2022/23 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

ITAL2500 Modern Italian Identities Across Cultures

20 creditsClass Size: 10

Module manager: Olivia Santovetti
Email: o.santovetti@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semesters 1 & 2 (Sep to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2022/23

Pre-requisite qualifications

Level one Italian or equivalent

This module is mutually exclusive with

ITAL2501

Modern Italian Identities Across Cultures

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

This module will explore how modern Italian identities have changed and have been represented across media and cultures, from the country’s unification to the present. Our approach will be historical, intranational, and transnational. We will examine how social identities such as nationality, gender, ethnicity/race, class, and religion have changed over Italy’s modern history and have travelled across national boundaries, for migration and cultural exchange have always marked modern Italian identities. By looking at modern Italian identities in context, we will also emphasise their intersectional dimension, for we will look at how identities such as nationality, gender, ethnicity/race, class, and religion intersect. By working independently and in groups, students will also learn how to design and produce a podcast.

Objectives

This module has three main objectives. Students will develop a theoretically grounded and historically informed understanding of the ways in which modern Italian identities such as nationality, gender, ethnicity/race, class and religion intersect and are represented. By focusing on modern Italian identities as a case study, students will be also able to break the mould of national stereotypes and explore how social identities and their representations change over time and transcend national boundaries. By working independently and in groups, students will learn how to design and produce a podcast.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this module, students should demonstrate an ability to:
1. Engage critically with theories of social identities
2. Understand how modern Italian identities intersect, change over time, and cross over national boundaries
3. Analyse the representation of modern Italian identities across the arts and media
4. Develop and communicate to an international audience a perspective on modern Italy’s history and culture
5. Design and produce a podcast

Skills outcomes
- Present information and arguments on a designated topic
- Understand and use, in written contexts, a range of critical terms appropriate to the topic at hand

- Adopt a critical approach to the selection and organisation of a large body of material in order to produce, to a deadline, a written argument of some complexity.

Syllabus

Italy has become a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multicultural society. If we look at Italy’s past, we see that modern Italian identities have always been shifting through time and space. And the arts and media capture and shape these changes as they happen.
In this module, students will explore how social identities such as nationality, gender, race/ethnicity, class, and religion have changed and have been represented across media and cultures, from the country’s unification in the late 19th century to the present. A particular emphasis will be placed on the historical, intranational and transnational dimensions of modern Italian identities as they have been lived, experienced, told, and imagined by different people through time and space, for modern Italy has been marked by migration and cultural exchange. By looking at modern Italian identities in context, we will also emphasise their intersectional dimension, for we will look at how identities such as nationality, gender, ethnicity/race, class, and religion intersect.
Students will discover modern Italian stories, both real and imagined, by engaging with and analysing a variety of materials across arts and media, from opera to novels, memoirs, films, photographs, and much more. Those materials will come from different parts of Italy, North and South, as well as beyond the country.

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Lecture	19	1.00	19.00
Practical	2	1.00	2.00
Seminar	8	1.00	8.00
Tutorial	1	1.00	1.00
Private study hours			170.00
Total Contact hours			30.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

Preparation for class: 120 hours
Individual portfolio: 20 hours
Group project 30 hours

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Students will receive formative feedback through seminars, a tutorial, and practicals. In seminars, their progress will be monitored, and they will receive feedback through class discussion. In the Sem 1 tutorial, they will receive feedback on the first 2 entries/scripts of their written portfolio. Practicals will be scheduled toward the end of Sem 2 and will prepare students to design and produce their group project (a podcast). Since their group project will be based on the entries/scripts from their individual portfolios, the feedback received on the first two entries/scripts of the portfolio submitted in Sem 1 will also be formative and inform the writing of the additional entry/script in Sem 2

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Portfolio	1 = 2 x 1000-word entries	60.00
Group Project	2000-word scripts + 20 minute podcast	40.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 15/11/2022

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