AFST331

This course will explore Italian colonial and postcolonial culture from the preunification period to the present in the light of the new theoretical perspectives. The texts, films and opera will provide a panorama of Italian colonial culture and will illuminate the wealth of material that still needs to be addressed and debated. Specifically, the course will address the Italian campaigns in Africa and it will provide a valuable, full account of the political exchanges to date between the spiritual value to the Ethiopian people. This course will also examine the failures and shortcomings of Italy's postcolonial history and alternative subjects of investigation including women's history, oral history and postcolonial writing of Eurocentric viewpoints. This course will revisit the Orientalist discourse within the Egyptian work of Giuseppe Ungaretti and Edward Said's interpretation of "Aida". It will address national identity and imperialism through the emergence of cinema of both the 1920s and 1930s, thus bringing Italian colonialism into the space of today's most important debates regarding colonialism and multiculturalism.