstruct, with archival sources mainly unpublished, the history of the satirical press in post-war Italy, East and West Germany. The third chapter presents the similarities between Italian and German sources. These regard what I have called an “externalization” of the two regimes, which are represented as something ridiculous or as something extraneous to the national community. In the forth chapter are discussed the peculiarities of the Italian sources: during the years after 1948 an “internalization” of Fascism imposed itself, which consists in images banalizing or glorifying the regime. Chapter V deals with the peculiarities of the German context, particularly the long and contradictory but critical “internalization” of Nazism in West Germany and the long-lasting “externalization” in East Germany. This development is discussed through the taking in consideration of the component of horror of Nazism, which the text attributes an important role to.

 

• Luciano Villani - Fascist housing institute and roman suburbs. Social, political and urban history

This research represents the first work specifically focused on the Roman suburbs built during the Fascist Era (Borgate romane). The topic of this research involves urban, social and political history, and especially the housing policies and the social identities related to specific areas during the interwar period: in the last fifteen years many scholars have attempted to study this topic, and this research aims to represent a new contribution to the debate on this issue. After the "Rome bourgeois" uptown and the central districts dismantled in the twenties, in this research is the outskirts of Rome to be the focus of extensive investigation, which led to new theories of interpretation and little known details about one relevant page of the history of Rome. The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, the main actors of the story, the Governor of Rome and the “Istituto Fascista Autonomo delle Case Popolari” (the Fascist Housing Institute) are analyzed in the context of the Fascist housing policies. After a phase of cooperation, which coincided with the enlargement of the tasks of the institution of public housing, the relations between the two institutions faltered, until the break: as a result of this break there was a sharp deterioration in the quality of houses built for the lower class and the construction of the first settlements of shacks. Here I analyze few projects completed from Ifacp in that period: the focus is on the architectural point of view and the criteria of houses allocation (analyzed here for the first time), and the difficult financial situation of this institution in the early thirties. A second chapter is focused on the birth of the first outskirts and their following abandonment. It is suggested a different time sequence of building work carried out in the suburbs, confuting arbitrary scanning who has defined as “firstborn” districts built even more than a decade later. This section ends retracing the steps and outcomes of the talks which led to a new collaboration between institutions and city authorities, describing their strategies and objectives. The second part of the work, perhaps the most innovative, is based on a database prepared during the research. Old interpretations, as the link between the demolitions in the city center and the birth of the outskirts in the suburban areas, are called into question by new documentary sources. Statistical analysis of data of the transfers that took place in the homes of the Institute has led to reconstruct in detail the whole story, bringing out the management procedures adopted by Governor and Ifacp and how they faced the problem of forced evictions due to the Master Plan, occurred in period marked by big social and urban changes. A more complex geography of internal migration, in which there are many variables in play, shows the origins of the inhabitants of the villages made after the 1935. Another chapter defines the main features of the popular house (casa popolarissima), whose typological schemes are linked to rationalist theory. The main outskirts are analyzed from the fascist point of view, focusing on financial choices, building plans, materials used, types of construction adopted and followed in the development of a slow urbanization. The last chapter of the research reconstructs the ways in which the experiment of the totalitarian regime was carried ou in the context of the houses of the Institute. The Institute accomplished an educational mission: there was a large propaganda of the Fascist ideology and the internal rules of the communities were based on Fascist values. The Institute honed methods of close surveillance, organized by an efficient system of control: for years this had assured the social peace in the stable. The outskirts were largely unrelated to the formation of anti-fascist activists during the thirties, but the police reports show large cracks in the consensus, generated mainly by the critical situation of living and working conditions. This research aims to offer a new point of view on the issue of consent.

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XXIII^rd Cycle

• Antonio Soggia - Political Struggle, Health Care Reforms, and Race in the United States from Truman to Johnson. The National Medical Association, 1945-1968

The National Medical Association, the organization of African-American physicians, was born in 1895 from the American Medical Association’s refusal to accept black professionals in its ranks. The N.M.A. had a dual identity: it was both a professional group and a racial organization; consequently, black physicians’ profiles resulted from a permanent negotiation between class and race demands. After the end of WWII, gradually the N.M.A.’s political role prevailed on professionals’ self-interest; during the 1960s, the N.M.A. evolved as a militant group, attracting progressive physicians of all races interested in health problems of black and underprivileged masses, even though the association was divided within its ranks on the federal role in health care. My doctoral research has adopted a race and class perspective in the analysis of the N.M.A.’s life between 1945 and 1968. By analyzing the papers of several N.M.A. and black medical community leaders, I have developed a detailed understanding of the interaction of racial, political and professional aspects in the organization's activities. My research has highlighted the close relationship between government and movements in health care, and connections between civil rights and the right to health.

 

Seminaries and conferences