Unit information: Sexuality and Gender in Postcolonial Italy in 2009/10

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Unit name Sexuality and Gender in Postcolonial Italy
Unit code MODLM2064
Credit points 20
Level of study M/7
Teaching block(s) Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director Professor. Duncan
Open unit status Not open
Pre-requisites

none
Co-requisites

none
School/department School of Modern Languages
Faculty Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit looks at constructions of sexuality and gender in the context of postcolonial Italy. Focusing on a range of films and literary texts from the 1930s to the present day, the unit explores how ideas concerning gendered and sexed bodies have played a role in national identity formation. The debates are historically contextualized in terms of Italy's colonial past, and its more recent experience of immigration.

Aims:

The unit aims to provide students with a theoretically informed introduction to issues of sexuality, gender and race in modern Italian culture. Particular emphasis will be placed on how they inflect notions of Italian nation identity. The unit will offer students the critical tools to engage analytically with specific instances of these constructions both in terms of the medium in which they are expressed, and of the historical and cultural contexts in which they are produced.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to engage in an informed manner with critical debates on sexuality and gender in the context of postcolonial Italy. They will develop an understanding of the relationship between these issues and the particular medium through which they are articulated. They will be able to use this knowledge to analyse particular formations of sexuality and gender in a range of cultural forms. They will be able to situate these understandings historically with special emphasis on questions of national identity formation in a postcolonial context.

The unit will also serve as a possible preparation for further postgraduate study, leading to a research degree.

Teaching Information

Weekly 1.5 hour seminars

Assessment Information

  • 1 x 5000-word essay.

Topics are by agreement with the unit director.

Reading and References

  • T. De Lauretis, Soggetti eccentrici (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1999)
  • G. Parati, Talking Back (Toronto: Toronto UP, 2005)
  • J. Andall & D. Duncan (eds) Italian Colonialism: legacy and Memory (Oxford: Peter Lang 2005)
  • I. Chambers, I., Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008 )
  • Romania, Vincenzo. Farsi passare per italiani: strategie di mimetismo sociale

(Roma: Carocci, 2004)

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