Italy Today: From the Margins to the Center
Our goal in this course will be learning about Italy by concentrating on the margins, on what is not mainstream, on those who are not in power. We will study discrimination, marginalization, racism, and how Italy does, or does not, address them. People can be marginalized through the use of derogatory words and terms, even when speakers do not realize that they are participating in the act of marginalization. We will discover how Italian language affects minority groups (because of race, religion, culture, non-binary or non-conforming genders), and discuss how to translate, into and out of Italian, terms and texts that could help redress some inequalities. We will rely on authors such as Forgacs, Gheno, Guerra, Aime, Hakuzwimana. Taught in Italian. (ITAL 0252 or Instructor's approval) This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities.*