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For about a decade now, the historiography of emotions has developed spectacularly, though with mixed outcomes. This paper will assess the main research orientations that have shaped this history. It will provide a first critical account of the main works in the field. To do so, we will begin by highlighting the often implicit tensions and the various debates that have erupted around the history of emotions. Among the contentious historical approaches to the study of emotions, we will focus on the so-called tensions between nature and culture, language and experience, the individual and the collective. Starting from an essentially nineteenth/twentieth century historiography, this paper aims to go beyond just a history of emotions as a research topic. Instead, it seeks to seize emotions more broadly as a category of cross-analysis that allows historians to reach and study all aspects of social life. In this regard, emotions can be analyzed both through their own historicity and through the agency of the social actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the nature of Burckhardt's apolitia, and raises the question as to the real meaning of his detachment from political things. The first part presents some major interpretations of Burckhardt alleged "Greek" unpolitical attitude (Ernst Cassirer, Karl Löwith, Albert Salomon, Benedetto Croce), and shows how these authors understood Burckhardt's contemplative stance almost as a philosophical one. The second part offers a brief historical reconstruction of Burckhardt process of detachment, mostly drawing on his correspondence. The third part analyses the meaning of Burckhardt's transcendence of the present in the past, namely, the way in which the historian wins a critical perspective on the present by concentrating on history. This process of detachment from the present is interpreted in its "political" aspects; as shown in the fourth part, Burckhardt's apolitia amounts to a critical movement aimed at the recovery of the spiritual connection with the past. In this way, the paper maintains that his apolitia is, in truth, in service of a higher ideal of humanity, namely, a specific idea of civilization which must be understood in contradistinction to barbarism. The essence of barbarism is the absence of historic consciousness; it is only the awareness of a fundamental continuity in the flowing of human things that allows the flourishing of man's spiritual life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Jerome never wrote neither ecclesiastical history nor a monastic history, nonetheless he cultivated the ambition to be a Church and monasticism historian competing with both Eusebius of Caesarea and Athanasius of Alexandria. The paper focuses on the several stages of this relationship, going through the Vita Pauli;Vita Hilarionis; De viris illustribus, Praecepta Pachomiana and the Epistula 127. Jerome's main concern is to establish who was the first and this aim makes him draw 'authentic' genealogies of the monasticism, challenging other historical reconstructions. His work is mainly targeted to ascetics and his origins' reconstruction and it is important since it reports of the rising of a monastic self-awareness in the first generation of western ascetics. Their experiences were linked to the Egyptian tradition, as it was the generating, most ancient and prestigious one; on the other side, they believed monasticism being related to the apostolic Church and considered themselves as contemporary 'apostolic men'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following text is a report upon the Congress organized by two scholars of the University of Udine, in order to present new and original contributions in studies related to 1917's Russian Revolution. The main aim of the promoters was to invite best of the Italian experts in Russian and Slavic studies to discuss together in Udine. Thanks to its geographic position and historic heritage Udine seems to be the ideal place to connect Western and Eastern European languages, history and culture. The survey gives a brief account of the organization, scientific program and communications in the two days of the Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]