
- UCAS course code
- PR30
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Course unit details:
Reading Italy: Medieval to Modern
Unit code | ITAL10500 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 1 |
Teaching period(s) | Full year |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
This course unit seeks to furnish students studying Italian language and culture with the intellectual and analytical tools needed to understand the processes of cultural production, circulation and reception as a necessary prequel to ‘making sense’ of the history of Italian cultural production.. In Semester 1 we will explore what we understand by ‘the Arts’ and the ‘humanities’ and their roots in the classical tradition of the Academy before moving on to consider how symbols work within urban and spatial contexts to generate identities and subjectivities through cultural translation and multiple forms of media, including film. In semester 2, the focus shifts to the analysis of specific forms of cultural production including the analysis of prose, poetic, and still and moving visual forms.Seminars focus on Italian language-specific and area-specific material that relate to the themes covered in lectures, allowing students to develop further linguistic and cultural competence in their language of study.
Pre/co-requisites
Unit title | Unit code | Requirement type | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Italian Cultural Studies | ITAL10300 | Co-Requisite | Compulsory |
Please note that if you take ITAL10500 at Level 1, you cannot take ITAL20500 at Level 2.
Available on which programme(s)? | Single Honours Italian Studies and all joint honours programmes with Italian Studies |
Aims
The principal aims of the course unit are as follows:
- To develop knowledge and understanding of specific aspects of Italian culture and society from the medieval period to the present day
- To develop critical thinking and higher-order conceptual reasoning and analytical skills
- To equip students with working definitions for key concepts in the Italian context such as periodization, identity, ‘nation’, ‘ideology’, ‘multiculturalism’, etc.
- To enable students to analyse and interrogate a variety of forms of written and visual cultural production in their contexts.
- Students on this course will hone their skills of analysis, academic writing and independent research.
Learning outcomes
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Syllabus
Semester 1
Week | Lecture | Seminar | |
1 | Unit introduction: lectures, seminars and assessment | ||
2 | Italian Cultures: the process of making | Seminar 1: Thinking about making | |
3 | Italian Cultures: the process of reading | ||
4 | Reading Space and Culture 1 | Seminar 2: Moving through the City | |
5 | Reading Space and Culture 2 | Formative Assessment Deadline 12pm, Thursday Week 5 | |
7 | Italian Cultural Translation and Reception 1 | Seminar 3: Translating Italy to Manchester | |
8 | Italian Cultural Translation and Reception 2 | ||
9 | Making and Reading Italian Culture Film form | Seminar 4: Film form terminology | |
10 | A Case Study: Federico Fellini’s Cinema | ||
11 | Federico Fellini’s I vitelloni | Seminar 5: I vitelloni Sequence analysis | |
12 | Revision class | Q and A session. Summative assessment deadline, Thursday Week 12 |
Semester 2
Week | Lecture | Seminar | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1 | Reading Italy: Introduction to the S2 Course. Renaissance Aesthetics 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
2 | Renaissance Aesthetics 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
3 | Futurist Aesthetics | Renaissance Visual Culture seminar | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
4 | Fascism: Visual Propaganda | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
5 | Caro Michele: an Epistolary Novel (Natalia Ginzburg, 1975) | Futurism/Fascism
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6 | Caro Michele/prose Lecture 2 (Natalia Ginzburg, 1975) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
7 | Poetry Lecture 1: How to read a poem | The romanzo epistolare | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
8 | Poetry Lecture 2, Ungaretti and Quasimodo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
9 | Women’s writing in the Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna and women poets | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
10 | Italian Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Ital
Knowledge and understandingBy the end of this course students will be able to: • Demonstrate their ability to analyse the formal qualities of a range of different kinds of Italian cultural production, which may include visual artworks, political propaganda, poetry, films, novels and/or children’s literature. • Apply their analytical skills to render Italian texts, films, and other forms of cultural representation meaningful in their historic contexts • Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of some of the major aspects of national and cultural identity in Italy in the modern period. Intellectual skillsBy the end of this course students will be able to:
Practical skillsOn successful completion of this course unit, students will be able to:
Transferable skills and personal qualitiesOn successful completion of the course unit, students will be able to:
Employability skills
Assessment methods
Resit Assessment
Feedback methods
Recommended readingWeekly readings and visual texts will be supplied in seminars and on Blackboard. Secondary readings will be provided via Blackboard. Study hours
Teaching staff
Additional notes
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