32590 - Anglo-American Language and Literature (1) (2nd cycle)

Learning outcomes

The course 1980s New York Framed: Novelists, Filmmakers, Musicians, and Other Artists aims at reconstructing for the student the cultural climate of New York's artistic and intellectual fringes, in relation to their localization within the city, in areas with an intensified sense of community and interchange of different forms of art. Its ample thematic survey deals with a particularly exciting moment in the cultural history of NYC, and students will become aware of the primary cultural importance of the interrelation of identity, place, architecture, art.

N.B.: This course has been selected for the US students of EU/US Atlantis Programme Global Cities/Global Citizenship.

Course contents

The course 1980s New York Framed: Novelists, Filmmakers, Musicians, and Other Artists aims at reconstructing for the student the cultural climate of New York's artistic and intellectual fringes, in relation to their localization within the city, in areas with an intensified sense of community and interchange of different forms of art. Its ample thematic survey deals with a particularly exciting moment in the cultural history of NYC, and students will become aware of the primary cultural importance of the interrelation of identity, place, architecture, art.

N.B.: This course has been selected for the US students of EU/US Atlantis Programme Global Cities/Global Citizenship.

Readings/Bibliography

Background readings [& selected materials]

 

·         Abu-Lughod, Janet L. From Urban Village to East Village. The Battle for New York's Lower East Side. Oxford UK & Cambridge USA: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1994 [selected material: Appendix to Chapter 6 – Mario Maffi, “The Other Side of the Coin: Culture in Loisaida”, pp. 141-147]

·         Algarín, Miguel and Holman, Bob (eds.). Aloud. Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1994 [selected material:”Congratulations”, invocation by BH & “The Sidewalk of High Art”, introduction by MA, pp. 1-28]

·         Belsito, Peter (ed.). Notes from the Pop Underground. Berkeley: The Last Gasp of San Francisco, 1985 [selected material: “Raw Magazine”, an interview with Françoise Mouly & Art Spiegelman, pp. 85-95; “Jim Jarmusch”, pp. 57-71]

·         Campbell, Neil and Kean , Alasdair . American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture, London/New York: Routledge, 1997 [selected material: Chapter 6 – “The American City. ‘The old knot of contrariety'”, pp. 162-187]

·         Charyn, Jerome. Metropolis. New York as Myth, Marketplace and Magical Land, New York: Sphere Books/Viking Penguin, 1986 [selected material: Ch. 5 - ”Material Girl”, pp. 105-123]

·         Cognetti, Paolo. New York è una finestra senza tende, Bari: Laterza, 2010

·         deAk, Edit. “Nightclubing: Urban Kisses/Slum Hisses”, in  Alan Moore and Marc Miller (eds.), ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery, New York: ABC No Rio with Collaborative Projects, 1985

• Hager, Steven. Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986

·         Hoberman, J. Vulgar Modernism.Writing on Movies and Other Media. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991 [selected material: “Vulgar Modernism” (1982), pp. 32-40]

·         Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York. A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994

·         Lopate, Phillip (ed.). Writing New York. A Literary Anthology, New York: The Library of America, 1998 (advised edition: [Expanded] 10th Anniversary Edition, 2008)

·         Maffi, Mario. Gateway to the Promised Land: Ethnicity and Culture in New York's Lower East Side. New York: New York University Press, 1995

• Maffi, Mario. New York City: An Outsider's Inside View (Urban Life & Urban Landscape), Ohio University Press, 2004

·         Minganti, Franco. “New American Fictions. New? American? Fictions? New Wave cinematografica e storytelling letterario”, in Pierpaolo Loffreda (ed.), New York New Wave, Pesaro: Editrice Flaminia, 1989

·         Minganti, Franco. “1939: Flying Eyes. Flight, Metropolis, and Icons of Popular Imagination”, in Storia Nordamericana, vol. 7, n. 1, 1990

·         Minganti, Franco. “Imaginary Drifts Down Loisaida's City Streets”, in Mario Maffi and Franco Minganti, “City Maps and City Alphabets” (also editors of the accompanying video In the City of Contradictions), in The City As Text, RSA. Rivista di Studi Anglo-Americani , vol. VI, n. 8, 1990

• Musto, Michael. Downtown. New York: Vintage, 1986.

·         Petterson, Clayton. Captured. A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005

• Phelps, Donald. Covering Ground: Essays for Now, New York: Croton Press, 1969 [selected material: “The Muck School”, pp. 36-44]

·         Siegle, Robert. Suburban Ambush. Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency . Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989 [selected material: “Preface/Suburban Ambush”, pp. XI-46]

·         Sleeper, Jim (ed.). In Search of New York. New Brunswick (US)/Oxford (UK): Transaction Publishers, 1989

·         Sukenick, Ronald. Down and In. Life in the Underground. New York: Collier Books/Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987

·         Wakefield, Dan. New York in the 50s. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin/Seymour Lawrence, 1992

• Wolfe, Gerard W. New York. A Guide to the Metropolis. Walking Tours of Architecture and History, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1975, 1994

 

Fictions

 

·         Joel Rose and Catherine Texier (eds.), Between C & D. New Writing from the Lower East Side Fiction Magazine, New York: Penguin, 1988 [selected material: “Introduction”; Ron Kolm, “Duke & Jill”, pp. 164-166; Tama Janowitz, “Case History #179”, pp. 85-87; Katherine Texier, “The Fedora”, pp. 42-61; Kathy Acker, “Male”, pp. 21-28]

·         Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985), in The New York Trilogy , New York: Penguin, 1990.

·         Jerome Charyn, War Cries Over Avenue C, New York: Penguin Books, 1985 [selected material: “The Alphabet Blocks”, pp. 7-10; “Saigon Sarah”, pp. 13-19; “Alphabetville”, pp. 53-73]

·         Emily Listfield, It Was Gonna Be Like Paris, New York: Dial Press, 1984 [selected material, pp. 1-13]

·         Catherine Texier, Love Me Tender, London: Paladin, 1987, [selected material: “The Red High Heels”; “Scenes of New York Life #7”, pp. 1-11]

 

NB: All selected materials, collected in a folder identified by the course title and name of the instructor, can be accessed through the desk of Biblioteca del Dipartimento di Lingue (v. Cartoleria, 5). Students are kindly requested to t reat the materials carefully without damaging, altering, nor losing them.

 

Films

 

Primary selections :[1]

 

New York Framed (Keith Griffith and Simon Field, 1988)

Bridges-Go-Round (Shirley Clarke, 1958)

Greenwich Village Sunday 1960 [*]

Pull My Daisy (Robert Frank & Alfred Leslie, 1959) [*]

Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959) [*]

Permanent Vacation (Jim Jarmusch, 1980)

The Blank Generation/Dancing Barefoot  (Amos Poe & Ivan Kral, 1976) [*]

Blank Generation (Uli Lommel, 1980)

Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1981)

Liquid Sky (Slava Tsukermann, 1984) [*]

Downtown 81 (Edo Bertoglio, 1981/2000) [*]

Mixed Blood (Paul Morissey, 1984)

 

 

[1] T hese films will be screened during the course (in full or in part) and knowing them is definitely required for the final.

[*] Available, at least partially, on either YouTube.com, or video.google.com, or else on other internet sources.

 

Secondary selections :[2]

 

Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984) [*]

Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch, 2003) [*]

Empire (Andy Warhol, 1964) [*]

Various Warhol “screen tests” [*]

Empire II (Amos Poe, 2007) [*]

Fugs 1968 [*]

Chappaqua (Conrad Rooks, 1966) [*]

Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)

Unmade Beds (Amos Poe, 1976) [*]

The Foreigner (Amos Poe, 1977) [*]

Subway Riders (Amos Poe, 1981) [*]

Alphabet City (Amos Poe, 1984) [*]

Forty Deuce (Paul Morissey, 1982) [*]

Wild Style (Charles Ahearn, 1984) [*]

*batteries not included (Matthew Robbins, 1987) [*]

New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles, 1991) [*]

The Wrong Side of the Bridge (Paolo Cognetti & Giorgio Carella, 2006)

 

[2] Clips from these films will be screened during the course.

[*] Available, at least partially or in trailer form, on either YouTube.com, or video.google.com, or else on other internet sources.

 

Music & performance poetry

 

Lou Reed, David Wojnarowicz, the musicians of the New York downtown scene, the poets at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe & and many more (cfr. Various, Alphabet City, sub rosa, 1994; Various, New York Downtown: Jazz & Other Sounds, Knitting Factory, 1996; Lou Reed, New York, Sire, 1989; Nuyorican Symphony, Knitting Factory, 1993; Shelley Hirsch, O Little Town of East New York, Tzadik, 1995)

 

 

Comix

 

Art Spiegelman, Sue Coe, Mark Beyer, Gary Panter & others

Selections from Mad Magazine to RAW Magazine

Teaching methods

Seminar course [in English] with part lecture, part class discussion. Attendance is strongly recommended.

Assessment methods

Students will be required to write a paper after discussing its topic & outline with the instructor. The paper will be 12-15 pages long (*) and an oral conversation will take place about the paper, its correction, and the course syllabus

(*) by “page” we mean 2000 characters, spaces included.

Teaching tools

For this course we will resort to audiovisual materials of various kinds, some of which are rare or not particularly easy to find. That is why attendance is strongly recommended.

Office hours

See the website of Franco Minganti