The module aims to provide the historical, political, and cultural coordinates to understand events and processes that have characterized the Nineteenth and Twentieth century, offering the historiographical means to critically re-think the global world in which we live. Between the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, European States embraced modern forms of political administration and culture, while strengthening their power over the world. The roots of these phenomena lie in the "long Nineteenth century", the age of bourgeois and scientific revolutions, of industry and imperialism, yet also the age of individual rights, democracy, liberalism, and socialist thoughts. In those decades, the capitalist economy assumed a global dimension, through trade and imperialism, and at the same time the political premises for the emergence of nationalisms and the World Wars of the Twentieth century were established. The Twentieth century, defined as "short" compared to the "long Nineteenth century", includes the study of the period between the outbreak of the First World War to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with reference to the national and global order resulting from the end of the Cold War. Along with a diachronic survey of the main political and global events, some specific social and cultural themes will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to the analysis of ideological and cultural dynamics (art, literature, film, propaganda) in order to provide the analytical tools to understand how the history and the stories of the past may have influenced the political as well as cultura dynamics of the current world. Students must be able to locate these phenomena in space and time, to develop the critical ability to establish logical connections between the various topics covered, and between the various conceptual and historiographical tools employed.