30811 - History of English Culture (LM)

Learning outcomes

Students will deepen their knowledge of the history of culture, with specific reference to the U.K. The course will especially analyse the contributions of gender studies and Orientalism in the History of British culture. The students will be asked to articulate and elaborate on these studies with originality of thought showing ability in critical thinking and capability of analysis.

Course contents

Programma di Storia della cultura inglese, modulo 1, Monticelli

Anno accademico 2013-14

Storia della cultura inglese LM, Modulo 1,  Rita Monticelli

Genealogies and critical theories of gender and postcolonial studies.

Lessons will introduce students to the history of culture and cultural theories and will include an overview of the main debates in cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial theories. Main issues: cultural theories, Orientalism, critical theories and methodologies of gender and women's studies, postcolonial theories. Re-reading of the notion of identity/difference, and diversity; gender as a social construction; women's re-visions of the symbolic and social order; the construction of sexual difference; politics of location and situated knowledge. Introduction to Cultural studies, and Orientalism, with specific reference to the U.K.

 

Storia della cultura inglese LM, Modulo 2, Federica Zullo

Women and Empire. Migration, Gender and Labour in Victorian Britain.

The module intends to explore the debates around Britain's Empire from the point of view of the women who took part in the colonial enterprise, on different levels, either at home and abroad. Starting from the early Fifties, when British society saw the rise of a multitude of charities that characterized the so-called "mid-Victorian benevolence", the module will examine the relationship between women and philanthropy, poverty and Empire, together with the collective vision of the "fallen women", their treatment at home or their shipment to the colonies. Then lessons will consider some key-figures that contributed to the consolidation of the Imperial mission, through their activities as nurses, teachers, intellectuals, journalists and writers, though examining how they were able to question the colonial administration and the women's role in it, finding a place for themselves, claiming recognition for their work and revisioning the relationship between the British colonizer and the men and women of the colonies. Through the analysis of the lives and writings of women such as Florence Nightingale, Flora Shaw, Mary Kingsley, Amelia Edwards and others, a more complex vision of the Empire project clearly emerges, providing a gender perspective that sheds light on unknown stories of emancipation and cross-cultural relations as well as in the history of British culture.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Storia della cultura inglese LM, Modulo 1,  Rita Monticelli

Lessons will make reference to the following texts:

Baccolini , R., Fortunati V., Fabi, M.G., Monticelli, R. 1997, (eds) Critiche femministe e teorie letterarie. Bologna: Clueb. (selected essays, available in the library)
Corona, D., 2004, "Critica letteraria femminista" in M. Cometa, a cura di, Dizionario degli studi culturali. Roma: Meltemi, pp. 122-145 reperibile in biblioteca
Butler, Judith, 1993, Bodies that Matter. On the Discoursive Limits of “Sex”. New York and London: Routledge, 1996, Corpi che Contano. I limiti discorsivi del “sesso”. Milano: Feltrinelli. (library). Introduzione di A. Cavarero.
Cometa, Michele, 2010, Studi culturali, Napoli: Guida (selected chapters, library).
Irigaray, Luce, “Donne Divine” in Sessi e Genealogie, 1989. Trad. L. Muraro. Milano: La Tartaruga. Sexes et parentés Paris: Minuit, 1987, “Divine Women”, Occasional Paper, Sydney, 1986, trans. S. Muecke (Reader)
Lowe, Lisa (1991) Critical Terrains. French and British Orientalisms. New York: Cornell UP (selected chapters) (available in the library)
Rich, Adrienne (1986) “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision” in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, Selected Prose 1966-1978. London: Virago, pp. 33-49, f.p. 1971.
Rich, Adrienne, 1986, “Notes towards a Politics of Location” in Blood, Bread and Poetry. London: Virago. (available in the Reader)
Said, Edward, 1978, Orientalism, “Introduction”, and first chapter New York: Pantheon Books. (library, Reader)
Spillers, Hortense J., 1987, “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.”, in Diacritics. A Review of Contemporary Criticism 17 (2), 1987, 65-81. (1997) “Figli/e di madre, del padre forse: una grammatica Americana” in Critiche femministe e teorie letterarie. A cura di Raffaella Baccolini; M. Giulia Fabi, Vita Fortunati, Rita Monticelli. Bologna: CLUEB, 1997, pp. 255-279, trad. Lucia Gunella e Rita Monticelli. (jstor, Reader)
Spivak, Gayatri C., 1989, “Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” in Catherine Belsey e Jane Moore (eds) The Feminist Reader. Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan., pp. 65-81.

 

Requirements for the exams will be provided at the beginning of the course. For module 1 students have to choose three essays from the reading list.

 Storia della cultura inglese LM, Module 2, Federica Zullo

Texts:

G.C. Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?", in C. Nelson, L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 271-313.

Clare Midgley, Feminism and Empire. Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790-1865, Oxon, Routledge, 2007, pp. 65-91 e 123-146.

M. Strobel, European Women and the Second British Empire, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1991, chapters 2, 3, pp. 16-48

Antoinette Burton, “Woman in the Nation. Feminism, Race and Empire in the National Culture”, in Burdens of History : British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915, Chapel Hill London, University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Helen Callaway,“Imperial Representations of Gender”, in Gender, Culture and Empire. European Women in Colonial Nigeria, Oxford, Macmillan Press, pp.30-54.

Clare Midgley, “Bringing the Empire Home: Women Activists in Imperial Britain, 1790s-1930s”, in Catherine Hall, Sonya O. Rose, At Home with the Empire. Metropolitan Culture and the Imperial World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 231-250.

Further readings will be provided during the course.

For module 2 students have to choose three essays from the reading list.

 

Teaching methods

Lessons, seminars, discussions in class

Assessment methods

Participation in class 25%

Final Oral exam: 75%

By participatation in class we mean the ability of the student to enter the dabates, contributing with questions and/or elaborations of the topics proposed by the lecturer. This participation does not aim at testing students' specific preparation in the field, rather, their ability to take part in discussions and their capability to discuss in group. The final oral exams will include both the programmes of the first AND the second module together. Students will have to choose three articles/essays from the reading list of module 1 AND three articles/essays from the reading list of module 2. The exam will test the student's ability to elaborate on the topics exposed in class, to show the knowledge acquired thorugh the study of the proposed bibliography, and their capability for critical thinking.

Teaching tools

Videos, power point

Office hours

See the website of Rita Monticelli

See the website of Federica Zullo