Week 1:
Course overview and introduction to some key concepts: culture and popular culture; media and behaviors; consumption and taste; global vs local. Italian media and popular culture studies. Case study: Umberto Eco. Basic information about Italian history from Unification to date, in order to better understand the development of the entertainment industries and the way they have been assimilated.
Week 2:
Digital Italy: features of the digital era and their impact on traditional media. The coming of new media and their penetration in Italy. Rewriting youth culture: social networks, video and computer games. Smartphones: redefining personal and collective identities. Politics 2.0.: the rise of M5S and the ‘web democracy’.
Week 3:
Television: local and global formats. History of Italian television. The Americanization of the Italian small screen. From paleo to neo TV: the changing habits of family watching. The close relationship between TV and politics. Case studies: Gomorra (the series), and Il Boss delle cerimonie.
Week 4:
Cinema: the industrialization of the imaginary and the rise of a society of the spectacle. Italians’ contribution to world cinema: from silent movies to Neo Realism. Hollywood’s impact and some Italian ways to tell domestic stories. The average Italian as portrayed by Totò, Alberto Sordi and Fantozzi. Stardom and trend setters, from Sofia Loren to Ennio Morricone
Week 5:
Radio and print: history of radio in Italy, from propaganda to mobile listening, from state monopoly to free radios. Case study: I cento passi (One Hundred Steps). The press: journalism in Italy from its heydays to DYT information. The destiny of books and the mutations of publishing industry in a world market. Written and oral culture in the digital age, from blogs to web radios.
Week 6:
Music: who are the best-selling artists in Italy and who has made it abroad. Popular music: indigenous drives and foreign influences (rock, rap, canzone, hip hop, etc). Music and national identity. The globalization of an Italian trademark: opera, bel canto, Neapolitan song. Promoting domestic songs on the web: the case of www.canzoneitaliana.it
Week 7:
Course review and mid-term exam
Week 8
Cultures of revolt: countercultures and subcultures, social movements and cultural resistance. The Long ’68. The alternative press and the birth of a counter-information. From no-logo to no-global movement. Classic subcultures: mods, hippies and punk vs contemporary subcultures: hip hop, ravers, skaters. Labelling the new generations. Case study: Re Nudo pop festivals.
Week 9:
Holiday culture: travelling, trains, cars: mobility and modernity. Beach culture and its representation on big screen. Mythologies of Italy: from the Grand Tour to mass tourism. Autogrill, package tours, holiday villages and amusement parks: the rise of pseudo-places. A clash between tradition and modernity: Christmas in Italy.
Week 10:
Italian trademarks: food and fashion: food TV shows and the rise of a cooking awareness. Food and national identity: hunger and the myth of a rural country. The invention of regional cooking. Gender in the kitchen. Fast vs slow food: ways of approaching the table. Fashion and the easy life (Dolce vita) in the Sixties. Postmodern icons: Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and the imported logos.
Week 11:
Consumption styles: shopping and advertising : from village and neighborhood markets to round-the corner outlets, from supermarkets to shopping centers, the lure of things and the art of displaying them. Pseudo (non) places and new ways of wasting time. Objects as promoters of symbolic consumption. Carosello and the fictionalization of advertising. The myth of America in Italian TV commercials.
Week 12:
Church and the media - Queer cultures: Pope Francis, Twitter and CTV (Centro Televisivo Vaticano). Fatal attraction: John Paul II and the Papa boys. How the church has assimilated the media, from cinema to radio, from TV to social networks. Gender studies and politics in Italy. The murder of Pasolini: the first media event to focus on gay culture. Queer cinema, queer TV, queer music. The rise of a homosexual movement in the Seventies. The spread of LGBT culture.
Week 13:
Leisure and entertainment: soccer as a national passion vs soccer as a weapon to divide peoples. Soccer as an intercultural/interethnic laboratory, where to test the social resistance to accept the stranger. Bar and coffee culture in the Fifties. Games, spas, discotheques, quiz shows on TV: old and new forms of entertainment in contemporary Italy
In class presentations I
Week 14: In class presentations II - Course final review
Readings will be assigned on a weekly base. What follows is a list of books that can be useful for the final paper:
Allen, Beverly and Mary J. Russo. Revisioning Italy. National Identity and Global Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Eco, Umberto, Apocalypse Postponed, Indiana University Press, 2000.
Edensor, Tim. National identity, popular culture and everyday life, Berg, 2002.
Fabbri, Franco and Plastino, Goffredo (eds.). Made in Italy. Studies in Popular Music. Routledge: London, 2014.
Forgacs, D. and Gundle, S. Mass Culture and Italian Society From Fascism to the Cold War, Indiana University Press, 2008
Forgacs, D. and Lumley, R. Italian Cultural Studies. An Introduction, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Hebdige Dick. Hiding in the Light: on Images and Things. Comedia: London, 1988.
Hibberd, Matthew, The Media in Italy: Press, Cinema and Broadcasting From Unification to Digital, Open University Press, 2008
Lumley, Robert, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, Verso, 1990
Sassoon, Donald. The Culture of the Europeans. From 1800 to the Present. Harper Collins, London, 2006.