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).

“Go West, Young Man!”
Wilderness and the West in US Culture

In American history, different parts of the nation were identified as West. Whereas in New York or on the Pacific shores, the West has always been a place, a direction, and an idea. This geographical and cultural space has in fact had different meanings, differently associated with the idea of the frontier, possibility, wilderness and renewal. Initially a space of hybridization and Americanization (as in Cooper and Whitman), an escape (Thoreau and Twain) or a space of Manifest Destiny and continental conquest (O’Sullivan and Turner), the idea of the West has been a geographical resource and a powerful rhetoric device to discuss national identity. When in 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared that the American frontier 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
James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. Extracts, Moodle
Thoreau, “Walking”. Moodle.
Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road". Extract, on Moodle
O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”. Moodle.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn. Chapter 43.
Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier”. Extract, Moodle.
Ford, The Searchers
Penn, Into the Wild
Sherman Alexie, “My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys”
Louise Erdrich, “Dear John Wayne”
Tarantino, Django Unchained
Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain


SECONDARY SOURCES“Frederick Jackson Turner in the Dream City”. A Cultural History of the Modern American Novel. 2008. 43-47. (moodle)
Chapters “The West” and “Native-Americans” from American Civilization (moodle)
Paul, Heike. Chapter 6 in The Myths that Made America.
Bordin, Elisa. Masculinity and Westerns. Introduction and chapter 1. (moodle)
Kollins, Alaska. “Inventing the Last Frontier”, in Nature’s State: Imagining Alaska as the Last Frontier, 2001.
Terri Francis, “Looking Sharp: Performance, Genre, and Questioning History in Django Unchained”, Transition 112, 33-45 (moodle)
Bordin, Elisa. “On Westerns and Settler Migration: A Reading of Meek’s Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt”, Iperstoria. (free online)
Sollors, “Cooper’s The Leatherstocking Tales” (moodle)

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 (10' / 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 lecturer has a duty to ensure that the rules regarding the authenticity and originality of exam tests and papers are respected. Therefore, if there is suspicion of irregular conduct, an additional assessment may be conducted, which could differ from the original exam description.

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.