Anno 2022-23

This course is composed of 4 modules of 3 credits each offered in succession by the course’s conveners and by 1 visiting professor each year teaching in collaboration with Professor Poggiolini, Professor Berkofsky or Professor Zaccaria. A pre-course will also be available.
The main aim of this course is to provide students with basic knowledge of the main trends, events and developments of politics and security in the Transatlantic region, Middle East/Africa and East Asia during the Cold War and in the post-Cold War era. As students will be asked to prepare a presentation and write a final paper, the course will equip them with those skills and abilities necessary to conduct in depth-research on a selected topic in international history and to present convincingly the results of their study/investigation. Students will learn to select and work with relevant archival digital sources and secondary literature in view of writing their final paper. At the end of this course students are expected to be familiar with basic facts and trends in international relations over the last 50 years (in the areas previously described) and to be able to compare and discuss different interpretations of these facts and trends on the basis of the existing literature and data. Students are also expected to establish connections between the contents of the modules of this course. Finally, students are expected to be able to exercise critical thinking in relation to this area of study and to orientate themselves objectively in accessing relevant web sources and dealing with the flow of information available on-line on this subject.