78988 - Anthropology, Gender and Communication Processes

Learning outcomes

Students acquire the basic elements in the field of anthropology and historical novel; they acquire also the elements to interpretate literary text with an anthropological approach and gender oriented perspective; they can apply the acquired knowledge in the field of translation of literary text; they  can also independently elaborate further knowledge.

Course contents

Deconstructing the neuter. Languages, memory, micro-stories

Human and social sciences have a close connection with fiction. In particular, anthropology has always been strongly rooted in narrative. At first, anthropology questioned the possibility of representing reality by avoiding the alterations due to the observer; secondly, it focused on the changes that the the observer’s presence imposes on the observed system. In the literary field, numerous authors have addressed social issues and anthropological questions in their works. Among these issues, they have often attempted to represented the human experience under difficult conditions. Belonging to the scientific field, the idea of objectivity is excluded from the literary language. On the other side, the attempt to narrate a human truth by a situated narrative, or by multiple points of view, belongs to literature.

The conceptual and interdisciplinary core of the course is the transition from a neutral observer to a situated gaze at an epistemological level. The course focuses also on the transition from a representation which is presented as objective truth to a representation consisting of the interplay of partial stories.

This course proposes literature as a form of anthropology, an approach which dates back to the forms and theories of the social novel. In this context, the contemporary historical novel is placed at the core of the analysis and interpreted with a gender oriented perspective.

The course aims to address the following issues:

· Representations of body, gender and sexuality;

· The anthropological representation of characters, images and narrative situations. Diaspora, migration and colonization themes are also investigated in the representations colonized and the colonizers figures;

· The inner life’s representation and its relationship with agency.

Readings/Bibliography

James Clifford, I frutti puri impazziscono: etnografia, letteratura e arte nel secolo 20, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1999.
Introduction e chap. 1, "Sull'autorità etnografica" (disponibile nel materiale didattico)

Raffaella Baccolini (ed. by), Le prospettive di genere: discipline, soglie e confini, Bologna, Bononia university press, 2005.
Capitoli di: R. Baccolini (pp. 27-46), G. Rossetti (pp. 107-124), M. Palazzi (pp. 125-146), S. Stanford Friedman (pp. 265-292), R. Monticelli (pp. 321-338).

Emanuela Piga Bruni, La lotta e il negativo. Sul romanzo storico contemporaneo, Milano, Mimesis, 2018.
Chap. 1, 2.

Other texts

Zelda Alice Franceschi, Storie di vita, autobiografie, Milano, Ledizioni, 2012

Cristina Demaria, Teorie di genere. Femminismi e semiotica, Milano, Bompiani, 2019 (n. ed.)

Sandro Bellassai, Politica e immaginario maschile nell'Italia contemporanea, Roma, Carocci, 2011

Teaching methods

Lectures and discussions

Assessment methods

Oral exams and collective presentations focused on a novel drawn from the program list

Teaching tools

Material available on the e-learning site.

Office hours

See the website of Emanuela Piga Bruni