Diversity and Exclusion in Contemporary Italy, 1945 to the Present

Catalog description

The main aim of the course is to develop in students a critical awareness of how various ‘others’ have been described and depicted in Italy since 1945 and how demarcation lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ have been produced, both in scholarly discourse and popular media. The ‘others’ include poor inhabitants of cities and the rural South, people with disabilities and those classified as mentally ill, people of color, people with non-heteronormative sexual identifications, immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, Roma. The course asks how processes of definition and classification work, what forms of power back them up, and to what extent the dominant definitions may be resisted, challenged or reversed. Materials for study include written texts, photographs, documentary films and television programs. Most of the verbal materials, including spoken words, are in Italian and advanced competence in Italian is required for the course.