Anglo-American Cultures

Focusing on the literary and non-literary works, films, art forms, discourses and cultural practices which inform and characterize the current debate on US national, racial and cultural identities against the backdrop of the continent's history and global scope, this course aims to enhance the students' knowledge and understanding of these themes, which are central concerns in our experience of contemporaneity. This aim is pursued through the methodological and critical tools of cultural studies, which, in line with the main objectives of the Degree Course, favour an understanding of ideological, intercultural and socio-spatial relations, as well as a multicultural and interdisciplinary approach. The course is meant to foster active participation from the students, and, besides advancing their English skills, aims to enhance their ability to make judgements and recognize the differences and connections among divergent forms, genres, and cultures, according to the wider mission of Mediazione Linguistica.
Students will acquire the skills relevant to making more informed and autonomous judgements. Thanks to their familiarity with different perspectives of intercultural analysis, they will develop analytical and critical attitudes towards cultural productions and literary texts and draw comparisons and establish connections between the various contexts under scrutiny and their own situated experience.

Within the frame of the linguistic and cultural specificity and multiplicity of the US, tudents are expected to show interdisciplinary methodological and cultural tools for discussing and analyzing cultural, political and media discourses and practices, fictional and non-fictional texts, visual culture, documentaries and films. This is to be done using the methodological approaches of Cultural Studies. The acquisition of the required skills will be fostered by encouraging active participation and dialogue, and by enabling the students to draw comparisons between the US context and their own situated experience of being Italians and citizens of the world, so as to facilitate forms of analysis and engagement with the issues and challenges of the American present which are consistent with the avowed specialist and intercultural mission of their Degree Course.