AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES MOD. 1

The course is part of the graduate degree in American, European, and Postcolonial Languages and Culture, Language Sciences and Comparative International Relations. Its aim is to provide students advanced skill in and knowledge about the analysis of American culture through a multidisciplinary approach. Students are expected to develop autonomous critical skills and to be able to analyze and contextualize heterogeneous cultural material (textual and visual), using a specific critical vocabulary.

This is an Advanced course in American cultural studies that provides students with the opportunity to develop original critical thinking and apply it to a specific area of study. The course aims at building analytical and critical skills by adopting a multi- and interdisciplinary approach, and by integrating previous knowledge with independent and autonomous study.

Advance knowledge of written and spoken English (≥ C1).
Ability to enrich the syllabus through individual research of material and independent study

The course aims at critically investigate the question of race in American culture and nation, with an emphasis on blackness, its meanings and its representations. The course will feature heterogeneous materials including literary (political speeches and texts, poems, novels, essays) and cinematic (movies, documentaries, videos) products.

Primary texts:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (extracts)
D. W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation (1915) (film)
Langston Hughes, “I, too, Sing”; “The Weary Blues”
Governor Wallace, “Segregation Now”
Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”
Malcom X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”
Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power” speech
Alex Haley, Roots. (some chapters)
Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained
Obama, “A More Perfect Union”

Secondary sources:
Daniel, Reginald. “Race, Multiraciality, and Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union”
Paul Finkelman, “The Monster of Monticello” The New York Times, 2012
Annette Gordon-Reed, “Sally Hemings Takes Center Stage”, The New York Times, 2018
Entry “Miscegenation” e “Ku Klux Klan” da …
Jack Temple Kirby, “D.W. Griffith’s Racial Portraiture”. Phylon 39.2 (1978): 118-127
Leslie Fiedler, “The Anti-Tom Novel and the Coming of the First Great War: From Thomas Dixon, Jr. to D.W. Grifffith”. In What Was Literature? Class Culture and Mass Society. New York: Touchstone, 1982.
Neil Campbell and Alasdair Kean, “African Americans”, in American Cultural Studies: An Introduction to American Culture

Other primary and critical essays will be uploaded to the Moodle platform

Oral exam. Participation in the class debate will be evaluated positively.

Seminar with class debates and class presentations by students

English

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