Flavia Brizio-Skov
 Associate Professor of Italian
 University of Tennessee

Fascism & Resistance in Italian Literature & Cinema

Fascism, Nazism & Francoism in Literature & Cinema

The Italian Women's Movement: Divas, Directores, Writers

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Italian 421
Italy in Literature and Cinema from 1860 to the Present Syllabus*

Exams: will include the material covered in class.

Please note that Attendance at the screening is mandatory -- all the films are available for extra-viewing at the Audiovisual Center in Hodges Library in order to give you the opportunity to review the films before your class presentation or exams.

Midterm and Final: will include questions on the material covered in class. Books and articles are available at the Reserve Desk (Hodges Library) for consultation, see list handed by teacher.

Oral Presentation: students will choose a book or a film and they will base their report on (at least) two critical articles. The oral report has to be presented to the class but it also has to be written and handed in after the oral presentation: at least 4 pages typed with a biblio of the critical material used.

Attendance: to be active is essential in a class whose main object is critical discussion about literature and cinema. Good class participation requires regular attendance and actual involvement in all class activities and assignments.

Italian Majors and Minors: the students will be required to read some material in Italian.

Purpose of course: This course will present an overview of Italian culture, history and literature starting with the films that deal with the troublesome years of the Unification of Italy and then moving chronologically toward the major events of contemporary Italy: Worlds War I, Fascism, World Wat II, the economic boom of the 60’s, terrorism of the 70’s, Mafia, political corruption of the 80’s etc. At the same time, this course will focus on the literary works that contributed to throw a new light on many Italian events. The objective of the course is to investigate the literature produced in a specific historical moment and the films that later on revisited and recreated those moments in Italian history that shaped the future of the nation. We will also examine the most important literary and cinematic trends in pre-and post-war Italy.

Textbooks: Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (Westminster: Pantheon Press-Ramdon House, 1960); Italo Calvino, If a Winter Night a Traveller... (Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1981); Beppe Fenoglio, The Ruin (Chicago: Marlboro Press, 1994).

Articles: At the Reserve Desk, in a file under my name, there are articles and other critical material on films and novels that must be read during the course. Italian/Cinema Studies 421 Name:................................... Spring 1995