Spring 2005 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Spring 2005. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Cowell College

[COWL-105]

105. Radical Italy

Note: Draft Working Syllabus

T/Th 10:00-11:45 a.m.
Cowell Senior Common Room
Screening times and location to be arranged
Instructor Team: Tyrus Miller (tyrus@ucsc.edu)
and Deanna Shemek (shemek@ucsc.edu)

Course Description

An overview of radical, oppositional, and utopian thinking in Italy, focusing on literary and social writings spanning seven centuries: from St. Francis of Assisi and Dante, through Machiavelli and Galileo; to Mussolini, Gramsci, and Fo. This is an upper-division seminar restricted to sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Week 1: Medieval luminaries

St. Francis of Assisi: selected poems
Dante, Inferno: selected cantos
Excerpt from Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Screening of Roberto Rossellini, Francesco the Minstrel of God

Week 2: Renaissance rebels

Girolamo Savonarola and the bonfires of the vanities (sermons)
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, and selections from The Discourses

Week 3: Women on the edge

Veronica Franco, selected poems and letters
Artemisia Gentileschi, selections from Mary Garrard's biography and slide presentation of works in oil. Anna Banti, Artemisia [Screening of films on these two women]

Week 4: Worlds in collision

Galileo Galilei, The Assayer
Giordano Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper

Week 5: Enlightenment and the Risorgimento

Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments
Giuseppe Verdi, Aida

Week 6: Fascism and Futurism

Mussolini, selected speeches
F.T. Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto and selected poems

Week 7: "A Flower and Not a Weed"

Antonio Gramsci, selections from the Prison Notebooks on organic intellectuals and on popular culture
Gramsci on Dante and Machiavelli

Week 8: Gramsci's Ashes

Pier Paolo Pasolini, "The Ashes of Gramsci"
Screening of Pasolini's film, Hawks and Sparrows
Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, selections on language question and southern question

Week 9: From the Generation of '68 to the "Lead Years"

Carla Lonzi, "Let's Spit on Hegel," and other writings from Italian feminists
Toni Negri, selected political writings

Week 10: The Second Time is Farce

Dario Fo, Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas (text and video)
Franca Rame, Female Parts

Requirements: Students will write three papers of 3-5 pages each.

Note: One of these will be derived from attendance at a conference, "The Gramsci Discourse," which will be held at UCSC in May 2005. If you sign up for this course, please arrange your calendar so that you are free to attend this conference.

Also required will be a final examination.

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