AMERICAN LANGUAGE

The course is part of the core offering of the MA degree in American, European and Postcolonial languages and Cultures and of the MA degree in Language Sciences. It aims to offer students and advanced knowledge and advanced competences in English. The module focuses on the development of US English and provides students with the necessary tools to master the English language not only as far as interaction and oral productions are concerned but also in writing, as well as theoretical tools to further their reflection on language.

The context of this year's American Language is the scrutiny of language – of the thought it provokes, of its representation, and of its workings – in key American texts spanning from the nineteenth-century to our times. The investigation will revolve around the issue stated in the course subtitle: "Antigone in America: The Psychic Life of Language." The course will build on an interdisciplinary method that draws on the resources of linguistics, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Under my guidance, students will learn to pursue a motif, draw connections, and write a research paper on a selected topic or text of interest.
A detailed description of the course is available on Moodle (Syllabus).

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to

• Reading, appreciating, and talking about the language of key American texts across time;
• Practice identifying and pursuing a specific issue or motif running through a range of texts, motivating its value and interest;
• Become familiar with an interdisciplinary methodology;
• Reflect on the link between US English and the intellectual life of the nation;
• Develop a general awareness of the power of US English to vehicle key ideas of our time across national and geographical borders;
• Participate in a debate, turn-taking, respond to the work of peers, offering productive feedback;
• Deliver an audience-oriented presentation;
• Research: learning to identify appropriate academic resources to acquire scientific knowledge on a topic of interest, thus learning about a topic/problem/issue of interest through conversation with quality scholarship;
• Produce a research paper that is the outcome of reflection and of the attempt to build on the idea of others and exhibits the features of an academic paper (with paragraphing and argument);

Level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference.
The course assumes a proficient user at the C1/C2 level of the Common European Frame of Reference.

As you know, language can be approached in different ways: it can be conceived as a set of structures and a system of signs; it can be examined as an ensemble of multiple codes (along the findings of semiotics), or by looking at diverse functions. In no case, however, language is just a neutral or abstract entity, but always a transindividual and collective reality that carries in itself the traces of cultural memory and of the relation to the past. This is why we customarily think of language as inseparable from culture and as the prime figure of the social tie. Another way of saying this is to suggest, as part of the course subtitle does, that language has a “psychic life.” In no other realm this is truer than in literature, especially in what we consider as classics. We’ll take our cue from one such texts, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden because it reenacts -- metaphorically -- the moment of origin: the Puritans driven from their native land by tyranny and oppression and compelled to take up their abode in the woods to build the “city on the hill.” Divided between the claim of independence from that troubling origin and the need to identify with it, Thoreau’s solution is to transform the origin into something coeval and no longer haunting by proposing the fascinating notion of the “father tongue” as quite distinct from speech. We will embark on an exciting journey of discovery of the meaning of “father tongue” and its contemporary metamorphoses.
We will embark on an exciting journey of discovery of the meaning of “father tongue” and its contemporary metamorphoses. We shall see that for Thoreau, as for his friend Emerson, the father tongue is not a patriarchal principle of authority; rather, it is a reflective and indirect relationship to the written words of the past; it is a way of negotiating the wild idealism of the fathers and correcting their failures by transforming the patriarchal bond of kinship (fathers-sons (or daughters)) into a more essential human bond, one that is less forbidding and more generative. The “father tongue” responds to the American writer’s incarnation of that mood with the suggestion of a shadow language that can reach the ear beyond speech and give new birth to the speaker. The notion interests us particularly because it calls attention to what might remain unknowable or unsayable in speech.
But in order to illuminate more fully the potential of the idea of the “father tongue,” we will resort to the figure of Antigone, and thanks to this myth we will introduce feminist and dissenting American writers who, in times of crisis, place themselves outside the city and, exactly like Antigone, invoke an ethical reshaping of discourse. Antigone rebels against the law of the tyrant Creon, which forbids to give the dignity of burial to the enemies of the city, and decides, at the cost of her own life, to perform burial rites for her brother, who is considered a traitor. The equivocal terms of her kinship with Oedipus (Oedipus is at once father and brother, because they share a mother in Jocasta) will pave the way for our hypothesis: that in insisting on burying her brother Antigone places in full view the transformation of the paternal and patriarchal bond (power, norms, obedience/disobedience) into a brotherly tie or essential human bond of proximity and empathy.

REQUIRED TEXTS
Please note that the list below comprises the core texts for the course; these are the mandatory readings that we will work on week after week according to the schedule published in the SYLLABUS (uploaded on Moodle). Please note that two of them, Sophocles and Sontag, are in print format and are available at Libreria Cafoscarina; the rest are made available by me in PDF format on Moodle, in the folder called “Required Texts: Course Packet.” I strongly encourage you to print all the online sources and collect them neatly in a booklet for study purposes.

Sophocles, Antigone (Penguin). PRINT. Available at Libreria Cafoscarina
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (Penguin, 2003). PRINT. Available at Libreria Cafoscarina

Course Packet containing:
Henry David Thoreau, “Reading.” From Walden (1854). The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. Intro. By Joyce Carol Oates. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 99-110.
(Moodle)
Stanley Cavell, “Words and Sentences.” The Cavell Reader. Ed. Stephen Mulhall. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 260-294; 260-272 only. (Moodle)
T. S. Eliot, “A Game of Chess,” The Waste Land (1922), lines 77-173. From The Poems of T. S. Eliot. Vol. I: Collected and Uncollected Poems. Eds. Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. London: Faber and Faber, 2015. pp. 58-61 (Moodle)
Gertrude Stein, brief excerpts from “Objects,” from Tender Buttons (1914). Writings 1903-1932, vol I. Eds. Catharine R. Stimpson and Harriet Chessman. Library of America, 1998. pp. p. 313; 315; pp. 325-326. (Moodle )
Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Sister/Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984. 110-113.


SUGGESTED READINGS
Non-attending students will be responsible for all the required readings listed above and for the two additional readings listed below. Please note that the readings below are mandatory for all non-attending students:
Julia Kristeva, Language the Unknown: An Initiation into Linguistics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), part I and part III (Moodle)
Mena Mitrano, English for American Studies: The Delectable Speaker (Venice: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, 2021), chapters 2, 3, 4, 6. PRINT. Available at Libreria Cafoscarina.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION: ATTENDING STUDENTS

Your final grade for this course will result from a combination of the following: active class contribution, which comprises your weekly readings, a presentation during the student-led seminar, any assignments, and the final research paper. The final research paper should be 5-7 pages in length on a topic proposed by you and agreed upon with the professor. The research paper must be submitted on the last day of class. Documentation style: MLA.
For attending students there will be final oral exam. It will be an opportunity to discuss your final research paper. Therefore, attending students who commit to the course should think of the oral exam as a conversation. The aim of this conversation is to build on issues raised in your research paper and invite connections with the rest of the course materials. For example, once we establish a connection with a particular text in our course, I will, for example, ask you to offer a close reading of a passage, and your reading, explication, and linguistic analysis will contribute to the evaluation of your oral exam, together with the discussion of your final paper.

Thus, to recap, elements of evaluation for attending students:
Active class participation 20%
Student-run seminar 20%
Final research paper 50%
Final oral exam 10%
Additional bonus for students who have regularly attended Esercitazioni Linguistiche and have earned a final assessment of their language competences at the B+ level and at the A level.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION: NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS/STUDENT WORKERS
The elements of evaluation for non-attending students are: a final research paper and a final oral exam. To prepare adequately for the oral exam, non-attending students will be responsible for all the required readings, plus the two (2) additional readings listed in the “Suggested readings” section of the syllabus. As for the production of the final research paper, non-attending students are strongly encouraged to contact me during the semester to discuss their work in progress. All non-attending students must hand in their final research paper (5-7 pp) before the final exam. Documentation style: MLA. The MLA stylesheet is available at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/
The final oral exam for non-attending students will be a formal exam, with the aim of testing your knowledge of the course materials, hence it will contribute in a substantial way to your final grade.
Thus, to recap, elements of evaluation for attending students:

Final research paper 40%
Final oral exam 60%
Additional bonus for students who have regularly attended Esercitazioni Linguistiche and have earned a final assessment of their language competences at the B+ level and at the A level.

The course builds on the competences indicated by the CEFR at that the C1/C2 and furthers them, with special regard to the ability to reconstruct the arguments of others and produce coherent individual presentations. Students practice how to enter an ongoing academic debate by offering their reflections for peer discussion and by producing a well-structured and well-documented research paper. The paper will exhibit all the defining features of an academic paper, including a solid engagement of the work of others in the relevant realm of research, a coherent argument through solid and effective paragraphing, and an overall awareness of the academic ethical code.
Lecture
Student presentations and student-run seminars
Interactive class discussion

English

Teaching language: 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