Course Catalogue

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This course explores the role of mountains in shaping (and re-shaping) Italy's material and cultural identity. By reading poems and stories that intersect the physical reality of rocks, rivers, and lakes, as well as Alpine and Appennine flora and fauna, it aims to approach Italian mountain landscapes as layered texts that enrich our view of Italian society, ecology, and politics, as plural entities always in the making.  

20 x 1 hour seminar sessions  

Available to all students fulfilling requirements for Honours entry into one of the SMLC Honours programmes, and by arrangement to visiting students or students of other Honours programmes who qualify under the University's 25% regulation.

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The standard assessments for this course are:

■ Essay (2,500 words) - 60%

■ Podcast (7 minutes) - 20%

■ Portfolio (1,000-words) - 20%

If required, for instance where a disability prevents a student from undertaking a specific method of assessment, the following alternatives are available:

■ There is no alternative to the essay and portfolio, but an extension to the deadline can be offered as reasonable adjustment (students should follow the usual process for extensions).

■ 700-word podcast script as an alternative to the podcast.

Further reasonable adjustments may be provided where necessary. Students are encouraged to consult with the course convenor. 

This course aims to:

■ offer Honours students of Italian an innovative perspective on Italian culture that, through examination of the political, social, and cultural relevance of mountains, aims to broaden its commonplace, metropolitan facet.

■ Analyse in a collaborative environment the effectiveness of an ecocritical reading of mountains as texts, contextually inviting students to identify in the layered nature of mountain texts an alternative to monolithic national discourses.

■ Analyse the ecological complexity of Italian border landscapes through close readings of poems, short stories, novels, films, and theatrical performances representing mountains' storied matter.

■ Allow students to produce creative work engaging with the most up-to-date environmentalist concepts through different media (podcasts, journal pieces, textual-visual pamphlets, essays), to reflect an innovative understanding of mountain landscapes as sites of complex stories and histories that escape simplifying national narratives.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ question received, simplifying views of Italian landscapes as aesthetically pleasing, and complicate them through engagement with mountains' ecological fragility

■ translate the ideological and sociological relevance of Italian mountain borders (and frontiers more broadly) into renewed travel and citizenship practices;

■ analyse texts of different kinds (poems, short stories, novels, films, theatrical performances) in relation to their historical contexts and relevant ecocritical frameworks;

■ undertake independent research engaging with secondary sources and applying critical tools to the analysis of primary texts;

■ develop original and well-researched texts, clearly written and carefully proofread, with an academic purpose in mind but adaptable to different means of communication.