• Walter LaFeber et al., The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, 4 vols (Cambridge, 2015).
• Mario del Pero, Libertà e impero. Gli Stati Uniti e il mondo 1776-2016 (Rome, 2017) (for non-attending students)
• A.G. Hopkins, American Empire. A Global History (Princeton, NJ, 2018).
Obiettivi Formativi
Apprise students of key ideas and developments in the history of the United States and the Transformation of International Order.
Prerequisiti
Graduate level capabilities; capacity and willingness to read, discuss and write in English.
Metodi Didattici
Anglo-American style Socratic methods.
Altre Informazioni
none
Modalità di verifica apprendimento
1) participation and contributions to seminar discussion (20%); 2) a 15-minute presentation on one of the course’s topics or central questions and a midterm paper outline and bibliography (25%); 3) a final 12-page paper (55%) on a topic coordinated with the instructors.
2) Requirements for non-attending students: submission of a detailed outline and bibliography for a proposed research paper; 20-page paper (37000 characters, including spaces) on a topic coordinated with the instructors.
Programma del corso
This course re-appraises the United States’ impact on the transformation of the modern international order in the 20th and 21st century. Introducing students to both new and classic interpretations, the course focuses on the ways in which American policies, ideas and power have shaped and reshaped inter-state relations and international politics, finance and economics during what some have called “the American century”, particularly in the wake of global crises and wars. This will be examined not only from an American perspective but also from the perspectives of those states and societies that came to interact with the United States in new and manifold modes. Core aspects of governmental policies and strategies will be given due attention; but non-governmental aspirations and transnational developments that have shaped the relations between the United States and the world will be analysed as well.
The course is divided into “moduli”. The course’s first part re-appraises the origins and consequences of US aspirations to create a modern international order and to make the world “safe for democracy” and American-style capitalism after World War I. The second part explores how the emerging American superpower influenced the remaking of world order after 1945 and attempts to consolidate a “liberal” international system. Principal themes include Wilson’s quest for a “peace to end all wars” and progressive US reform aspirations of the 1920s; American traditions of “open door” and “dollar diplomacy” and America’s eventual key role in refashioning the world financial and economic system from Bretton Woods to the era of post-cold war globalisation; the emergence of the cold war’s “Atlantic Community” and US-led alliance system in east Asia; American international policies in the 1970s and the 1980s and US contributions to the remaking of international order after the end of the cold war; and the evolution and impact of competing American and non-American ideas, ideologies and conceptions of international norms, including conceptions of collective security, self-determination and human rights.