Graduate Studies
MPhil in European Literature & Culture | Course content | Modules | IT 20th Century - New Commitments: Literature, Cinema and Culture in Italy 1960 - present
MPhil in European Literature & Culture
Italian | IT 20th Century
New Commitments: Literature, Cinema and Culture in Italy, 1960 - present
(Convenor: Dr P Antonello & Dr R Gordon)
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The module is available to students on both the MPhil in European Literature and Culture and the MPhil in Screen and Media Cultures.
This module will examine a body of work in Italian film, literature and intellectual debate from the 1960s to the present day. It is interested in analysing the on-going evolution of forms of social or political commitment within the cultural sphere, in a period of intense change in culture and society, and of increasing scepticism about the ideological models of the preceeding anti-Fascist, neo-realist generations. Building on, but also challenging their neorealist predecessors, Italian writers and filmmakers in this period reconfigured the workings of political art in response to shifting national and international histories, from social changes in the family and society to the upheavals of terrorism in the 1960s and 1970s to the end of the Cold War and the 'mediocracy' of the fin de si�cle. They also responded to changes in conceptions of history and memory, and the nature of aesthetic form, including gestures towards postmodernism (although the latter term has proved a highly problematic one in Italy). As a result, complex new relations between narrative, history, ideology and representation emerged, including new uses for materials such as the document, the archive, spoken memory and recovered histories. The module will focus on certain key figures who worked towards these new forms of cultural commitment (Pasolini, Sciascia, Moretti, Tullio Giordana) as well as on key motifs or issues at stake within them (eg. relations between law and history, avant-garde and postmodernism, memory, oral history and orality, gender and exclusion, documentary and narrative, genre, the historical film and novel).
The module will consist of six seminars over the course of Lent term, run by the convenor in collaboration with others, and led by student presentations, followed by open discussion. A core framework of topics and texts for study will be set out in advance, but the shape of the module will be adapted to fit the particular interests of students in each year.
The module is open to anyone with a reading knowledge of Italian.
General Reading
- *Baranski, Z.G and West, R. eds., Modern Italian Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001
- *Burns, J., Fragments of 'impegno'. Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980-2000, Leeds: Northern Universities Press, 2001
- *Forgacs, D. & Lumley, R., eds, Italian Cultural Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996
- *Gordon, R. S. C., Introduction to 20th-Century Italian literature: A Difficult Modernity , London: Duckworth, 2005)
- *Sorlin, P., Italian National Cinema, 1896-1996, London: Routledge, 1997
- Adams Sitney, P., Vital Crises in Italian Cinema, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995
- Armes, R., Patterns of Realism, London, Tantivy Press, 1971
- Asor Rosa, A. ed., Letteratura italiana, Turin: Einaudi, 1982-96)
- Baranski, Z.G. & Lumley, R., eds, Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy, London: Macmillan, 1990
- Bobbio, N. Ideological Profile of Twentieth Century Italy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)
- Bondanella, P., Italian Cinema from Neorealism to the Present, expanded edition, New York: Continuum, 1991
- Brand, P. and Pertile, L., eds., The Cambridge History of Italian Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chs. 35-44.
- Brunetta, G.P., Il cinema italiano dal 1945 agli anni ottanta, Rome: Riuniti, 1982
- ------- , Storia del cinema italiano, 4 vols, Rome: Riuniti, 1993
- Bruno, G. & Nadotti, M., eds, Off Screen: Women and Film in Italy, London: Routledge, 1988
- Dalle Vacche, A., The Body in the Mirror: Shapes of History in Italian Cinema, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992
- Ferroni, G. Storia della letteratura italiana. Il novecento, Turin: Einaudi, 1991
- Foot, J., Modern Italy, London: Palgrave, 2002)
- Forgacs, D., Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880-1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990
- Ginsborg, P., A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988, London: Penguin, 1990
- Günsberg, M., Italian Cinema. Gender and Genre, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
- Hainsworth, P. and Robey, D., eds., The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 Useful dictionary format.
- Landy, M., Italian Film, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ Press, 2000
- Liehm, M., Passion and Defiance: Film in Italy from 1942 to the Present, Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University Press, 1984
- McCarthy, P., ed., Italy since 1945, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
- Marcus, M., Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
- Marrone, G., ed., New Landscapes in Contemporary Italian Cinema [=Annali d'Italianistica, 17, 1999)]
- Moliterno, G., ed., Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture, London: Routledge, 2000)
- Restivo, A. The Cinema of Economic Miracles, Durham-London: Duke University Press, 2002
- Stajano, C. ed., La cultura italiana del Novecento, Bari: Laterza, 1996
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