Reading and composition course based on works by Italians and foreigners about Italy and its culture and by Italians about their distinctive experiences of other cultures as tourists and emigrants. Works studied will be primarily chosen from among fiction and non fiction narratives, both originally in English and translated into it. R5A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition Requirement and R5B satisfies the second half.

What is shame and how does it operate? Is it beneficial, detrimental, both? A silent pandemic? I don’t know about you, but I have definitely experienced shame and its effects. What’s more, how to talk about this emotion and what to make of it is a grey area at best. This course explores the many manifestations and ramifications of shame and how these can impact our lives, our thinking, our writing. We will come to grips with shame in a constructive and transformational manner by putting on four different hats—as Bodybuilders, Authors, Activists, and Italianists—all of which will persist and intertwine in our reading and composition journey. Spoiler alert: Freewriting and “mad drafting” will be fun, essential skills for all four personas! The Bodybuilder will stimulate and strengthen the “analytical muscles” as we set out to understand shame by tracing its evolution, from biblical and philosophical passages (i.e. Aristotle’s Ethics and Dante’s Banquet), to marketing campaign ads, to Brené Brown’s TED talks on shame and vulnerability. Having established the many shades of shame, we will analyze and write about aspects of shame in and around other contexts. The Author will dig deep and reflect on how shame and its connotations—(dis)honor, fear, (im)modesty to mention a few—might be restraining our own writing. What experiences have conditioned and potentially even silenced us? Our first project will help us identify our censuring inner judges and break free from them in order to develop our true voices. Louise Dunlap’s Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing will guide us in the process, empowering us to write coherently, confidently, and true to ourselves. With greater authorial freedom comes greater power and responsibility! Hence, the Activist will explore the rise of (trans)national movements in response to socio-political bias and shameful governments. For instance, we will look at the Black Lives Matter movement and draw similarities and differences between the US and Italy in the fight against racism. For the final project you will have the option to engage with past or currents movements (e.g. Women’s Suffrage, Free Speech, Native American Fish Wars, LGBTQ, #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, SlutWalk) or other pressing social issue through a letter, article, report, testimony, blog, podcast, poem, or other means of expression. The Italianista will do comparative analyses of representations of shame(lessness) in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s Scattered Rhymes and Boccaccio’s Decameron, with the option to write a literary analysis essay or a creative piece for the final project. (Spoiler 2: Two of these Italian authors staged their personal feelings of shame in their masterpieces, and one was outright shameless.) Set in the 1348 plague in Florence, the Decameron will provide us with the opportunity to write critically about shame(lessness) parallels with our ongoing pandemic. This course features in-class workshops to support your thinking-writing skills, two projects (1500-2000 words each), and in-class studio time dedicated to your projects. Are you ready to inhabit these identities and tackle shame with flying colors?

Requisites

• Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills