The first part of the course will be devoted to helping students understand the importance of history as a vehicle not only for knowledge but also as a critical and civic tool for living the present in an informed way.

In the second part, an effort will be made to acquaint students with the tools and methods of historians' work, in order to understand what is "behind" the teaching.

The third part of the course will provide a brief but critical and interpretative overview of the most relevant issues in contemporary history, from the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century, exploring, among other things, the links between the historical acceleration of the last two centuries or so and the current times that students find themselves living, especially from the perspective of the history of communication in the contemporary age.

The fourth part will deal with the historical evolution of communication (forms, methods, meanings, symbols) which, from the centuries preceding the 19th century, has led to the acceleration that characterises today's globalised world in terms of the circulation, acquisition and exchange of information on a planetary level.

Finally, in the fifth part of the course, which is more specific, the topic of political communication in the 20th century will be explored in depth, with particular reference to all the questions concerning the relations between democracies and dictatorships. As a matter of fact, the topic of political communication is one of the most interesting and useful in order to compare democracies and dictatorships, highlighting both the similarities and the contrasts between them.