The course aims to delve into the history and key themes of the debate relating to historical anthropology and aims to offer historical-critical knowledge of its disciplinary development and of the methodologies and theoretical approaches that inform it. The training objectives of the course include the understanding of the main issues of historical anthropology and the relationships between historical disciplines and anthropology; the ability to apply anthropological-historical analysis in a cultural context and to relate different conceptions of history to each other; the ability to carry out an anthropological analysis of historical sources of different nature.
After having traced the emergence of the field of historical anthropology and addressed the main theoretical issues of the relationship between historical disciplines and anthropology, the course illustrates the investigation methodologies and some of the research areas of this discipline.
The course will include the analysis of some historical anthropology writings, facilitating reflection on the sources, their contexts of production and conservation, their materiality and their possible uses.
P. Viazzo, Introduzione all'antropologia storica, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2000. or A. Coello de la Rosa & J. L. Mateo Dieste, In Praise of Historical Anthropology. Perspectives, Methods and Applications to the Study of Power and Colonialism, New York, Routledge, 2020.
One book among the following:
C. Ginzburg, Il formaggio e i vermi, Adelphi, Milano, 2019.
C. Ginzburg, I benandanti. Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento. Milano: Adelphi, 2020
M. Sahlins, Isole di storia. Società e mito nei mari del Sud, Raffaello Cortina, Milano 2017.
A. L. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010.
Marc Bloch, I re taumaturghi. Torino: Einaudi, 2006.
Tzvetan Todorov, La conquista dell’America. Il problema dell’”altro”. Torino: Einaudi, 2016.
Robert Darnton, Il grande massacro dei gatti ed altri episodi della storia culturale francese. Milano: Adelphi, 2013.
a. Attendance of lectures and participation in group discussions and field-work (only for attending students).
b. Oral exam: interview with the teacher to assess the correct comprehension and study of the assigned texts. The final grade is expressed out of thirty (for attending and not-attending students).
N.B.: The test is passed if the candidate demonstrates that he/she has understood the basic conceptual structure of the topics addressed in the course.
N.B.: Students who have agreed on INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS and / or ERASMUS students are invited to contact the teacher a few days before the exam (fabiana.dimpflmeier@unich.it).
