IN-DEPTH SEMINARS OF DISCIPLINARY AREA (LCSM) - MOD. 8

The Ph.D. program in **Languages, Cultures and Modern Societies, and Language Sciences** at the Department of Comparative Linguistic and Cultural Studies is characterized by its **multidisciplinary nature** and its focus on promoting linguistic and cultural diversity. The wide range of languages offered by the department, some of which are unique to universities in this macro-region, combined with the quality and innovation of its research, provides an ideal environment for a doctoral program that aims to train highly specialized professionals in **text analysis**, **linguistic-cultural phenomena**, and **theoretical, applied, and educational linguistic research**.

As in the previous five-year period, the doctoral program will interact with the development project of the Department of Excellence, which provides for the allocation of three additional scholarships tied to the themes of the project itself.

The program is defined by the intersection of two distinct academic tracks, Languages, Cultures and Modern Societies and Language Sciences. Each of these, in turn, is distinguished by the breadth of topics and contexts it addresses and by the innovation of its methodological approaches, which foster a multidisciplinary education. The curriculum in **Languages, Cultures and Modern Societies** includes a wide variety of linguistic and cultural fields (American and English studies, French studies, German and Scandinavian studies, Iberian and Ibero-American studies, Slavic and Balkan studies). These are structured to both value differences and specificities and to promote transdisciplinary perspectives. The curriculum integrates various critical approaches to literary and cultural tradition, from textual analysis to philological-linguistic and historical-cultural analysis, through diverse methodologies, including comparative, translation, and historical-linguistic ones.

The seminar I have proposed is aimed at acquiring and consolidating knowledge of critical methodology.

Ph.D. students will acquire theoretical and critical skills aimed at solidifying and enriching their approach to literary texts. The proposed seminar will offer the opportunity to read the work of important thinkers who transformed the discourse on literature, to examine pivotal moments in contemporary literary criticism, to explore central concepts such as the "text," and to reflect on what it means to think with literature.

Good knowledge of English.

The seminar will focus on two interconnected schools of thought that have changed literary and critical practice in the Anglophone world, particularly in the USA: deconstruction and post-structuralism. We will read and discuss foundational texts by Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva, and examine the effects of these schools of thought on critical practice. Starting from the notion of the subject, which is transversal to multiple disciplines, we will explore how these schools of thought have changed the encounter with a text and the search for meaning in literature.

The seminar will be divided into five parts:

Section I: Influence

Section II: Post-structuralism, i.e.: post-sign

Section III: Deconstruction

Section IV: Effects of the post-sign axis

Section V: Reconceptualizing the Subject

Two sessions will be held by guest colleagues: Margaret Sönser Breen (University of Connecticut), who will speak online about the developments of Queer Theory, and Pia Masiero (Ca' Foscari University), who will speak in person about first-person narrative.
The seminar will be structured in 12 sessions, each lasting 2 hours and 30 minutes, for a total of 30 hours.

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford University Press, 1973.
Butler, Judith. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination 1.” Ed. Diana Fuss. Inside/Out. Routledge, 1991. 13–31.
Campo, Cristina. “The Unforgivable.” The Unforgivable and Other Writings. Trans. ‎Kathryn Davis. New York: NYRB Classics, 2024.
De Man, Paul. Selections from Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
De Man, Paul., selections from Allegories of Reading. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1979.
Derrida, J. Selections from A Derrida Reader. Ed. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Derrida, J. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press, 1978. 278-293.
Halberstam, Judith. Selections from The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
Kristeva, Julia. Selections from Semeiotike: Richerche per una semanalisi [Sēmeiōtikē; recherches pour une sémanalyse, 1969]. Trans. Piero Ricci. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1978.
Kristeva, Julia. Selections from Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1980.
Malabou, Catherine. Selections from The New Wounded. Trans. Steven Miller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
Nielsen, Henrik Skov. “The Impersonal Voice in First-Person Narrative Fiction.” Narrative 12.2 (May 2004): 133-150.
Žižek, Slavoj. “Descartes and the Post-Traumatic Subject: On Catherine Malabou's Les Nouveaux Blessés and Other Autistic Monsters.” Qui parle 17.2 (2009): 123–147.

Learning for the in-depth studies will be assessed through the semiannual evaluations scheduled for Ph.D. students.

Not applicable.

Interactive in-person seminars.

This course addresses topics related to the macro-areas of "Poverty and Inequalities" and "Human Capital, Health, Education." It contributes to the achievement of the relevant UN Sustainable Development Goals for the 2030 Agenda (specifically goals 5, 10, and 4).

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development