RMST459

The Strongman, the Latin Lover, and other Italian Masculinities

Cross-listed with ITAL409

This course offers an overview of diverse Italian masculinities as they are represented in Italian literature and culture. What does it mean to be a man in Italy? How do diverse concepts of Italian manhood come into being? How are they constructed and circulated through literary and cinematic texts? What do these texts tell us about Italian society? And how are these male types challenged in the Italian cultural domain?

We will probe these questions by studying the depictions of Italian virilities in memoirs, novels, public speeches, news articles, films, and television programs from the 18^th century to the present, with a focus on the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Male types and ideals that we will examine include the self-made man, the strongman, the fascist new man, nationalist soldiers, the inetto (schlemiel), the Latin Lover, libertines, and gay men. To delve further into these texts, we will also study a selective number of influential theories from Masculinity and Gender Studies.

Through this course, we will gain a historical and critical understanding of men and gender dynamics in Italian culture. This course is designed to develop your critical thinking, as well as speaking and writing skills in the context of Italian masculinities. No prior knowledge of the Italian language or Italian culture is required.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisite: No prerequisites

Note: Credit will be granted for only one of ITAL 409 or ITST 419 or RMST 459. Students who plan to minor in Italian must take this course as ITAL and will be expected to do part of their reading and assignments in the Italian language. ITAL 409 may be taken twice, with different content, for a total of 6 credits.

Italian Fashion Cultures

Cross-listed with ITAL110

Milano Fashion Week & Design, 02/2011 | Source: Flickr (Mat's Eye)

In 2022, Italy’s newly-elected, right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, re-named a previous trade ministry as the “Ministry for Business and Made in Italy,” thereby invoking a key marker of Italian commercial, group, and cultural identity. Since the end of the WWII, the garment and accessories sector has been traditionally recognized as a pillar within the Made in Italy industries.

“Italian Fashion Cultures” examines both the national history of Italian fashion since the post-WWII period and its global dimensions. The course delineates the dynamics among the country’s fashion capitals (Florence, Rome, and Milan), with a focus on the apparel sector’s growth during the 1950s-1970s. We also probe how and why Italian fashion has developed in response to the clothing sector’s exigencies and creative tension with France, the United States, and China.

The course highlights ready-to-wear and fast fashion, the two most significant categories of the fashion world today. Cultural appropriation, decoloniality, and sustainability are examined throughout the course in relation to the course’s primary texts, including fashion journalism, websites, social media, advertising, literature, films, and artworks.

Students are encouraged to consider three central questions:

(1) how clothing is represented in the primary texts to influence the audience’s cognitive and affective knowledge;

(2) how fashion helps forge individual, brand, national, and other cultural identities;

(3) given the ubiquitous presence of fashion branding, how these narratives articulate the Made in Italy cachet to consumers?

The course does not assume student’s prior knowledge of Italy or Italian fashion. Oral presentations and a final project (in the format of a critical essay, a short film, a multimedia project, or creative writing) are the main tools of assessment of learning outcomes. Regular attendance in class lecturing and participation in group discussions and in-class activities are essential for developing critical and analytical skills for these assessment activities.

Language of instruction: English

Prerequisites: No prerequisites

Identity, Ideology and Power

Instructor: Marie-Eve Bouchard
Language of instruction: French

This graduate seminar will delve into three critical themes in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology: ideology, identity, and power. Its broad objective is to examine how language ideologies are involved in the construction of power structure and social identities. Focusing largely on key articles, this course engages with debates and methods for analysing linguistic evidence pertaining to symbolic power, cultural contact and language shift, migration and mobility, authenticity and identity, resistance, and digital communication. Throughout this seminar, we will explore the social, economic and political consequences of different identification strategies by discussing how people’s beliefs about language reinforce or contest normative power structures and social. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French. The class is designed for three main audiences: 1) graduate students in French linguistics, 2) graduate students in the French literature interested in language use, and 3) advanced undergraduate students who have taken sociolinguistics courses at FHIS. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French.

Recommended readings: Most readings will be available on Canvas.