Anglo-American Cultures I
A.Y. 2024/2025
Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding: students, who are expected to know and be able to apply basic cultural studies methodologies, will be led to better define and analyse the relationships between culture, discursive strategies, social phenomena, mass communication, production and consumption of cultural products, and to analyze them from the perspective of ideology and their social, spatial, historical and political contexts. Within the frame of their improved language competences and awareness , they will be led to gain an improved awareness of the relationship between language and cultures within the US context and in connection with the chosen syllabus. MA courses are meant for qualitative, more than quantitative, study and tends to privilege a limited number of texts that must be read and analyzed with sophisticated skills.
Expected learning outcomes
Students will be required to be fluent in both written and spoken English in approaching texts and topics of relevant complexity and belonging to the field of culture, society and literature, managing the required critical lexis and organizing contents coherently. They must prove familiar with the texts proposed in the syllabus and they must be able to analyse them both at the syntagmatic level and at the paradigmatic one.
Moreover they must prove able to approach texts and topic autonomously, exploiting the methodological tools acquired during their MA training, therefore completing their linguistic training through the cultural one.
Moreover they must prove able to approach texts and topic autonomously, exploiting the methodological tools acquired during their MA training, therefore completing their linguistic training through the cultural one.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course can be attended as a single course.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Lesson period
Second semester
Course syllabus
Small-town America: Heartland, Main Street, and more
Representations of small-town America are everywhere, from fiction to film, architecture to photography, diners to Disneyland. Particularly since the 1920s, a mythology of the small town as a place at once ideal and contradictory has taken shape. Ideally set against the diversity and sophistication of the big city, the small town has been constructed both as a symbol of authenticity and simplicity to which one can nostalgically return and as a place of social contradictions and tensions. We will examine both the sociological and urbanistic phenomena necessary to contextualize the centrality of the small town in American history and geography, as well as its cultural representations, focusing on two fictional texts (Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, 1919 and Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 1940), films, television series, and photography.
Representations of small-town America are everywhere, from fiction to film, architecture to photography, diners to Disneyland. Particularly since the 1920s, a mythology of the small town as a place at once ideal and contradictory has taken shape. Ideally set against the diversity and sophistication of the big city, the small town has been constructed both as a symbol of authenticity and simplicity to which one can nostalgically return and as a place of social contradictions and tensions. We will examine both the sociological and urbanistic phenomena necessary to contextualize the centrality of the small town in American history and geography, as well as its cultural representations, focusing on two fictional texts (Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, 1919 and Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 1940), films, television series, and photography.
Prerequisites for admission
Students should be able to read and understand complex texts in English and express a critical opinion on the proposed content, while also demonstrating good methodological competence.
Teaching methods
Classes will develop partly on a lecture-based method and partly as a seminar. Guest speakers on specific topics will be invited.
Teaching Resources
Required texts:
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919),
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940),
8 essays to be defined.
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919),
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940),
8 essays to be defined.
Assessment methods and Criteria
Attending students will have the opportunity to write a final essay that will be agreed upon in detail (topic, bibliography, length). The overall assessment will be communicated at the end of the oral examination. For non-attending students (and attending students who do not opt for the essay) there will be a final oral examination.
L-LIN/11 - ANGLO - AMERICAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES - University credits: 6
Lessons: 40 hours