HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE

The course is foreseen for students at the 1st year of the MA Degree Programmes “Comparative International Relations” (curriculum "Eastern Europe"; type of educational activity: core educational activity) and “European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature” (curriculum "literature and culture" - Slavic and Balkan Studies; type of educational activity: core educational activity). The historical nature of the course contributes to the multidisciplinary goals of the two MA Degree Programmes. Furthermore, its geographical focus on Eastern Europe constributes to the teaching programmes specifically conceived for MA students interested in deepening their knowledge about that area.

The course deals with the issue of East-European collective memories, with particular attention to the policies of remembrance linked with mass violence. The expected learning results are the following:

- to familiarize with and to be able to understand the main features of post-socialist memories linked with mass massacres and violence
- to be able to apply this knowledge to a critical understanding of the present time in terms of continuities/changes and public use of history
- to become acquainted with the most recent historiographical debate around notions like "collective memory", "instrumentalization of history", and "politization of the memory"
- to refine your communication skills, both oral and written

A basic knowledge of modern and contemporary history (at least the whole high school history programm; furthermore, at least 6 ECTS in the political, social or historical field, acquired in the framework of the first degree), with a particular attention to Eastern Europe.

The course will analise some of the main features of contemporary Est-European collective memories. The sub-topics are the following:

- memory of WW2
- memory of the Holocaust
- memory of the Gulag
- the role played by the EU in shaping post-socialist European memories

• Paolo Jedlowski, Memorie: Temi e problemi della sociologia della memoria nel XX secolo, in “Rassegna italiana di sociologia”, 2001, vol. 42 fascicolo 3, pp. 373 -392.
• Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Postsocialist Change, Columbia University Press, New York, 1999, Introduction (pp. 1-22).
• Johanna Beata Michlic, The Path of Bringing the Dark to Light: Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, in Małgorzata Pakier-Joanna Wawrzyniak (eds.), Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives, Berghahn Books, New York-Oxford 2016, pp. 115-130.
• Lidia Zessin-Jurek, The Rise of an East European Community of Memory? On Lobbying for the Gulag Memory via Brussels, in ivi, pp. 131-149.
• Bruno Groppo, Politiche della memoria e politiche dell’oblio in Europa centrale e orientale dopo la fine dei sistemi politici comunisti, in Filippo Focardi, Bruno Groppo (a cura di), L’Europa e le sue memorie. Politiche e culture del ricordo dopo il 1989, Viella, Roma 2013, pp. 215-243.
• Nikolay Koposov, La politica della storia e la legge sulla memoria in Russia, in ivi, pp. 197-214.
• Carla Tonini, L’eredità del comunismo in Polonia: memorie, nostalgia, distacco, in ivi, pp. 155-178.
• Mila Orlić, Il passato che non passa: cortocircuiti nelle politiche della memoria in Croazia, in ivi, pp. 179-195.
• Katerina Stefatos, Iosif Kovras, Buried Silences of the Greek Civil War, in Francisco Ferrándiz, Antonius C. G. M. Robben (eds), Necropolitics. Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 2015, pp. 161-184.
• Sarah Wagner, The Quandaries of Partial and Commingled Remains. Srebrenica’s Missing and Korean War Casualties Compared, in ivi, pp. 119-139.
• Julie Fedor, Tomas Sniegon, The Butovskii Shooting Range. History of an Unfinished Museum, in Stephen M. Norris (ed), Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe, Indiana University Press, 2020, pp. 304-342.
• Jeffrey Hardy, Commemorating and Fogetting Soviet Repression: Moscow’s State museum of GULAG History in ivi, pp. 274-302.
• Viacheslav Bitiutckii, State secrets and concealed bodies: exhumations in Soviet-era victims in contemporary Russia, in Élisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus (eds), Human Remains and Identification. Mass violence, genocide, and the ‘forensic turn’, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2017, pp. 98-116 (open access).
• Elena Agazzi, Memoria culturale, in Dizionario degli Studi Culturali, a cura di Michele Cometa, http://www.studiculturali.it/dizionario/lemmi/memoria_culturale.html

For those who attend classes:

1. Group presentations (about 20 minutes) on a text in the syllabus.
The aim is to evaluate the oral communication skills, as well as the ability to work synergically with other students (10% of the final grade);

2. Written test (90% of the final grade)
The examination has three main goals:
1) to verifying the knowledge of the main historical facts and processes, as well as the most relevant personalities, with relation to the treated topics
2) to verify the analytical skills and the ability of the student to formulate critical reflections about the historiographical issues emerged during the lessons
3) to verify the knowledge of some elements of historical comparison in the framework of the East-Central and South-East European space.
The written examination (duration: 1½ hours) also aims at verifying the written communicative skills of the student.
Due to the COVID-19 emergency, the test could take place on-line, through the Moodle platform. Please, check the communications about this regard on the Moodle-section dedicated to this course.

For those who do not attend classes:
only the written examination (see above, point 2).

The course includes both lectures and short oral presentations by the students.
Due to the COVID-19 emergency, lectures could be took place partly or entirely on-line, through the Moodle platform.

Italian

The teacher is easily available for questions concerning the course at his office hours and by email at stefano.petrungaro@unive.it. Emails have to be written in a formal style (not "Hi prof." or "Salve prof.", but "Good morning", "Buongiorno", and the likes) and should not ask questions whose answer can be found in the information contained in this syllabus. The teacher is also available for discussing final thesis' projects.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "International cooperation" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development