Postcolonial Anglophone Cultures I

The course draws on the tools of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies to provide an analysis of cultural production and expressive practices in Anglophone countries, particularly popular creative forms and narratives. Specifically, the course will focus on imperial legacy and the cultures of the Commonwealth, exploring the artistic and cultural expressions of former British colonies and protectorates. It will also retrace the formation and reshaping of local identities during the transition from the empire to the construction of nation-states, and the way this process affected the various fields of artistic production. At a methodological level, the course will focus on the study of inclusive and plural mechanisms and narratives, to shed light on the instances that, in colonised countries, sparked an identity-reshaping process affecting various aspects of culture and language. The goal is to foster an advanced understanding and critical awareness of the mechanisms at work in the British Commonwealth and the former colonies, and to provide students with adequate methodological tools to interact effectively in English within inclusive and diversity-valuing environments.
Learning objectives include:
- advanced knowledge and critical understanding of a variety of Anglophone cultural practices, textual and artistic products (both spontaneous and codified) on diversity-related topics and the connected processes of cultural hybridisation;
- fruitful application of the tools of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies to the context of contemporary Anglophone countries, along with the ability to trace the historical developments that contributed to shaping current issues related to the topics covered during the course;
- the ability to apply the knowledge acquired during Bachelor's studies (regarding the notions of otherness, decolonisation, immigration, diaspora, and the contemporary age) to investigate concepts such as race, ethnicity, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, power, ideology, hegemony, discursive practices and consensus-building;
- the ability to critically analyse communication models across various media under the lens of identity, inclusivity and diversity, combined with the ability to identify good and bad practices in the contemporary context, supported by reasoned evaluations;
- the ability to research, select, summarise and compare relevant information, and to debate in the classroom/in groups on the texts and topics studied;
- the ability to formulate independent and critically reasoned judgements on a variety of cultural products and literary texts;
- the ability to compare and draw correlations between different contexts related to class, ethnicity, gender and the like, with a view to developing a pragmatic and authentic awareness of what it means to respect and include diverse identities.

This course will guide students in investigating the concept of identity in relation to contemporary post- and neo-colonial English-speaking cultures, as well as to the multiple influences, ideologies, religions and cultural practices which have developed over time during the decolonisation process and the formation of nation-states. This is in line with the goal of the Master's degree programme as a whole, which is to enhance the linguistic and cultural mediation skills acquired by students during the previous three-year programme. Students are also expected to learn how to identify the most suitable critical categories and methods of Cultural and Postcolonial Studies to analyse the proposed cultural products. By the end of the course, students should possess not only adequate language skills, but also an array of methodological tools allowing them to critically select, organise and interpret various types of contemporary textual productions, including media, performative, musical, and literary texts. Moreover, they should also be able to identify the constituent parts of a text, in order to deconstruct it and learn to reproduce similar structures. Teamwork will be an integral part of the course, so students are expected to learn to organise their work and collaborate in English.