27928 - Laboratory (1) (LM) (ENG)

Academic Year 2020/2021

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Italian Studies, European Literary Cultures, Linguistics (cod. 9220)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the lab, students are equipped with managing and organising complex themes tied to linguistics, and with applying methods tied to critical linguistic analysis.

Course contents

Taught in conjunction with Dr Barbara Montecchi and Dr Miguel Valério of the ERC INSCRIBE Project.

Writing is perhaps the most important invention in the history of humankind. But how do we define writing? How was it invented, when and where? What are the linguistic mechanisms underlying this invention?

The course is centred on the invention of writing in the world, in Mesopotamia. Egypt, China and Mesoamerica. Case-studies of potential invention from Easter Island and the Indus Valley script will be considered and discussed, with a foray into the earliest scripts in Europe, which are still undeciphered, from the II millennium BC in the Aegean, namely from Crete and Cyprus.

From cuneiform, to hieroglyphs both Maya and Egyptian, the alphabets and the Chinese script, and other typologies of scripts, like the Cherokee alphabet and the runes, the course will survey hte greatest successes in the history of decipherment, coded cyphers and scripts that are still undeciphered, and the modern methods to uncode them.

Readings/Bibliography

Intros

G. Cardona. 2009. Antropologia della scrittura.

A. Robinson.1995. The Story of Writing. London.

M. Pope. 1978. La decifrazione delle scritture scomparse. L’avventura dell’espressione umana dall’immagine all’alfabeto. Roma.

Additional Material

In class, and also online in pdf or ppt on the IOL e-learning platform.

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures, with active participation and interaction from the students, with chosen topics to be explored individually, via presentations and short essays. 

Assessment methods

Assessment revolves around:

  1. Regular attendance and participation in class
  2. individual directed study with chosen topics (ppt, essays), but this is optional.

Teaching tools

All pptx presentations of the lectures will be uploaded and made available on the e-learning platform IOL.

Office hours

See the website of Silvia Ferrara