AMERICAN CULTURAL STUDIES

The course is part of the graduate degree in American, European, and Postcolonial Languages and Culture, Language Sciences and Comparative International Relations (American curriculum). 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 textual and visual cultural material, using a specific critical vocabulary.

This is an Advanced course in American cultural studies with the following learning goals:
a) comprehension of the historical development of the concept of race, with specific reference to blackness in the US context from the first contact in 1619 till contemporary phenomena such as Black Lives Matter; development of critical knowledge on this theme, understood in a diacronic and synchronic way, and on the complex relation between blackness and whiteness as a political act determined by the progressive request of authority and agency by African American citizens
b) development of students' critical skills by stimulating the elaboration of original ideas within a specific area of study
c) building students' analytical skill by adopting a multi- and interdisciplinary approach
d) development of independent and autonomous study through the possibility of personal research to be presented to the class.

Advance knowledge of written and spoken English.
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)
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
PAY ATTENTION: students who cannot attend the course must study the material in the FURTHER READINGS folder on Moodle and specify it at the moment of the exam.

a) Final oral exam of about 30 minutes. Students must be able to discuss a topic thoroughly. Every student is asked 3 questions (specific or broad) on 3 different topics, which the students must use to organize their critical discourse on the themes of the course. The questions may be the comment of a text, a precise data/title/etc, or a broad investigation of a topic. The exam is not thought of as a test but as a critical discussion, whose aim is the assessment of the learning goals (knowledge of the historical and critical frame and of the texts; comparative and analytical skills; independent thought; communicative skills).
Primary and secondary sources are mandatory.

b) Participation in the class debate will be evaluated positively (10%).
NOTE: Class presentations of about 20 minutes on an accorded topic. This is an additional way to show class participation. However, because of the number of students, presentation-time cannot be granted to every student. Although extremely welcome and encouraged, especially if in group, class presentations are not mandatory but are part of your active class participation.

c) This a "blended course", which means 30% of the lessons are online. Any kind of online activity is mandatory. Students who do not do the online activities will be considered non-attendee.

Seminar with class debates and class presentations by students.
Please consider that the COVID-19 pandemic has not ended yet; this may have an impact on the teaching methods.

English

Because of the COVID19 emergency, lessons and exam modality may vary. Please, check the announcements on the professor's page and on Moodle. Remember also to active and daily check your institutional mail (unive.it).

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