ITL 1050 ITALY TODAY
“Italy Today” provides an overview of the contemporary Italian society. To achieve this goal, we will read articles about what’s currently ongoing in the Old Boot and try to understand how Italian society operates and what is that concerns Italian people the most. Conversely, because we will do this by way of looking at articles written in English, which means written and published mostly by non-Italians in non-Italian publications, we will also try to understand how Italy is represented in the countries where the articles are published and what is about Italy that interests non-Italian writers. Thus, we will be concerned with analyzing types of representations and stereotypes. What do these articles tell us about Italy as well as the writers/countries that write about Italy? We will divide the class in three units and focus our attention on the following three themes: Italian society, Italian identity, and Italian culture.
Course Types
Civilization
Course Outcomes
- • Understand what is happening and what is relevant in today’s Italy.
• Be aware of cultural representations and stereotypes.
• Understand the difference between media representations and Italian society as it is.
• Understand the importance of a narrative in building an idea of a country.