Race and Gender in Italian Pop

(4 Credits)

Italian pop music has shaped Italy’s image at home since the early 1900s. We will examine music, genre, lyrics, and style through a range of primary and secondary sources, investigating how Italian pop music constructs ideas of gender and race within and beyond Italy. We will track the evolution of mainstream pop phenomena like Sanremo and its role in creating ideas of “Italianness” and enforcing gender roles; look to how alternative scenes and “counterculture” genres subverted ideas of the racialized and gendered Italian subject; and investigate the reception of “foreign” performers in Italy. This course will be taught in English.