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 examining the beginning of the genre and its "golden" years, the course will focus on the literary and cinematic re-writings of the western at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Specifically, we will deal with how Native American and in general feminist approaches to the genre have critically engaged the idea of the frontier and the connected vision of the American westward expansion.

PRIMARY SOURCES
John O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”
Frederick Jackson Turner, from “The Significance of the Frontier in American Culture”, in The Norton Anthology
Theodore Roosevelt, from “The Strenuous Life”, in The Norton Anthology.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
John Wayne, The Searchers
Sherman Alexie, “My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys”
Louise Erdrich, “Dear John Wayne”
Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman (season 1)
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff
Sean Penn, Into the Wild

SECONDARY SOURCES
Richard Slotkin. “Myth and the Production of History”. Ideology and Classic American Literature. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen, editors.
Elisa Bordin, "On Westerns and Settler Migration: A Reading of Meek’s Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt" Iperstoria 17 (2021): 9-28. https://iperstoria.it/article/view/1011/1036
Elisa Bordin, Masculinity and Westerns: Regenerations at the Turn of the Millennium. Chap. 1 and 4.
William Savage. The Cowboy Hero. Chap. 2
Heike Paul, The Myths that Made America: An Introduction to American Studies, Chapter 1

MATERIAL FOR NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
Le frontiere del Far West. Forme di rappresentazione del grande mito americano, a cura di Stefano Rosso. Shake, 2008. Introduzione + capitolo Cartosio
More pages from Heike Paul, The Myths that Made America: An Introduction to American Studies, (see folder on Moodle)
Lorenzo Veracini, “Settler Colonialism”
Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2019.

ORAL EXAM (in English, 30 minutes):
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 questions on the extra-readings for non-attending students

Lectures, class discussion, and students' activities are possible teaching modalities of this course. Students who cannot attend classes must contact Prof. Bordin for alternative readings.

English

All students (both attending and non-attending ones) are required to subscribe to the Moodle page of the course.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development