HISTORY OF NORTH-AMERICAN CULTURE

The course aims at introducing students to American cultural studies through the acquisition of concepts and methodologies and the analysis of heterogeneous materials examined and contextualized from a historical/cultural perspective. Students are expected to develop autonomous ability to analyze cultural materials through a specific critical vocabulary of medium-advanced level.

The learning outcomes of these course entail developing:
1. Good knowledge of the basics in American cultural studies;
2. Ability to apply such knowledge to the critical analysis of cultural products;
3. Ability to formulate critical hypotheses and judgments;
4. Communication skills and appropriate terminology;
5. Autonomous reading of handbooks and suggested materials.

Good knowledge of English (≥ B2).

The course will deal with the western, understood as a literary and visual genre with a long genealogy in American culture, whose imaginative force expands from the past till the United States of today. After an introduction to beginning of the genre and its "golden" years, the course will examine literary and cinematic re-writings of the western at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century.

Primary Texts
O’Sullivan, “Manifest Destiny”
John Ford, The Searchers (1956)
Sherman Alexie, "My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys". 1993. The Western Reader. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, editors. New York: Limelight, 1998. 253-255.
Louise Erdrich, "Dear John Wayne"
Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV series)
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino

Secondary Sources
Richard Slotkin. “Myth and the Production of History”. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, editors.
Paul Heike, “Agrarianism, Expansionism, and the Myth of the American West”, in The Myths that Made America: An Introduction to American Studies
Neil Campbell and Alasdair Kean, “Approaches to Regionalism: The West and the South”, in American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture (solo parte sul West)
Elisa Bordin. Masculinity & Westerns: Regenerations at the Turn of the Millennium. Verona: Ombre corte 2014. (alcune parti)
More material on moodle

ORAL EXAM
1) assessment of students' general knowledge of the syllabus
2) identification and analysis of excerpts with the purpose of assessing skills for communication, analysis and contextualization
3) further question on the extra-readings for non-attending students

Lectures and class discussion
group activities

English

All students (both attending and non-attending) are required to subscribe to Moodle.
Please contact the professor for further information.

written and oral