Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding
The course will allow students to acquire theoretical knowledge on the particular way in which literature is dealing with the ecological question.
Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
At the end of the course, students will be able to comment on the works presented in class and to use the critical tools that literary texts can offer to the environmental education.
Making judgments
At the end of the course, students will learn how to adequately discuss and evaluate, with attention to the specific vocabulary and with independent judgment, the contents of the teaching and the works discussed in class. The course will also make available to students some theoretical tools capable of allowing, through the interpretation of literary texts, an innovative approach to the issues of the present.
Communication skills
At the end of the course, students will achieve the ability to communicate in a clear and articulate way, correctly using the specific vocabulary of an innovative field such as that of literary ecology.
Learning skills
The theoretical commitment will give students a certain methodological mastery, an expansion of the repertoire of knowledge and a learning ability useful for acquiring the tools necessary for careers in the cultural industry.
Prerequisites
None
Course unit content
Beyond anthropocentrism. Literature and environmental education
Environmental education is the still emerging discipline that aims to address issues relating to the impact and the awareness of the impact of the human species on the biosphere. What is place that literature can have in this attempt to review the way of thinking that has led humanity to confront problems that no generation previous to the present one has ever experienced? What does it mean – as it has been written – that "literature will save us from extinction"? The course aims above all to offer a theoretical framework of the relationship between literature and ecology, an introductory phase which will be followed by the analysis of the major issues at the center of some "narratives of the planet Earth", according to the definition of the recent anthology edited by Niccolò Scaffai included in the syllabus, and finally the reading of some texts that point to a redefinition of the position of the subject capable of overcoming the anthropocentric perspective, one of the most crucial questions with which the literature of the Anthropocene is confronted.
Full programme
The detailed program in preparation of the exam will be posted by the end of classes on Elly 2022/2023 portal.
Bibliography
Both the syllabus and the bibliography will be presented during the first class and from that moment on made available in the Elly 2022/2023 portal, where students will also have access to further readings (both mandatory and optional) in PDF format.
Teaching methods
The course consists of lectures. Students are strongly encouraged to participate with questions and comments related to the topics covered in class.
Assessment methods and criteria
At the end of classes there will be an oral exam on all the contents of the program. The exam will start from a review of 6,000 characters (including spaces) which will make up 25% of the final evaluation and which must be delivered one week before the oral exam. The subject of the review will be one of the optional essays or literary texts among those made available in PDF or indicated on Elly. It will be up to each student to choose the text to review.
The exam is considered insufficient in the event that the minimum knowledge of the teaching contents, the ability to autonomously re-elaborate, the ability to understand and analyze the literary texts and essays proposed as well as an adequate expressive and argumentative capacity are lacking. A sufficient evaluation (18-23/30) is determined by the acquisition of the minimum contents of the lessons and by a basic level of autonomous re-elaboration (including the ability to establish simple links between the works analyzed in class), by the acquisition of a minimum ability of textual analysis and a not solid command of the Italian language. Similarly, the intermediate scores (24-27/30) are assigned to those who demonstrate a more than sufficient (24-25 / 30) or good (26-27/30) level of the evaluation indicators listed above, while the Higher scores (from 28/30 to 30/30 with honors) are assigned based on the demonstration of an excellent level. In particular, honors are assigned to students that reach the maximum score in the parameters indicated and that allow to detect, together with a solid autonomy of judgment, an excellent expressive and argumentative ability.
Other information
- - -
