Minicourses

Italian Mafia: Origins and Development in Italy
Dr Gloria Pastorino, Professor Emerita, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Tuesday afternoons, 1:30-3:30 pm
Jan 20, 27, Feb 3, 10 and 17, 2026

This minicourse will be held online via Zoom.
These lectures look at the development of organized crime in Italy from its inception as Cosa nostra in Sicily in the 19th century to its ramifications as Mafia, camorra, ‘Ndrangheta, and Sacra Corona Unita in the 21st century. We will analyze issues of power, political corruption, governmental connivance (national and international), and gender.

Students will watch four films (available on streaming, subtitled) on their own before each of the last four lectures. For those who do not have access to the streaming service, the Madison Library will hold a viewing of the films in the Chase Room prior to each class. Viewing the film is not required.

-One Hundred Steps, Marco Tullio Giordana, 2000
-The Sicilian Girl, Marco Amenta, 2008
-Gomorrah, Matteo Garrone, 2008
-Black Souls, Francesco Munzi, 2014

Making of a Continental Power: The Expansion of the U.S. from 1607-1890
Dr. Gary Darden
Associate Professor of History and Chair, Department of Social Sciences and History, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Monday afternoons 1:30 - 3:30 pm
Jan 26, Feb 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2026

This minicourse will be held in-person in the Chase Room of the Madison Library
This lecture series analyzes the formation of British North America in the 17th Century as a chain of separate colonies competing with rival European powers for the lands of indigenous Americans and in many colonies with the labor of African slaves; the maturation of the 13 British colonies and their rebellion for independence in the 18th Century with the creation of a Republic; the tension between Northern free labor and Southern slavery over expansion out West; and lastly the rapid conquest and settlement of a preserved Union across the West in the late 19th Century.

1. British North America – Colonial Origins (1607-1763)
2. American Republic – Revolution & Nation Building (1763-1789)
3. Republic or Empire – Expansion across the Continent (1789-1854)
4. Fate of Expansion – Free Labor vs Slavery in the Continental Empire (1820-1877)
5. Conquest & Settlement of the West – Closing the Last Frontier (1862-1890)

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