Learning outcomes
Students will be required to know and be able to analyse literary, critical and cinematic texts, most of which in English, from heterogeneous cultural areas using the critical and methodological tools offered in class. Texts will be selected according to the course program.
Course contents
Bodily inscriptions: mapping and narrativising gendered identities
The course sets out to introduce some key concepts and part of the basic critical tools of cultural studies in order to analyse the notion of identity from different angles, in particular its gender articulations. More specifically, the texts included in the syllabus – critical reinterpretations of traditional genres like the fairy tale and buildungsroman, or intrinsically complex narratives which defy categorisation such as noir – enable one to investigate the narrativisation of marginal subjects’ problematic identity journeys. Among the languages and practices of identity development and construction taken into consideration, special attention will be devoted to the body as a surface of inscription, a map where to trace one’s identity journey, and thus make it visible.
Reccomended or required readings
Critical texts
• R. Bromley, “Cultural Studies: Its Origins and Growth”.
• S. Hall “Introduction” in Hall, Stuart, Jessica Evans, e Sean Nixon, a c. di. Representation. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2013.
• R. Williams “Culture is ordinary”, 1958.
• E. Said “Reflection on the exile” in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000
• S. Hall “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in Framework 36, 1989.
• Pasolini, “Eastern Promises: The (De)Colonisation of the Body of the (M)Other in Eastern Promises”, in N. Vallorani & S. Bertacco (eds), Postcolonial Crimes: Crime Fiction and the Other, Textus. English Studies in Italy, n. 2 (2014),
• A selection of extracts and quotations from Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz e Rosi Braidotti’s work.
The critical texts will be collected in a handout and uploaded to the KIRO portal.
PPT slides of the lessons.
Primary texts
A. Carter, 1979, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (a selection of short stories)
J. Winterson, 1985, Oranges are not the Only Fruit (novel, any edition)
C. Abani, 2006, Becoming Abigail, (novel, any edition)
D. Chronenberg, 2007, Eastern Promises, (film)
Romanek, 2010, Never Let Me Go (film)
Assessment methods
Written exam (with multiple choice, gap-filling and open questions) which aims to test specific content – both of the critical readings and of the primary texts – as well as text analysis.
Attending students can sit a midterm test.
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