edited by Elisa Rossi (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia)

In 1973, the pedagogist Elena Gianini Belotti, based on her long and in-depth educational experience with parents and preschool children, asserted in her groundbreaking work titled Little girls that the traditional differences in character and behavior between males and females were not primarily due to innate or “natural” factors. Rather, they are depend on social and cultural conditioning, stereotypes, and prejudices that individuals experience during their development and upbringing: «among these also the “myth” of “natural” male superiority as opposed to the equally “innate” female inferiority»….

A well-established transdisciplinary literature has identified the early 1970s as a periodising moment for the labour history and the history of the welfare state. The end of the Bretton Woods system and, mostly, the first energy crisis of 1973 have been generally regarded as the beginning of a major break with social policy as it was conceived during the so-called “Golden Age” of capitalism in Western Europe. Ideas and structural macro-processes gradually reshaped cultural paradigms, policies, and socio-economic relations….

The image of North-Eastern Europe appears composite and complex. While its geographical conglomeration is cut across by the Baltic Sea, it is not a coherent area at a cultural and political level. Yet, the numerous investments made by local and international actors in attempting to define this space (GÖTZ 2016) call for a closer scrutiny in the processes of imagining spaces. Between crossroad for international routes and point of contact for insular realities, North-Eastern Europe is a repository of numerous perceptions and self-perceptions on a local, region, and global level. In the last centuries, the history of the Baltic Sea has also been a history of small states devising the most diverse and original strategies….

Over the last few years, we have been witnessing two phenomena which are concurrent and yet apparently in contrast with each other. On one side, there is evidence of a marginalisation of history, in the sense of a crisis of identity and social function, which extends to the very role of historians. On the other side, there is a huge interest in history among the general public in the consumption of cultural products with a historical focus. Production, dissemination and reception of historical narratives takes place through an ever-increasing number of films and TV series…