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F1416 Identity, Heritage and Globalization (Global Challenges core)

Zanalda Giovanni

This course will examine episodes of globalization in a historical perspective. It will analyze the complex nature of globalization by focusing on specific events, institutions, people, and policies which facilitated, or hindered, the exchange of commodities, people and ideas from the Renaissance to the twentieth-first century. After reviewing major trends and patterns of global history, the course will focus on case studies. On the basis of current historiography we will study and discuss commercial and cultural exchanges along the Silk Road, across Mediterranean, Atlantic, Pacific, and South and East Asian areas.  The focus is on connections rather than simple comparisons; topics will include, among others, the cultural, institutional, and policy implications of the rise of trading networks; changes in production and consumption of commodities and artifacts (e.g. cotton, paintings, silver, spices, oil); changes in art and fashion in response to new connections or shifts in global power (e.g. in music, museum collections, visual arts, and more recently cinema).

 

Throughout the semester students will work on projects. Topics will be identified in class according to students’ interests.  The project approach will enable students to use contributions from different disciplines. The course uses a vast array of sources from visual material and maps to primary and secondary sources.

 

Computer use in the classroom
Use of computers and digital devices is allowed in the classroom for taking notes and consult material relevant for the course.