28991 - Contemporary Italian Literature (LM) (A-L)

Learning outcomes

The course intends to provide a critical and cultural awareness in contemporary Italian literature and civilization. For this purpose, literary texts are always analyzed as open shapes, focusing on the relationships among their tradition and cultural legacies. We will also read together and discuss a corpus of prose works through many examples of comparative analysis and practice on different methods.

Course contents

Title: Italian Culture and the Colonial Heritage III

The course is worth twelve credits, amounting to 60 hours (30 lectures, 2 hours each). The first week will be introductory and dedicated to the presentation of the authors whose novels will be discussed during the course. In the following weeks we will approach their works with closer and deeper reading and analysis.

Course topic:

The recent passing of historian Angelo Del Boca, maximum scholar of Italian Colonialism, offered in the past two years an occasion to study, starting from one of his most appreciated works, entitled Italiani, brava gente?, a dramatic and still removed or misrepresented part of italian history, the colonization in Africa between the late XIXth Century and the Thirties of XXth Century. While the present political situation in Italy shows every day more and more raging episods of racism and sexism, this new course for the LM would like to try the recovering of a more objective historical knowledge through the words of male and female writers telling the truth about colonialism as a whole and in particular about italian colonialism, its war crimes, its brutality, its injustice.
 

 

Please Note:

Students who are not native speakers of Italian must prepare a shorter program than Italian students, to be agreed with the professor by email or during the dedicated office hours. They are also requested to inform the professor of any difficulties understanding the lessons.

Readings/Bibliography

Students will fully read:

Ennio Flaiano, Tempo di uccidere (1947), Milano, Adelphi, 2020

And will also read one book of their choice from each of the following groups:

First group:

a) Bruno Barilli, Il sole in trappola: diario del periplo dell'Africa (1931), Firenze, Sansoni, 1943

b) Riccardo Bacchelli, Mal d'Africa (1934), Milano, Rizzoli, 1990

c) Curzio Malaparte, Viaggio in Etiopia e altri scritti africani (1939), Firenze, Vallecchi, 2006

d) Emilio Cecchi, Appunti per un periplo dell'Africa (1939), ora in E. Cecchi, Saggi e viaggi, Milano, Mondadori, 1997

e) Fausta Cialente, Il vento sulla sabbia (1972), Milano, Nottetempo, 2023

Second group:

a) Gabriella Ghermandi, Regina di fiori e di perle, Roma, Donzelli, 2011

b) Wu Ming 2, Antar Marincola, Timira. Romanzo meticcio, Torino, Einaudi, 2012

c) Francesco Biamonti, Le parole e la notte (1998), Torino, Einaudi, 2014

d) Gianni Celati, Avventure in Africa, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2000

e) Vitaliano Trevisan, Black Tulips, Torino, Einaudi, 2023

Third group:

a) Luca Rastello La frontiera addosso. Così si deportano i diritti umani. Bari, Laterza, 2010.

b) Alessandro Leogrande, La frontiera, Milano, Feltrinelli 2015.

c) Tommaso Giartosio, Tutto quello che non abbiamo visto. Viaggio in Eritrea, Torino, Einaudi, 2022

Fourth group:

a) Nicola Labanca, Oltremare. Storia della espansione coloniale italiana, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2012

b) Frantz Fanon, Pelle nera, maschere bianche (1952), Pisa, ETS, 2015

c) Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. L'identità nera tra modernità e doppia coscienza, Miano, Meltemi, 2019

 

Given the great breadth and variety of the bibliographies on all the authors in the program, precise indications regarding critical texts or essays to accompany the reading will be provided by the professor in class and, when possible, essays will be uploaded onto "Virtual".

 

Students presenting a 6-credit course will have their program halved: they will read three literary texts of their choice as long as they are taken from different groups (i.e. not all three texts from one or the other block).

 

Non-attending students will add the reading of: Riccardo Bonavita, Spettri dell'altro, Bologna, il Mulino, 2010

Texts that are less available, or possibly no longer on stock, are in any case available at the Library of the Department of Classical and Italian Philology or in other libraries of the Polo Bolognese. The locations can be found thanks to the national Opac (www.sbn.it) or the Polo Bolognese Opac (https://sol.unibo.it).

 

Teaching methods

The professor will hold 30 lectures of 2 hours each. Discussion will be encouraged immediately after.

Assessment methods

The oral test consists in an oral interview which has the aim of evaluating the critical and methodological ability of the students. The students will be invited to discuss the texts on the course programme. The student must demonstrate an appropriate knowledge of the bibliography in the course programme. Those students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during the lessons, are able to use these critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence.
Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a ‘fair' mark. A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a pass mark or just above a pass mark.

Teaching tools

Video projector, PC, overhead projector, possibly slides and notes from the lessons. Essays from open access literary journals. 

Office hours

See the website of Luigi Weber