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).

The Call of the Wild:
Wilderness and the West/ern in US Culture

In American history, different geographical areas have, at various times, been identified as ‘the West.’ Whether viewed from New York, the Pacific shores, or the icy landscapes of Alaska, the West has always been more than a coordinate: it is a place, a direction, and a powerful cultural idea. This space has carried shifting meanings, deeply intertwined with the concepts of the frontier, wilderness, endless possibility, and renewal. Initially framed as a site of hybridization and Americanization (Cooper, Whitman), an escape from civilization (Thoreau, Twain), or the stage for Manifest Destiny and continental conquest (O’Sullivan, Turner)—an ideological drive capable of extending its frontier logic even onto the oceans (Melville)—the West has served as both a geographical resource and a rhetorical device to shape national identity. When Frederick Jackson Turner famously declared the closing of the frontier in 1893, his proclamation paradoxically marked the birth of a distinctly American genre: the Western. This course journeys through some of the most significant examples of American literature and cinema, interrogating the shifting borders of the West, its political implications, and its modern revisions. Along the way, we will question whether the traditional Western is still equipped to contain the complexities of post-1960s America—a counter-narrative where the dream of open possibilities is critically challenged by African American, Native American, and gender-centered perspectives (Tarantino, Erdrich, Reichardt), up to the contemporary re-evaluations of the ‘Last Frontier’" (London, Penn).

PRIMARY SOURCES
Sean Penn, Into the Wild, 2007
Jack London, “To Build a Fire”
Henry David Thoreau, extracts from Walden and “Walking”
Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 43James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (extract)
John O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale. Chapters 10, 28, 36, 41, 135.
Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier”
John Ford, The Searchers
Louise Erdrich, “Dear John Wayne”
Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff
Tarantino, Django Unchained (2012)


SECONDARY SOURCES
TBA

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.