Anna Scacchi

Pays:Italie

Cours

PROF. ANNA SCACCHI
Slavery, Diasporic Identities, and Counternarratives of Modernity

Since the second half of the twentieth century American slavery has gained major prominence in historiography and sociocultural debates and has become a crucial theme in the literature, cinema and visual arts of the Black Diaspora in the Americas. Through the reading of novels selected from among the most interesting contemporary works of US and Caribbean literature, the course will focus on slavery as constitutive of Western modernity, both in its historical developments and present legacies. Basing on Linda Hutcheon’s notion of “historiographic metafiction,” we will investigate how these works critique national master narratives of the past and historiographic methods at large.
Classes will be delivered both as lectures and seminars. Students’ participation in discussions and through brief oral presentations will be encouraged. Because of the multidisciplinary focus of the topics explored and its methodological approach, the course will often rely on films and other audio visual material and, whenever possible, will host guest lecturers.

Catégorie A.A. 2025 - 2026 / Corsi di laurea magistrale / LINGUE E LETTERATURE EUROPEE E AMERICANE

PROF. ANNA SCACCHI
The Power of an Illusion: Representing Race in US literature and popular culture

Race, according to most contemporary critical race theorists, is not a biological fact but rather a symbolic category which is constantly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed via discursive practices. After a preliminary introduction to the current debate on the relation between reality and representation and to the interpretive methodologies employed by Visual Culture Studies, this course will explore the multiple meanings of blackness produced by the history of the Black Diaspora in the Americas. We will examine an array of texts (novels and short stories, films, graphic novels, popular culture), organized so as to illuminate a number of conceptual and thematic knots (gender, racial stereotypes, adoption/subversion of stereotypes, representations of black heroism), as a way to achieve a critical understanding of narrations and counternarrations of black identity.

Catégorie A.A. 2023 - 2024 / Corsi di laurea magistrale / LINGUE E LETTERATURE EUROPEE E AMERICANE