This is an elective course offered in the first semester (36 hours/3 hours a week); lectures are given in English. It is open to all students, but is especially meant for third-year students and LM students of the Department of modern foreign languages, as well as for Erasmus and other foreign students visiting Genova University in the first semester. The syllabus for a.a. 2023-24 focuses on imperialism and its representations towards the end of the 19th century.
This elective course is available to both third-year BA and MA students. It focuses each year on different authors, themes, genres and moments in literary history with the aim of widening the student's experience of literary texts in English through a variety of critical approaches.
Students who have attended classes regularly and actively, and studied the assigned reading list,
- know the main aspects of the historical formation dubbed "New Imperialism", its economic and social causes, and the political and cultural debate it provoked;
- have a detailed knowledge of small corpus of texts dealings with the representation of life and adventure in colonial settings; are able to describe their main formal and thematic features; can connect them to specific historical and cultural contexts, making use of cues and ideas offered by some critics.
A general knowledge of British literary history (Romantics to Modernists), a good understanding of spoken English, and the ability to read complex literary and critical texts.
This course will mainly consist in lectures. Some classes will require preparatory individual work at home (flipped classroom). Individual or group activities on selected literary texts and relevant critical material may be offered to regularly attending students.
This course provides an introduction to the literary representation of late 19th-century Imperialism. The survey includes a classic example of adventure fiction (King Solomon's Mines) and a selection of shorter texts (fictional, poetic, argumentative), by men and women writers, representing and discussing life and adventure in extra-European regions touched by the modernization process.
All students will have to read H. R. Haggard, King Solomon's Mines (ed. by R. Luckhurst, Oxford World's Classics), a selection of shorter texts (short stories, poems, newspaper and magazine articles...) and some specimens of recent critical work, all of which will be made available on aulaweb or in the department library.
Ricevimento: Please check my departmental webpage: https://lingue.unige.it/luisa.villa@unige.it
LUISA VILLA (President)
LAURA COLOMBINO
3 October 2023
Class schedule: Tuesday 11-12 (aula B, Polo Didattico, Via delle Fontane) and Thursday 17-19 (aula E, Polo Didattico Via delle Fontane).
By the end of September, the aulaweb section of this course will be available: if you register on the aulaweb course, you will be able to receive updates and other information on the course.
Assessment will be based on written examination involving open questions on all the aspects of the course.
Regularly attending students will be allowed to opt for an oral presentation focussing on one specific theme/work which will substitute for part of the written exam.
Students from the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures are expected to take their exam in English. Students from other Departments may choose to be assessed in Italian.
Students will be asked to demonstrate their knowledge of primary texts and critical bibliography, their understanding of cultural and theoretical issues and their ability to analyse and contextualise extracts from literary texts.
Attendance is strongly recommended. At the beginning of the course students will have to enrol on AulaWeb. Enrolment for exams is online on the University of Genova website.
Students with special educational needs and disabilities certified by an official assessment body are kindly requested to contact the instructor at the beginning of term in order to arrange a suitable testing format.
This syllabus is valid till February 2025.
