Course description
The course examines questions of identity through the lens of short stories and novels written by recent Italian immigrants. Traditionally a nation of emigrants, Italy has recently become a destination for immigrants. The texts we will read offer testimonies to the difficulties and pleasures of assimilation for those who have migrated to Italy, as well as ideas about the contemporary evolution of Italian culture and identity.

Our authors are migrants or first-generation Italians. They write in Italian and use a language that is mediated less by the great masters of the past than by their own diverse, original cultures. Amara Lakhous is from Algeria, Gabriella Ghermandi’s mother is Ethiopian and father Italian, Gabriella Kuruvilla’s father is from India, her mother Italian, Ingy Mubiayi was born in Egypt, and Igiaba Scego, probably the most prominent voices of first-generation Italians, was born in Italy of Somalian parents. The course also includes two films about migration from the perspective of Italians: “Shun Li and the Poet,” directed by Andrea Segre in 2011, which is set in the small fishing town of Chioggia on the Venetian Lagoon, and “Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide,” directed by Marco Tullio Giordana in 2005, the story of a young Italian boy who finds himself lost at sea in a boat of migrants.

CULTURE & IDENTITY: Our objective is to better understand the perspectives of migrants in Italy and in our own countries. We will focus on the meaning of culture and how it defines identity, on hybrid cultural identity and question how and why migrants might appropriate or reject Italian culture, the value system that establishes meaning in Italy. We will contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of cultures that are open to greater pluralism. At first glance the works we will read seem straight-forward and easy to understand, but they are also profoundly challenging to established ideas about identity and culture, and offer guidance to understanding today’s societies, which are increasingly defined by migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures.

CITIZENSHIP: The texts raise important political questions about citizenship, which are the focus of debate today in many nations.

COLLECTIVE MEMORY: The third issue raised by the texts is that of collective memory. Although Italy was not a major colonial power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Ghermandi insists that the experience of the short-lived Italian Empire in Africa should be part of the collective memory of both the colonizer and the colonized.

During the course of the semester the class will visit one of the centers that welcomes migrants in Venezia.

Learning outcomes
Students taking this course work toward the following goals:
_Develop attentive reading and interpretive writing skills, and speaking strategies for the effective and respectful communication of ideas
_Acquire an understanding of the ways in which literature nurtures self-knowledge and knowledge of others and our environment.

Evaluation Methods
1. Class Participation (40%)
-Attendance: VIU specifies mandatory attendance. Frequent tardiness will also negatively affect this part of your grade.
-Contributions to discussions: These contributions can be made through active listening, raising critical questions, offering thoughtful comments, participating actively in small group work, and leaving space for others to speak.
-Two oral presentations.

2. Written Assignments (60%)
There will be a four-page, mid-term essay (20%), and an eight-page, final essay (40%).
You will have the opportunity to rewrite the first short essay, and the grade will be the average of the two versions. I will give you guidelines for writing and expect you to follow those guidelines to the extent that you are able. I am willing to assist you at any point in the process. Ideas or language borrowed from other authors or scholars must be properly attributed.

Program

Unit I The Changing Urban Space
Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous
Translated into English by Ann Goldstein
film: L'Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio by Agostino Ferrente (2006)
film: "Benvenuti in Italia" by Aluk Amiri, Hamed Dera, Hevi Dilara, Zakaria Mohamed Ali, Dagmawi Yimer (2011)

Unit II Daily Questions of Identity
"Dismatria" by Igiaba Scego (2005)
"Sausages" by Igiaba Scego (2005)
http://www.warscapes.com/retrospectives/food/sausages http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2011/07/video-meet-black-italian-writer-igiaba.html
film: Bread and Chocolate (1974) by Franco Brusati

Unit III Dreams of Assimilation
"Marriage" by Zhu Qifeng (2008)
Neyla by Kossi Komla-Ebri (2002)
translated into English and edited by Peter N. Pedroni
http://www.euroalter.com/2011/italy-and-the-new-italians-an-interview-with-migrant-writer-kossi-komla-ebri/
film: Chocolate Lessons by Claudio Cupellini

Unit IV Issues of Global Immigration
Saskia Sassen, “The Repositioning of Citizenship and Alienage: Emergent Subjects and Spaces for Politics” (2005)

Unit V Children's Lives
"Document, Please" by Ingy Mubiayi (2005)

Unit VI Immigration and Race
"Colf”" by Gabriella Kuruvilla (2008)

Unit VII Immigration Reimagined
film: Golden Door / Nuovomondo by Emanuele Crialese (2006)