HISTORY OF NORTH-AMERICAN CULTURE

The course aims at introducing students to American cultural studies through the acquisition of concepts and methodologies and the analysis of heterogeneous materials examined and contextualized from a historical/cultural perspective. Students are expected to develop autonomous ability to analyze cultural materials through a specific critical vocabulary of medium-advanced level.

The learning outcomes of these course entail developing:
1. good knowledge of the some basic elements in American cultural studies;
2. ability to apply such knowledge to the critical analysis of cultural products;
3. ability to formulate critical hypotheses and judgments;
4. communication skills and appropriate terminology;
5. autonomous reading of handbooks, critical essays and primary sources.

Good knowledge of English (≥ B2).

In American history, different parts of the nation were identified as West. This geographical and cultural space has had different meanings, often associated with the idea of the frontier, possibility, and renewal. When in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared that the American frontier—i.e., the West—had closed, his proclamation also marked the beginning of a distinctly American genre, the western. In this course, we will journey amongst some of the more significant examples of ‘western’ American literature and cinema, interrogating where the West is, its political meaning, and its more recent revisions. Along the way, we will question if the western is adequate to contain new instances typical of the post-1960s United States, in which the dream of open possibilities has been questioned by non-mainstream racial groups, environmental activists, and the LGBT+ community.

PRIMARY SOURCES
TBC

SECONDARY SOURCES
TBC

WRITTEN + ORAL EXAM
Written exam (2h / 60%): Assessment of the student's cultural and historical knowledge of the contents of the course through the study of primary and secondary sources, their ability to apply that knowledge to the analysis of cultural products, of the student's ability to formulate critical hypothesis and judgement and to use appropriate terminology. The written exam will consist of short questions (1-2 marks) and 3 open questions (5 marks each). The open questions may be general or may ask to recognize a text and/or a frame and comment them.

Oral part (15' / 30%): Those who pass the written exam with a sufficient grade (18/30) will be eligible for the oral exam. We will discuss the written part and further discuss some of the courses's topics. The exam will be verbalized during the oral session. Written and oral exams must be passed during the same exam session, otherwise they will have to be repeated in their entirety.

oral

The minimum grade is 18, the maximum grade is 30 cum laude. Grades correspond to:
A. range 18-22: sufficient content knowledge; limited ability to discuss independently, limited knowledge of theoretical tools, limited knowledge of cultural-historical context and debates.
B. range 23-26: fair content knowledge; fair independent discussion skills, fair knowledge of theoretical tools, fair knowledge of cultural-historical context and debates.
C. range 27-29: good content knowledge; good independent discussion skills, good knowledge of theoretical tools, good knowledge of historical-cultural context and debates.
D. 30: very good content knowledge, independent discussion skills and very good knowledge of the theoretical tools; very good knowledge of the historical-cultural context and debates.
D. Honors/cum laude: awarded in case the knowledge of contents, the independent discussion skills, the knowledge of theoretical tools, of the cultural-historical context and of the debates are excellent and the student expands what is required by the course syllabus

Lectures and class discussion are the teaching modalities of this course.

All students are required to subscribe to the Moodle page of the course.