Meridian Thought, Mediterranean Spheres

The scope of this course will be to reconsider some fundamental texts and commentaries on the Italian North/South relationship since the birth of the Italian nation in 1861, and to imagine expanded contexts for such questions in our contemporary era. Readings will include literary text and critical works and range from Antonio Gramsci's La questione meridionale, to Ignazio Silone's "La narrativa e il sottosuolo meridionale", to Franco Cassano's Il pensiero meridiano, to Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Appunti per un poema sul terzo mondo," to Tahar Ben Jelloun's Dove lo stato non c'e'. While these texts in general tend to comment on the role and participation (or exclusion) of the Italian south within the Italian national project, our readings will venture into, and be inclusive of, the more recent concept of what has been termed the "global south." For example, Ben Jelloun's writings on the Italian south represent a realigned perspective that might assist one in reading cross-Mediterranean relations. This is particularly important given the migratory influx of populations from the both the North-African coast and sub-Saharan Africa (as examples of points of departure). In this case Cassano's Pensiero meridiano comes to represent an attempt at finding parallel situations at home and abroad that once again re-present the Gramscian notion of alliances under evolved and extra-national circumstances. Not unexpectedly, film has come to form a large component of the continuing discourse on meridian thought. As a result, we will view and discuss both fiction and non-fiction films concerned with new migrations across the Mediterranean in order to begin to assess the differences or similarities between the written word and the filmic image in successfully representing the cultures of meridian thought.

Required Texts: Cassano, Franco. Il pensiero meridiano. Bari: Laterza, (1996) Tre modi di vedere il Sud. Bologna: Il mulino, (2009).