Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

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ITAL6576A-L10

Faces of Italy:1861 to Present

Faces of Italy: Italian Culture and Society though Literature, and Film from 1861 to the present

This course examines the most pressing issue that has confronted Italian society since its Unification: How does one make a nation? If the Italian historical process that led to unification (the Risorgimento) can be read as an unfulfilled revolution (Gramsci), a revolution that failed (Gobetti), or even the fulfillment of noble plans made by enlightened men, animated by a philanthropic spirit (Croce), how can these different ways of reading the nation’s beginnings help us to understand its past, its present, and its future? The course is interdisciplinary: we will place political and historical transformations (from Liberalism, to Fascism, to the Resistance, to the First and Second Republics) in a dialectical relation to the cultural production of an Italy constantly in flux, looking at literature, music and the visual arts as expressions of social change: as reactions for or against the dominant culture. We will also contextualize the Italian reality within that of Europe and the rest of the world.
Course Reference Number (CRN):
60635
Subject Code:
ITAL
Course Number:
6576
Section Identifier:
A

Course

ITAL 6576

All Sections in Summer 2010, LS 6 Week Session

Summer 2010, LS 6 Week Session

ITAL6576A-L10 Lecture (Nicaso)