Italy is a very young country and that explains why the country is so varied, so multifaceted. Italy is the union of different pieces of a puzzle, and each piece has many layers, like a cake. Several peoples have come to occupy different parts of Italy: Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Germans, French and Spanish. Each of them left an imprint, in the language, in customs, even in the kitchen. Italy is, therefore, an overlap of peoples and languages.
Italy is famous for its huge contributions to the worlds of art, architecture, fashion, opera, literature, design, film and of course food. Italy was unified into a single country in 1861. Before that, the boot-shaped peninsula was made up of separate territories such as the Papal States, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany.
I thought we need an hand from an expert to solve the Italian puzzle and so I have asked professor Stefano Agnoletto, an expert of Italian history, now working at the Norwegian business school in Oslo to create some lessons about Italian modern history. The online lessons will be held in Italian so they will not be just an occasion to know more about Italy but also to put to test your Italian comprehension.
During his lessons the professor will use pictures, videos, documents and other digital and original sources. His language will be accessible and student will be encouraged to interact and ask questions. Gabriele, the Italian tutor, will of course join the lessons and will help with the language and interact with the professor and the students.
Each conference is 1,5 hours long (with a break in the middle) and cost is £ 150 to be divided between all the participants. We are aiming to groups of at least 10 people so individual cost should be quite reasonable.
Please get in touch for more information
Here above Professor Agnoletto in a conference about Italian constitution
These are professor Agnoletto’s proposals for conferences:
Italian peninsula was divided into many small states until the nineteenth century. Italy was officially born in 1861 but completing the unification took a long time: Venice became Italian in 1866, Rome in 1870, Trento and Trieste only after the first world war. Italy is a very young nation and its strenghts and weaknesses lie in there. This conference revisits the fundamental steps of the difficult and controversial Italian unification process.
In 1922, just a few years after the victory in the first world war, Mussolini became Prime Minister and started to built his dictatorship which would rule the country for more than 20 years. Professor Agnoletto will explain the reasons that led to the rise of fascism, the repression of other political parties, the colonial expeditions, the racial laws and the alliance with Hitler. The conference will analyze all the important aspects of the fascist era: the school system, the economic policy, the culture, the role of women and young people in the dictatorship and its ideology.
Decades of Italian history will be explained through the vision of photographs, videos, documents and testimonies. After the fall of fascism Italy became a democratic republic who contributed to create European Union and was for 40 years one of the most important battlefield of the cold war. After the fall of Soviet Union, Silvio Berlusconi, one of the most divisive character in the history of the country, led Italy on and off for 15 years. Berlusconi was then taken down by a sex scandal and a declining economic situation and replaced by weak leaders who proved themselves incapable to give back credibility to Italy and reverse the economic decline.
Professor Agnoletto will go through the social changes in recent decades rethinking and debunking stereotypes and prejudices. Some very important questions will be answered. How the traditional Italian family model has evolved? How has the role of women changed? What was the role of young people in these changes? How Catholic Church lost its grip on the Italian society? How divorce and abortion became legal in one the most traditionalist country in the western world?
Few countries receive as many accolades for their beauty as Italy but political and economic instability make life difficult there and over the decades millions of Italians left the country in search of a better life for themselves and for their families. Professor Agnoletto will talk you through many different stories connected to immigration. Stories of poverty, exploitation, human trafficking and criminality but as well Stories of hard working people who built their fortunes all around the world.
Italy is not just the country of art, food and culture but as well one of the most economically developed countries in the world. This conference is about the very peculiar economic system of the third-largest economy in the euro zone.
After a brief reference to the most ancient roots of the Italian economic system (from the Maritime Republics to the Florentine and Genoese banks), Professor Agnoletto will talk through the history of the Italian industry from the end of the 19th century to the 1970s, highlighting its success and contradictions. You will definitely hear more about Italian most iconic products and brand.
I am an Historian, Economist and expert in Social Science research, Industrial and Cultural Heritage and Didactic. (PhD, Kingston University London).
I am currently visiting research fellow at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo (Norway), Department of Law and Governance.
Until August, 31 2018 I was the Head of the Department “Didactics ” at Fondazione ISEC (Institute for the History of the Contemporary Age) in Milan (Italy).
As lecturer, I have taught in various academic institutions around the world (Italy, Canada, Mexico, Russian Federation) in high schools and at the undergraduate, post-graduate, and doctoral level.
Over the last 25 years, I have conducted research in collaboration with universities, foundations, research institutes. I have worked as junior and senior researcher, as well as project manager, through my involvement in different international research environments and networks and for my research activity I have received fellowships, awards and conference grants from public and private institutions in Europe (Italy, UK, Spain and Poland) and America (USA, Canada and Mexico).
As result of my research efforts, I have edited nine academic books and dozens of chapters and articles. In particular, you can find my articles on the following journals : "Labor History", “The Journal of European Economic History”, “Science and Society”, ”Surveillance and Society”, “Californian Italian Studies”, “Region: Economics and Sociology” (Russian edition), “Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans”, "Studia Migracyjne - Przeglad Polonijny" , “Archives of Italian Economic and Business History”, “Zapruder World: An International Journal for the History of Social Conflict”, “International Journal of Regional and Local History“ “Ricerche di Storia Politica”, “Italian Canadiana”, “Imprese e Storia”, “Archivio Storico Ticinese”, “Nuova Rivista Storica”, “Memoria/Memorie. Materiali di storia”, “Bollettino dell’Archivio per la storia del Movimento Sociale Cattolico in Italia”, “Politiche sociali e servizi”, “Quaderni della Fondazione Giulio Pastore”, , “Prospettive Sociali e Sanitarie”, “Studi economici e sociali”, “Opinioni”, “Alternative Europa”, “il Ponte”, “Quaderni di Analisi Transazionale”, "Il Mestiere di Storico".