L’Italia nella prima età globale (ca. 1300-1700)
Giuseppe Marcocci
Italy in the Early Global Age (c. 1300-1700)
Over the past two decades the social sciences have undergone a global turn, which has affected both the conventional chronologies and geographies of historical research. This article focuses on the Italian Peninsula in a period that can be termed early global age, roughly from 1300 to 1700, when connection and communication among the different parts of the world significantly increased. The aim is to challenge the dominant narrative of Italy as a region whose history has been defined by its main dynamics within the Peninsula and its relationship with Europe and the Mediterranean. On the contrary, this article provides evidence from overseas projections of Italian powers (before and after the formation of the Iberian empires) to intellectual reactions, from the wide- ranging circulation of people and objects to the global lives of individuals, showing the extent to which a global reconfiguration of Italian history raises new questions and can open a promising field of research.
Parole chiave: Italia, Storia globale, Mondo, Connessioni
Keywords: Italy, Global History, World, Connections
Omosessualità islamiche e relazioni tra cristiani e musulmani: nuove prospettive di ricerca
Umberto Grassi
Islamic homosexualities and Christian-Muslim relations: new research perspectives
Since the mid-1990s, the history of Islamic sexualities have attracted increasing attention, especially by historians of gender and sexuality in the US. Their research has enriched our knowledge of Middle Eastern history and stimulated the wider debate on sexuality studies. The article focuses on the historiography on Islamic homosexualities and gender transgressions. This body of historical literature provides important insights for both a comparative analysis and a history of concrete interactions between Islam and Christianity. In the this article I suggest some hypothesis of research in both directions. I simultaneously analyse the theoretical problems left unsolved by the historiography, trying to answer questions that, for the most part, have arisen from the reception of the work of Said and Foucault. Finally, I take into account some relevant issues in current political debates, such as the increasing tension with the Islamic world, and the struggle for the rights of sexual minorities in Muslim-majority countries.
Parole chiave: Sessualità, Genere, Islam, Cristianesimo
Keywords: Sexuality, Gender, Islam, Christianity
Per una storia culturale del crimine. Alcuni recenti studi francesi
Giulio Tatasciore
A Perspective on the Cultural History of Crime: Recent Research in French Historiography
By taking into account three recent French studies (A. Rauch, M. Tsikounas (dir.), L’Historien, le juge et l’assassin, Publications de la Sorbonne, Paris 2012; B. Garnot, Être brigand, du Moyen-âge à nos jours, Colin, Paris 2013; D. Kalifa, Les Bas-fonds. Histoire d’un imaginaire, Seuil, Paris 2013) concerning crime and criminals, this paper reflects on new approaches and methods of the history of crime. The «cultural turn» has recently given great importance
to the concept of représentation in order to understand crime in modern Western culture. The importance given to crime and criminal events in historical studies has inspired new analyses focused on the linguistic and discursive models concerning criminal identities. Those models invite historians to reflect on the «performative effects» of collective imagination and representations of crime in political and social contexts.
Parole chiave: Storia del crimine, Storia culturale, Rappresentazioni, Bassifondi
Keywords: History of crime, Cultural history, Representations, Underworld