92646 - Seminars (R) (LM)

Academic Year 2022/2023

Learning outcomes

At the end of the workshop, students will be able to collect and organize complex information in a coherent way and to apply critical analysis methodologies to linguistic sciences. Moreover, students will possess the necessary skills to identify a research topic in the field of philological studies and to address it through an appropriate use of primary sources.

Course contents

 How to live together?


Starting with recent global upheavals (such as the pandemic and war), the workshop aims to reflect narratively on the possibility of creating a truly inclusive and multicultural global community in the future. The basic question is one that Roland Barthes already posed in his course at the Collège de France in 1976/77: at what distance must I keep myself from others in order to build a non-alienating sociality with them? A question that is becoming more and more topical, in a globalised but individualistic community, where we are constantly questioning what the right distance to live together might be. The macro-theme of migration, which has characterised the intercultural workshop since its inception, is particularly central in this context. In fact, in order to address the topic of the community to come, it is necessary to reconstruct those stratifications of civilisations that are still in place, the migratory flows that cross Italy in flight from violence and poverty and, at the same time, the large number of young Italians who leave their country, heading towards Europe and the world. These are two migratory movements, different and congruent, which are injecting transnational components into local substrata and which impose a constant confrontation with otherness.

The narrative exercises of the Intercultural Writing Workshop therefore want to respond to the need to keep open and active those paths of dialogue and exchange, beyond all barriers, and offer themselves as a place to experiment with new meticulous communities, through the shared development of stories, tales, narratives to overcome the negative stereotypes of the epic of migration, even within national spaces, which involve the whole of humanity from the beginning. In fact, collective writing is essential to allow the sharing of very different life experiences and to give a coherent narrative form to this sharing, learning to cooperate to amalgamate different points of view. In addition, the workshop offers the opportunity to interact with Italian students, international students and students seeking asylum accepted by Unibo, comparing different experiences of study and mobility.

Readings/Bibliography

Reading lists and other relevant material concerning both interculturalism and the creative writing exercises will be pointed out and used during the workshop.

Teaching methods

The workshop consists of 10 meetings (4 hours each), which will take place under the supervision of Wu Ming 2, and in collaboration with the professors Filippo Milani and Fulvio Pezzarossa. In-between each meeting, students will have time to edit and finalize the texts elaborated in class according to a shared timetable.

This is the schedule:

13 february / 20 february / 27 february / 6 march

20 march / 27 march / 3 april / 17 april

8 may / 15 may

The workshop aims to develop collective writing, issuing in its turn from the contact between native identities and foreign cultures. Therefore, the 40 participants will be selected by taking into account their native culture and language, as well as their proficiency in written Italian.

Students should apply starting from 2-29 January 2022 through the website https://eventi.unibo.it/laboratorio-scrittura-interculturale . In their CV, students are required to detail their previous experiences in the field of creative writing and their ongoing interest in the topic of migration.

Assessment methods

The purpose of the workshop is to create intercultural short stories characterized by high standards in terms of both content and form. These short stories will then be collected and published on the Eks&Tra website.

The volumes containing the texts developed in recent editions of the workshop are freely available as e-pubs or pdfs on the following website: www.eksetra.net.

Documented attendance is mandatory for students enrolled in the following degree programs: Italianistica, Culture Letterarie Europee, Scienze Linguistiche of the Scuola di Lettere e Beni culturali, 27928 - LABORATORIO (1) (LM) (G.A) and 73097 - LABORATORIO DI SCRITTURA (1) (LM) for students of Italian Studies as well as for all the students incorporating the workshop into their academic curriculum. Completion of the workshop grants 6 CFU.

For students attending the Corso di Laurea Magistrale di Lingua e Cultura italiana per stranieri of the Scuola di Lingue e Letterature, the workshop will be considered as 28929 - SOCIOLOGIA DELLA LETTERATURA (1) (LM). In this case, the completion of the workshop grants 3 CFU.

The final evaluation and the CFU will be assigned following the student’s attendance of all the meetings and a detailed assessment of his/her written production.

Teaching tools

The Intercultural Creative Writing Workshop is a collaborative project organised by the Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica of the Università di Bologna and the Associazione Eks&Tra. Its aim is to offer applicable knowledge for an evolving citizenry.

After a general introduction on the key principles of narratology, students – divided into groups – will focus on the development of an original short story. Great attention will be paid to the analysis of the plot, as well as of the style and language used.

The meetings are intended to stimulate conversation and collective creativity, thereby facilitating encounters and mutual “contamination” through narratives which explore crosscutting themes and current issues. The workshop seeks to promote collaboration between different voices willing to open themselves to the perspective of people coming from other countries and to exchange those perspectives with their own in order to build possible roads to a multicultural future. By renouncing a single point of view, it is possible to understand and appreciate different attitudes, thus spurring a clever imaginative flexibility when practicing interculturalism.

Office hours

See the website of Giuliana Benvenuti

SDGs

No poverty Quality education Sustainable cities Peace, justice and strong institutions

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.