Unit AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE I
- Course
- Languages, comparative literatures and intercultural translation
- Study-unit Code
- A004735
- Curriculum
- In all curricula
- Teacher
- Mirella Vallone
- Teachers
-
- Mirella Vallone
- Hours
- 54 ore - Mirella Vallone
- CFU
- 9
- Course Regulation
- Coorte 2024
- Offered
- 2024/25
- Learning activities
- Affine/integrativa
- Area
- Attività formative affini o integrative
- Academic discipline
- L-LIN/11
- Type of study-unit
- Opzionale (Optional)
- Type of learning activities
- Attività formativa monodisciplinare
- Language of instruction
- English
- Contents
- Regarding the Pain of Others: Trauma, Memory, and Representation in Contemporary American Literature
Starting from Freudian studies and arriving at the birth and development of Trauma Studies, the course will examine the relationship between trauma, memory, and representation through the analysis of literary and critical texts. In detail, trauma will be analyzed as a breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world and as an enigma of survival; as an experience that challenges the limits of language, and in its relationship with memory and identity. War and its representation, and the issues of vulnerability, relationality, and ethics will be examined as well. - Reference texts
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees.
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.
Felman, Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence - Educational objectives
- At the end of the course students should be able 1. to understand the development of the concept of trauma in relation to literary studies; 2. to analyze the texts studied in relation to their historical, social and cultural context and to perform a formal and critical analysis; 3. to effectively communicate the knowledge acquired with argumentative coherence and adequate critical language.
- Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of American history and literature.
- Teaching methods
- Lectures and seminars.
- Learning verification modality
- Oral exam. The exam will consist of an interview on the texts and topics covered in the course, aimed at verifying 1. the understanding of texts and their contexts; 2. the ability to apply the knowledge covered by the course; 3. the ability to expose and communicate what has been acquired with clarity and appropriate critical language.
- Extended program
- Regarding the Pain of Others: Trauma, Memory, and Representation in Contemporary American Literature
Starting from Freudian studies and arriving at the birth and development of Trauma Studies, the course will examine the relationship between trauma, memory, and representation through the analysis of literary and critical texts. In detail, trauma will be analyzed as a breach in the mind’s experience of time, self, and the world and as an enigma of survival; as an experience that challenges the limits of language, and in its relationship with memory and identity. War and its representation, and the issues of vulnerability, relationality, and ethics will be examined as well.