History of United States Politics

The general part of the course aims to provide students with basic knowledge of the historical events that led to the creation, institutionalization and social, political and cultural expansion of the United States of America, through a reading aimed at discovering on the one hand the rhetoric that justified the imperial path of the nation in the name of security and the fight against terror, on the other the plurality of ideas that have been expressed by American society throughout its political history. Themes of political history will be highlighted, including old and new migrations, problems of minorities, Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanics, to promote competence in the use of categories of class, gender, race and ethnicity. The monographic parts of the course vary from year to year and will focus on some topics of North American history that have emerged as predominant in the historiographical debate overseas. Some topics covered in the past years have been urban development and industrial growth, nature conservation and environmentalism, expansionism in the era of Thomas Jefferson, slavery and abolitionism, the presidency of Ronald Reagan and neoconservatism, investigative journalism and new media.
As regards knowledge, the course aims to obtain the understanding skills that allow the development of original ideas in a research context, solving new problems connected to the study of the subject, formulating judgments even based on limited information connected to the application of the notions provided. At the same time, the course aims to provide students with the tools to communicate the results obtained from the research to an audience of specialists and non-specialists, guaranteeing them the possibility of studying the cases in a self-managed and autonomous way.

The set of skills acquired will allow students to develop the ability to critically understand the development of contemporary political events, to know how to orient themselves in the complexity of society, to grasp cultural, social and political interdependencies, to act as an aware citizen in a world in constant and rapid evolution.