Unit AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE
- Course
- Italian, classical studies and european history
- Study-unit Code
- A000186
- Curriculum
- Letteratura e filologia italiana
- Teacher
- Mirella Vallone
- Teachers
-
- Mirella Vallone
- Hours
- 36 ore - Mirella Vallone
- CFU
- 6
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2021
- Offered
- 2021/22
- Learning activities
- Caratterizzante
- Area
- Lingue e letterature moderne
- Academic discipline
- L-LIN/11
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- English
- Contents
- “The measure of our lives”: Toni Morrison’s legacy
The course will take into examination Toni Morrison’s poetics. Through a selection of her critical and narrative texts it will analyze Morrison’s contribution to American culture starting from the recovery of African American history and tradition, through the analysis of the role of memory in filling in the gaps and healing the trauma of slavery and discrimination, and to the re-writing of national history. The course will consider Morrison’s experimentations in the novel analyzing texts in which the modernist tradition is imbued with African American oral culture and music to convey the complexity and interrelatedness of historical, class, gender and racial issues. It will also consider Morrison's legacy as it is expressed in the works of some contemporary African American writers. - Reference texts
- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.
Toni Morrison, Beloved.
Toni Morrison, What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction.
Texts of literary criticism will be added to the reading list at the beginning of the course. - Educational objectives
- At the end of the course, students should be able to understand the notions of identity, race, class, and gender, and of their complex interactions in American society; they should be able to perform a critical and formal text analysis of the literary works included in the reading list; they shoud be able to comment on the literary texts with an appropriate critical language.
- Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of American history and literature.
- Teaching methods
- Lectures and seminars.
- Learning verification modality
- Oral examination on the issues and texts of the course.
- Extended program
- “The measure of our lives”: Toni Morrison’s legacy
The course will take into examination Toni Morrison’s poetics. Through a selection of her critical and narrative texts it will analyze Morrison’s contribution to American culture starting from the recovery of African American history and tradition, through the analysis of the role of memory in filling in the gaps and healing the trauma of slavery and discrimination, and to the re-writing of national history. The course will consider Morrison’s experimentations in the novel analyzing texts in which the modernist tradition is imbued with African American oral culture and music to convey the complexity and interrelatedness of historical, class, gender and racial issues. It will also consider Morrison's legacy as it is expressed in the works of some contemporary African American writers.