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Syllabus

EN IT

Learning Objectives

This course will use the perspective of Visual Studies to explore the changes in gender identity and, as a consequence of that, on any individual and collective identities in the American society in the past twenty years. The main tool used in the course will be TV series and essays.
Visual Studies originated from the fact that our culture is becoming more and more visual and that there is a gap between the wealth of visual experience and the ability to analyze it. The world as a text has been replaced by the world–as-a-picture. Such world pictures cannot be purely visual, but by the same token the visual disrupts and challenges any attempt to define culture in purely linguistic terms. At the heart of the construction of the image in Visual Studies, a displaced location of knowledge, there is an element which determined their birth, questioning the disciplinary position that the visual should occupy within the existent disciplines: the shattering strength of women movements around the world. In the academic field thanks to the studies on gender and sexuality, the disciplinary assets have been changed, challenging the traditional system of disciplines and the borders between them. Therefore, Visual Studies represent a new emergent body of knowledge which concentrates on the continuous formation and transformation of any individual and collective identities in the social structure. Their task is to make re-emerge ghosts which a conventional reading would leave invisible. The women movements in many countries around the world challenged and continue to challenge the traditional asset of many societies influencing all the western world and the American society. They speak different languages, sometimes they live in diasporic places, sometimes they are prisoners of the past, of their assigned roles and bodies; some other times they are really in prison, they are nomads, migrants, transgenders; many of them come from countries which paid a high price to colonialism.
This course will focus on television and particularly on TV series which seem to illustrate better than any other visual media the profound changes which take place in the fabric of the society, particularly of the American society where the popular culture really represents a social thermometer. The series analyzed in this course will concentrate, therefore, on gender identity as a starting point to show the profound changes which took place in many other sectors (ethnic, religious and race identities) of the American society and will take into consideration the period which goes from the traumatic event of September 11 2001 until our days. It will also focus its attention on a few TV series which will show the condition of women in the past and how we arrived at the situation of today. The choice of American TV series is motivated by the fact that they seem to represent a case study of what it is happening, or will happen in many western societies.

Program

Topic 1: What are Visual Studies? Why are they relevant in our world? TV series: Love, Death & Robot on Netflix; The Matrix on Amazon Prime (3 hours)

Topic 2: Visual Studies and Gender Identity. TV series: Unorthodox on Netflix; Maid on Netflix; Grace and Frankie on Netflix (6 hours)

Topic 3: The Role of Media and Women. TV series: The Newsroom on HBO; The Loudest Voice on Showtime (3 hours)

Topic 4: Racism in American Society: Surveillance and Control. TV series: When They See Us on Netflix (3 hours)

Topic 5: The Relevance of TV series after September 11. TV series: The Looming Tower on Amazon Prime (3 hours)

Topic 6: The Pivotal TV series: The Birth of the Antihero - The Sopranos and The Wire (3 hours)

Topic 7: The Status of Women from Post-WWII to the 70s. TV series: Mrs. America on Hulu; Gaslit on Starz; The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime (6 hours)

Topic 8: The Body, Addictions, and Gender. TV series: Transparent on Amazon Prime; Orange Is the New Black on Netflix (6 hours)

Topic 9: Dystopian Series during the Trump Presidency. TV series: The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime; The Handmaid's Tale on Amazon Prime (6 hours)

Books

-Anna Camaiti Hostert Passing. Dissolvere le identità superare le differenze Castelvecchi, Roma, 1996, Meltemi, Roma 2004: Introduction, My Point of View, Killing Rage, Betraying Your Origin, Rerun the Memory Passing.

-Zurawiki, David “Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ and an American Press That Has Lost Its Sense of P:urpose” in Baltimore Sun June 23, 2012

Bibliography

Barker, Brian, Wiatroski, Myc (ed.) The Age of Netflix: Critical Essays on Streaming Media , Digital Delivery and Instant Access MCFarland & Company Jefferson, North carolina, 2017
Bourdieau, Pierre On Television New Press New York 1996
Braidotti, Rosi “Nomadic Subjects. Embodiment and Sexual Difference” in Contemporary Feminist Theory, Second Edition, Columbia University Press, New York, 2011.

Butler, Judith, Undoing Gender, Routledge New York/London, 2004.
Chomsky, Noam Requiem for the American Dream documentary directed by Peter D. Hutchinson, Nyks Kelly and Jared P. Scott, 2017
Ellis-Petersen, Hannah “Orange Is the New Black: This Show Will Change the Fabric of Our Culture” in The Guardian June 17, 2016
Fahari, Paul “Foxnews CEO Roger Aisles and Network in Final Talks” in Washington Post July 19, 2016
Haraway, Donna Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, New York/London, 1991
Hornby, Nick “David Simon interviewed by Nick Hornby” in The Believer Bimonthly Magazine of Literature, Arts and Culture, Mc Sweeney’s S Francisco, August 2007
Luce, Edward The Retreat of Western Liberalism Little Brown , London 2017
Mirzoeff Nicholas Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture Routledge, New York/London, 2005,
Sepinwall Alan The Revolution was Televised: How the Sopranos, Madmen, Breaking Bad, Lost and Other Groundbreaking Dramas Changed Tv Forever Gallery Books, New York 2013
Shudson, Michael Watergatein American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past Basic Books, New York, 1992
Spivak Gayaty Chakravorty “Can the subaltern speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994
Talpade Mohanty C. "Under Western Eyes” Boundary 2, Vol. 12, No. 3, On Humanism and the University I: The Discourse of Humanism. (Spring - Autumn, 1984), pp. 333-358.
Zurawiki, David “Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ and an American Press That Has Lost Its Sense of P:urpose” in Baltimore Sun June 23, 2012

Teaching methods

The course will be structured in lectures, discussions of visual and reading of the assigned materials and the showing of excerpts of TV series. The students are expected to attend every class and come prepared for discussions through reading and watching the assigned materials. The course will be organized in three sections.
Section I: A small theoretical and a historical part where the subject of Visual Studies will be introduced, analyzed and discussed in relation to Gender Identity
Section II: The American democracy and the role of the Media
Section IIi: The introduction of TV series and their importance to understand with critical tools the contemporary American society and therefore many western countries
The showing and discussing of the most relevant TV series concerned with gender identity from the past until today will be an essential part of the course.

Exam Rules

By the end of the course, students will:
· demonstrate an introductory understanding of the field of Visual Studies, and utilize a range of interdisciplinary tools and methods;
· construct and enhance a critical understanding of gender and its complex intersections with other social, cultural, and biological categories, including sex and also race, religion and class;
· understand the multiple levels of Visual media, particularly Tv series;
· be able to explain the importance of the role of gender in the field of Visual Studies;
· show an understanding of the evolution of the role of women in the American society;
· Methods of evaluation for attending students: attendance 30%, active participation to the in-class discussions 30%, final exam 40%. Attending students must be present at least to 80% of classes.
· Attendance is highly suggested for this type of course where themes of great relevance come often from the discussion in class opening new fields of research and interest.