Il Rinascimento italiano e l’invenzione dell’ecologia politica (PhD)

This course aims to re-examine the history of central and northern Italy during the Renaissance period through an analytical lens rooted in environmental history. The Renaissance will be understood here more as a chronological period than as a cultural movement, and within an extended chronology spanning from the 14th century to the early 17th century. We will analyse the environmental dimension of the political, economic, social and cultural changes of the Renaissance. The issues in the history of this period (such as political theory, the question of the state and political modernity, the spheres of legitimisation of political power, the relationship between the state and the community of inhabitants, the relations between cities and the countryside, and the definition of the public, communal, private and particular spheres…) will be addressed from the point of view of the transformation of the relationship with ‘nature’ in its various manifestations. The course will integrate an analysis of the history of ideas (political theory, humanism, moral and religious philosophy, treatises on science and medicine) with an examination of political, social and economic dynamics (management of natural resources, landscapes, agricultural production, techniques, water, animals and non-human beings, public health, pollution, natural disasters, environmental risks, the commons…), highlighting the interplay between the development of new paradigms for interpreting nature and the emergence of practices and forms of action linked to political ecology. The course will explore how the Italian Renaissance represented a turning point within the much broader context of the Anthropocene. For students, the course will offer the opportunity to examine the environmental dimension of political modernity and the emergence of political ecology, to understand how the essential concepts underpinning them are also deeply linked to the theoretical and practical conception of nature developed during the Renaissance.