79050 - STUDI DI GENERE\GENDER STUDIES (LM)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

Gli studenti e le studentesse acquisiscono conoscenze approfondite delle teorie e metodologie degli studi di genere in diversi contesti culturali. Il corso intende favorire l’analisi delle rappresentazioni e costruzioni di genere e del rapporto identità/alterita' in diverse forme testuali (teorie critiche, narrativa, testi visuali) in una prospettiva interculturale.

Contenuti

Improper Subjects, Improper Feelings

Through the frames of women’s and gender studies, black feminist, queer and transfeminist studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, the course tackles how specific subjectivities and communities are oppressed and constructed as improper in relation to a regulatory and exclusionary norm: as the “constitutive outside […] which is, after all, ‘inside’ the subject as its own founding repudiation” (Judith Butler).

Starting from these marginalised positions, as places of oppression but also sites of radical openness (bell hooks), and with examples in particular from speculative fiction, the aim of the course is to explore possible transversal and transcultural alliances that imagine and point toward utopian futures, as well as the strategies and forms of resistance that these subjectivities and communities employ by embracing and embodying a series of improper feelings (e.g. erotic, rage, dysphoria, unhappiness, failure) that expose, deconstruct and make that regulatory norm explode from the inside.

Some key critical concepts related to the course: feminist and transfeminist figurations; hope, future and utopia; black, postcolonial and decolonial feminism; intersectionality; disidentification; queer kinship; decolonizing epistemologies; orientations; queering ethnicities; abject and monstrosity.

The program is in progress (some essays from “Critical Theories” might change). Please do check this webpage for further notice.

Testi/Bibliografia

Novels

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)

Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories (1991)

Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Bernardine Evaristo, Soul Tourists (2005)

Janette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019)

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (2016)

Critical Theories

Ahmed, Sara, “Orientations: Toward a Queer Phenomenology”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 12, n. 4, 2006, pp. 543-574.

Ahmed, Sara, “Unhappy Queer”, in The Promise of Happiness, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2010 pp. 88-120.

Ahmed, Sara, “Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)”, The Scholar and Feminist Online, vol. 8, n. 3, 2010.

Anzaldúa, Gloria, “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness”, in Borderlands. La frontera. The New Mestiza, San Francisco, Spinsters and Aunt Lute Book Company, 1987, pp. 77-91.

Braidotti, Rosi “Difference, Diversity, and Nomadic Subjectivity” online document, http://women.ped.kun.nl, 2000 (If the link does not work the file is available on Virtuale)

Butler, Judith, “Introduction”, in Bodies that Matter. On the Discoursive Limits of “Sex” [ed. or. 1993], New York and London, Routledge, 2011, pp. xi-xxx.

El-Tayeb, Fatima, “Introduction: Theorizing Urban Minority Communities in Postnational Europe”, in European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 2011, pp. xii-xlvi.

Halberstam, Jack, “Introduction: Low Theory”, The Queer Art of Failure, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 1-25.

Haraway, Donna J, “A Cyborg Manifesto. Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in The Late Twentieth Century” [ed. or. 1984], in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature, New York and London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 149-181.

hooks, bell, “Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness”, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, n. 36, 1989, pp. 15-23.

Irigaray, Luce, “Divine Women" [ed. or. “Femmes divines” 1985], in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.), Women, Knowledge, and Reality. Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, New York, Routledge, 1996, pp. 471-484.

Irigaray, Luce, “When our Lips Speak Together”, Signs, vol 6, n. 1, 1980, pp. 69-79.

Lorde, Audre, “The Uses of the Erotic. The Erotic as Power”, in Sister Outsider. Essays and Speeches, Berkeley, The Crossing Press, 1984, pp. 53-59.

Lugones, María, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System”, Hypatia, vol. 22, n. 1, 2007, pp. 186-209.

Lugones, María, "Toward a Decolonial Feminism", Hypatia, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2010, pp. 742-759.

Monticelli, Rita, “‘I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess’: Genealogies, Re-Visions of the Body, and Feminist Figurations”, in L.M. Crisafulli and G. Golinelli (eds.), Women’s Voices and Genealogies in Literary Studies in English, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, pp. 41 – 56.

Muñoz, José Esteban, “Introduction: Performing Disidentifications” in Disidentifications. Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis and London, University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 1-34.

Muñoz, José Esteban, “Introduction: Feeling Utopia” in Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York and London, 2009, pp. 1-18.

Preciado, Paul B., Dysphoria mundi [2022], Roma, Fandango Libri, 2023, pp. 11-65 (Ch. “Dysphoria mon amour”; “Ipotesi rivoluzione”).

Russell, Legacy, Glitch Feminism. A Manifesto, London and New York, Verso, 2020 (excerpts)

Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book”, in Diacritics. A Review of Contemporary Criticism, vol. 17, n. 2, 1987, pp. 65-81.

Spivak, Gayatri C., “Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: a Reader, edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams, New York, Sidney, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, pp. 66-111.

Stryker, Susan, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix. Performing Transgender Rage”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Vol. 1, 1994, pp. 237-254.

Bibliography and further information will be provided also during the lessons (and then published in the online reading list). Students who cannot attend lessons must contact the lecturer via e-mail before the exam. Students are requested to check the online program also during the course for further notice and information.

B.A students are not admitted.

Exchange students are requested to contact the lecturer before enrolling in the course.

Metodi didattici

Lessons and discussions. Language: English

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Students of Feminist Theory between Difference and Diversity (10 CFU) are requested to read and analyse:

- 4 novels;

- about 250 pages to be chosen from the list of critical theories.

Students of English Literature / Literature of English-speaking Countries 2 (LM) (9 CFU) are requested to read and analyse:

- 4 novels;

- about 200/220 pages to be chosen from the list of critical theories.

Students of Gender Studies (6 CFU) are requested to read and analyse:

- 3 novels;

- about 150 pages to be chosen from the list of critical theories.

Active participation in class discussions: 20%. By participation in class we mean the ability of the student to enter the debates, contributing with questions and/or elaborations of the topics proposed by the lecturer. This participation does not aim at testing students' specific preparation in the field, rather, to favor their ability to take part in discussions and their capability to discuss in group.

Final oral exams: 80%

The final oral exam will test the student's critical capability, their knowledge of the methodologies employed, their ability to combine theories with the analyses of the case studies chosen. The close reading of the texts aims at showing the student's critical ability, their knowledge not only of the texts but also of their context of creation together with the cultural politics that inform them. Students are requested to use an appropriate language, to be able to articulate their thought in English (high level), and to have an accurate knowledge of the bibliography chosen for the exam.

Grades:

Excellent: Students' high capability to elaborate on the existing debates on the topics chosen, originality of thought and excellent knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, their ability to read them within an intersectional perspective, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, accurate and appropriate language.

Very good level: Students' capability to elaborate on the existing debates on the topics chosen, originality of thought and very good knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, their ability to read them within an intersectional perspective, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, and accurate and appropriate language.

Good level: Students' capability to elaborate on the existing debates on the topics chosen, knowledge of the theories and of the texts chosen for the exam, using also the theories employed during the course and showing comprehension of the bibliography chosen, and appropriate language.

Pass: Mnemonic and superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a sufficient analytical ability, non-satisfactory use of appropriate language.

Fail: Student's lack of knowledge of the theories employed during the course, incapability to critical reading of the novels, inappropriate and inaccurate language.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Francesco Cattani