Topics: Fascism and Resistance: Past and Present

3 units

A multidisciplinary course focusing on a significant aspect of Italian culture. The topic will differ from semester to semester and may draw on art, film, history, gender studies, literature, music, philosophy, politics, science. A multidisciplinary course focusing on a significant aspect of Italian culture. The topic will differ from semester to semester and may draw on art, film, history, gender studies, literature, music, philosophy, politics, science. Did the Fascist ideology end in 1945 or does it persist today? Was Italy mostly a Fascist nation or a stronghold of the anti-Fascist movement? How are World War II, Italy's Fascist past, its anti-Semitism, and civil war being remembered (or forgotten) to this day? In this course, you will try to answer these and other questions by looking at the many aspects of Italian literary culture during the Fascist regime and post-war years. You will read Resistance poetry, Fascist propaganda, novels of the literary Neorealism, Primo Levi's personal narratives, and the writings of female partisans. You will then explore how Italy's complicated past is being dealt with at both the individual and the collective level, and how the tragedy of World War II is being represented and re-imagined in Italian contemporary fiction, films, graphic novels and children literature. You will consider issues such as the relationship between testimony and memory, between history and fiction, and how notions of post-memory, forgiveness, and revenge shape this particular literary production and Italy's national identity. Class discussions and readings in English. Selected readings and assignments in Italian for Italian majors and minors. Course taught in Italian; readings in Italian.