Beyond Ferrante Fever: Contemporary Italian Literature in Translation

This course invites students to explore the landscape of contemporary Italian literature beyond—and behind—Elena Ferrante. Through close reading, we will examine themes such as non-normative bodies, human-nonhuman relations, and migration as a necessary living condition. Our guiding questions will address how contemporary Italian writers respond to issues of embodiment, relationality, and displacement, and how literary form itself becomes a site of ethical and political inquiry. Readings will include works by Italo Calvino, Jhumpa Lahiri, Igiaba Scego, and Antonella Anedda, among others. Class discussions will be informed by a range of theoretical perspectives, including psychoanalysis, gender studies, and critical theory. We will draw on thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Rosi Braidotti, Sigmund Freud, and Paul B. Preciado in order to offer a comprehensive introduction to contemporary Italian literature, while offering analytical tools applicable across a wide range of literary fields.