Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding. The course will allow students a critical understanding of the past as a tool for critical understanding of the present.
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding. Lectures, individual study and research conducted during the laboratory part of the course will give students the ability to connect the past with the present, identifying trends and long-term problems.
Autonomy of judgment. At the end of the course, students, on the basis of their analytical knowledge, should have acquired the ability to collect data and critically interpret the topics studied.
Communication skills. At the end of the course students should have achieved the ability to clearly explain the main problems
Learning ability. The study commitment should give students a certain methodological mastery, learning skills and ability to analyze sources that may also be useful for future professions related to communication and journalism
Prerequisites
Having taken the exam of Modern History and / or Contemporary History
Course unit content
The course aims to retrace the origins and evolution of the journalistic and literary phenomenon of the so-called judicial chronicle by examining, after a historical and historiographical premise, some famous cases between the modern and contemporary ages
Full programme
In modern democratic systems, access to information relating to the procedural process is considered an unavoidable right, a form of guarantee and a method of monitoring the correct functioning of the justice system. This is a relatively recent acquisition, which can be traced back, in continental Europe, to the nineteenth century, when the public debate already present in the Anglo-Saxon world and in the United States was introduced. In this way, unprecedented spaces for information were opened, giving rise to a dizzying expansion of news relating to criminal facts and processes that helped to define the perceptual thresholds between lawful and forbidden, acceptable and unacceptable, individual and collective attitudes. At the same time, a wide debate was opened on several levels, especially in Italy, on the effects that the dissemination of news through the new information tools - newspapers - could produce in terms of conditioning the "serenity" of the judgment, violation of the confidentiality of the investigation , "Morbidity" of the public, justice-entertainment, all themes that are very current. The new frontier is today represented by the "media process", in which the legitimate boundaries of the exercise of the right of judicial news are circumvented, often interfering with the exercise of justice itself and with its public perception, according to dynamics that are not of the all new and whose origins are the specific subject of the course. In fact, since the early modern age, the news about trials, strictly secret until the sentence, gave rise to an intense circulation of handwritten or printed texts. From the 17th century on, occasionally and very succinctly, news about crimes and trials began to be published in the first printed gazettes. From the end of the eighteenth century, thanks to the fashion of "famous causes" born in France and then spread throughout Europe, and to the parallel and progressive opening of the courtrooms to the public, judicial news took shape in the modern sense of the term. The aim of the course is therefore to reconstruct, after a historical and historiographical premise, the evolution of the phenomenon by examining some famous cases between the modern and contemporary ages.
Bibliography
ATTENDING
1)L. Roscioni et al. Informazione, politica e giustizia: la cronaca giudiziaria e le origini del processo mediatico (paoer available on Elly)
2) A case study, to be agreed with the teacher and to be presented individually or in groups during the workshop, which will be chosen from a list of sources and texts relating to well-known legal cases between the 16th and 20th centuries (availabe on Elly)
NOT ATTENDING
1) L. Roscioni et al., Information, politics and justice: the judicial news and the origins of the media process (handout available on Elly)
2) N. Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre. A case of double identity in 16th century France, Turin 1997 (available on Elly)
3) L. Roscioni, Lo smemorato di Collegno. Storia italiana di un'identità contesa, Torino, 2009
http://elly2020.dusic.unipr.it
NB. Bibliography may undergo changes which will be communicated at the beginning of the course
Teaching methods
The course is divided into two parts.
First part consist in some lectures about 1) main themes and problems covered by course 2) some case studies of judicial news between the 16th and 20th centuries
Second part consist in a workshop-seminar, with the active participation of students. Each of them, individually and / or for study groups, will be entrusted with a short research (the list of research to be carried out will be published on Elly at the beginning of the course)
Researches will be exposed and discussed in class.
Assessment methods and criteria
Attendants: oral presentation and discussion of the research conducted during the laboratory in the classroom.
Non-attending students: oral presentation and discussion of the scheduled texts.
Evaluation criteria
Attending:
A failure rating is determined by the lack of autonomy in conducting research and in elaborating and presenting one's critical point of view and in constructively discussing it with other students.
A sufficient evaluation (18-23 / 30) is determined by an acceptable level of performance by the student of the evaluation indicators listed above.
The average and high scores (24-27 / 30 and 30 cum laude) are assigned to the student on the basis of the demonstration of a level from Good to Excellent of the evaluation indicators listed above.
Not attending
An inadequacy rating is determined by the failure to study part of the program, by serious deficiencies in the exposition and critical reflection on the texts.
A sufficient evaluation (18-23 / 30) is determined by an acceptable level of performance by the student of the evaluation indicators listed above.
The average and high scores (24-27 / 30 and 30 cum laude) are assigned to the student based on the demonstration of a good to excellent level of the evaluation indicators listed above.
Other information
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