This version of the course guide is provisional until the period for editing the new course guides ends.

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History of Social Movements in the Modern Age

Code: 100365 ECTS Credits: 6
2025/2026
Degree Type Year
History OT 4
Contemporary History, Politics and Economics OT 3
Contemporary History, Politics and Economics OT 4

Contact

Name:
Arnau Gonzalez Vilalta
Email:
arnau.gonzalez@uab.cat

Teaching groups languages

You can view this information at the end of this document.


Prerequisites

None


Objectives and Contextualisation

The subject aims to provide resources for fundamental knowledge of contemporary social movements. It will analyze the role of subaltern classes throughout contemporary history. Concrete examples will be used to guarantee the essential gender perspective. Traditional and new approaches to research, analysis and presentation will be combined.


Competences

    History
  • Applying the main methods, techniques and instruments of the historical analysis.
  • Developing critical thinking and reasoning and communicating them effectively both in your own and other languages.
  • Identifying the main historiographical tendencies and critically analysing their development.
  • Respecting the diversity and plurality of ideas, people and situations.
  • Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
  • Students must be capable of communicating information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
  • Students must develop the necessary learning skills in order to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
    Contemporary History, Politics and Economics
  • Distinguish between and analyse the type of relations that have been established over the last century among the different social, political and economic agents on national, regional and international frameworks.
  • Distinguish between governmental decision-making systems in different social and political contexts from the mid-twentieth century to the present day in state-, substate and suprastate frameworks.
  • Explain and summarise knowledge acquired in English language at an advanced level.
  • Identify the role in the present of the different social memories referring to conflictive pasts, differentiating between the concepts of history and memory.
  • Recognise the basic foundations of economic analysis from both a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective.
  • Students must be capable of applying their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional way and they should have building arguments and problem resolution skills within their area of study.
  • Students must develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
  • Students must have and understand knowledge of an area of study built on the basis of general secondary education, and while it relies on some advanced textbooks it also includes some aspects coming from the forefront of its field of study.
  • Work cooperatively in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams implementing new projects.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Analyse the mechanisms of the formation of salaries.
  2. Analysing the main social and political movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  3. Appropriately identifying and using information sources for the historical research, specially about contemporary political regimes.
  4. Assess work-related policies.
  5. Communicating in your mother tongue or other language both in oral and written form by using specific terminology and techniques of Historiography.
  6. Critically summarise the different historiographical explanation for the rise of political regimes in the Contemporary Era.
  7. Deal sensitively with social questions
  8. Developing the ability of historical analysis and synthesis.
  9. Engaging in debates about historical facts respecting the other participants' opinions.
  10. Identifying the main and secondary ideas and expressing them with linguistic correctness.
  11. Identifying the social, economic and political structures of the contemporary world.
  12. Interpret the motivations, instruments and effects of public intervention in the labour market.
  13. Make a brief comparison of national and/or regional cases within the same international framework.
  14. Manage and apply data to solve problems.
  15. Organising and planning the search of historical information.
  16. Present works in formats tailored to the needs and personal styles, both individual and small group.
  17. Properly using the specific vocabulary of History.
  18. Reading and interpreting the historical documents produced in the contemporary era.
  19. Recognising diversity and multiculturalism.
  20. Recognising the historical processes that led to the contemporary society.
  21. Relate the labour market and economic activity.
  22. Relating elements and factors involved in the development of historical processes.
  23. Solving problems autonomously.
  24. Submitting works in accordance with both individual and small group demands and personal styles.
  25. Understand and explain situations of memory in conflict from the perspectives of class, gender and national identity.
  26. Understand in economic terms, the problem of unemployment and its causes.
  27. Understand the different perspectives of class, gender and national identity on which different relations between social, political and economic agents are based.
  28. Using computing resources of the area of study of history.
  29. Using the characteristic computing resources of the field of History.
  30. Using the specific work methods of Contemporary History.
  31. Work in teams respecting all points of view. Use the specific vocabulary of history correctly.

Content

Introduction.

a) The Commune of 1871 as a mass movement.

b) From the general strike of 1902 to the "tragic week" of 1909 in Catalonia.

c)  The popular response to the military uprising of July 1936 in Spain.

d) Social changes in wartime Catalonia through the photography of Antoni Campañà (1936-39).

e) 1968 and newsocial movements.

f) Traumatic Social Change: The Dismantling of the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe (1991-2000).

g)  Studying the working class, social movements and class struggle today.

 


Activities and Methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Type: Directed      
Seminars and directed practices 10 0.4 2, 23, 5, 10, 18, 15, 9, 19, 17
Theory classes 40 1.6 2, 18, 19
Type: Supervised      
Tutoring sessions 15 0.6 15, 24, 19, 17, 29
Type: Autonomous      
Personal study 30 1.2 2, 23, 18, 15, 19, 17
Reading of texts. Writing of papers. Preparation of presentations. Search of bibliographic information 45 1.8 10, 18, 15, 24, 19, 17, 29

The teaching methodology will consist of the combination of master classes, where basic contents of the subject will be taught, and seminars based on previously offered information. Documentation for students will usually be available on Campus Virtual. Audiovisual media will also be a part of the class.

Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.


Assessment

Continous Assessment Activities

Title Weighting Hours ECTS Learning Outcomes
Exam 50% 4 0.16 2, 23, 5, 10, 18, 9, 19, 17
Papers 50% (30% + 20%)% 6 0.24 1, 2, 23, 4, 13, 25, 27, 5, 8, 26, 14, 3, 11, 10, 12, 18, 15, 9, 16, 24, 20, 19, 21, 22, 6, 7, 31, 17, 30, 29, 28

There will be only one exam at the end of the course, and it will have a 50% assessment in the grade for the course.

Two exercises will be requested during it. They will have a value in the final grade of 30 and 20% respectively. Cheating on the exam or plagiarism in the exercises will result in a zero in those grades. It will be established the necessary mechanisms to review the results of the exam and the exercises.

 

Very important warning

Students who have not done the exam and one of the two exercises will not be able to take the recovery synthesis test, thus they will be NON-EVALUABLE. Nor will it be possible to present to the recovery test those who has a final grade equal to or higher than 5.0. The recovery will deal with all the contents of the subject program. In the Degree in History, the maximum mark for this recovery test is 5.0 (Pass).

 

Each academic year, the student can adhere to the single assessment in some subjects and maintain the continuous assessment system in others. The student who adheres to the single evaluation waives the continuous evaluation. This resignation is made at the beginning of each semester's teaching, on the dates set by each center within the framework calendar established in the academic and administrative calendar of the UAB. To set these dates, it must be taken into account that it must be possible to request the change a few weeks after starting the teaching.
 
The student who requests the unique evaluation has the same rights as the rest of the students. This means that your grade cannot be limited, your right to go to class or to request tutoring cannot be prevented and your right to retake the subject cannot be limited. In the same way, he also has the duty to monitor the teaching under the same conditions that the teaching staff has established for the rest of the students and, therefore, the teaching staff must not elaborate
exclusive learning materials or activities for this profile.

 

You can opt for the single evaluation in the generic terms decided by the UAB. All assessment evidence must be handed in on the same day. You must have previously requested the possibility of this type of evaluation.

 

Other evaluation factors

-The student will receive the grade of “Not assessable” provided that he has not submitted more than 30% of the assessment activities.
-According to academic regulations, the final grade will be rounded to the nearest whole number when it is within one tenth of a value that entails a change to a higher qualitative grade (it will go from 4.9 to 5; from 6.9 to 7; and from 8.9 to 9).
-In the event that the student makes any irregularity that could lead to a significant variation in the grade of an assessment act, this assessment act will be graded 0, regardless of the disciplinary process that may be instructed. In the event that several irregularities occur in the assessment acts of the same subject, the final grade for this subject will be 0.
-In the written activities, spelling, syntactic or lexical errors are taken into account. The penalty may be between 0.1-0.2 points for each error committed on the final grade. Repeated errors may be deducted.
-The assessment activities will be scheduled throughout the academic year. The dates for taking the tests in the classroom and for submitting assignments and reviews will be communicated to the students sufficiently in advance. The teaching staff will establish a specific tutorial schedule to proceed with the comment on the assessment activities. The student will have the right to review the results of the tests taken. At the time of carrying out/delivering each assessment activity, the teaching staff will inform (Moodle, SIA) of the procedure and date for reviewing the grades.
- The same recovery system will be applied as for continuous assessment.
- -The recovery will consist of a global exam of the subject, for both continuous assessment and single assessment students. It will take place on the date established by the Faculty.
-Those activities that the teacher considers not recoverable may be excluded from the recovery process, for example: oral presentations, group work or tasks related to daily teaching activity in the classroom.
-The UAB academic regulations do not limit the maximum grade that a student can obtain in recovery. If a teacher considers, for academic reasons, that it should be limited to 5, this guideline must be explicitly included in the Course Guide.
-In no case may recovery be considered as a mechanism to improve the grade of students who have already passed the subject in the normal evaluation process.
-In this subject, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies is not allowed in any of its phases. Any work that includes fragments generated with AI will be considered a lack of academic honesty and will result in the activity being evaluated with a 0 or not being able to be recovered or, even, in more serious measures.

 


Bibliography

. Llibert Ferri, Memòria del fred. Cròniques d'una transició, Barcelona, Empúries, 2006.

. P. Garcia-Planas, A. Gonzàlez i Vilalta. La capsa vermella. La Guerrra Civil fotografiada per Antoni Campañà, Barcelona, Comanegra, 2019.

. J. Rougeri, La Commune et les Communards, París, Folio, 2018


Software

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Groups and Languages

Please note that this information is provisional until 30 November 2025. You can check it through this link. To consult the language you will need to enter the CODE of the subject.

Name Group Language Semester Turn
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Catalan second semester morning-mixed
(TE) Theory 1 Catalan second semester morning-mixed