511670 - CULTURAL HISTORY

The single subject course aims to trace a cultural history of conspiracy theories in contemporary times, from 18th century revolutions to QAnon. It is intended to provide a critical overview of the main contemporary 'conspiracy theories', from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 21st century. That is, the course aims to identify and analyse, through targeted examples, some of the conspiracy fantasies that have circulated in Western societies (Europe and North America) over the last two centuries. After having been a marginal object of social enquiry, the phenomenon of conspiracy has come back into the limelight in the last two decades, stimulating social scientists, psychologists, and finally even historians to address this issue more systematically. And yet, in the face of a proliferating output of publications, conspiracy still largely eludes satisfactory historical analysis and theorization. The course therefore aims to first provide some analytical tools and then put them to work through the timely analysis of case studies ranging from the the myth of secret societies to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from the myth of Jewish Bolshevism to the Red Scare of the 1950s, from the conspiracy fantasies of the Third Reich to the repressive machine of Stalinism, to the recent conspiracy theories revolving around QAnon, the community that claims the existence of a Deep State conspiring against US President Donald Trump. The first part of the course will consist of lectures led by the teacher. After a few introductory lectures, during which some studies and methodological tools for the study of conspiracy fantasies will be discussed, the course will move on to case studies, with a focus on the state of the scientific literature, the types of sources mobilised, and the interpretative proposals that have emerged so far. In the second part, attending students will be invited to hold short seminars, discussing individual interpretations and case studies in dialogue with the class.