Teaching and learning for this module consists of one lecture and one seminar per week. Beginners in Italian must attend an extra reading group. All students are expected to attend the School of Modern Languages study skills sessions for first years.

Term 1

Week 1: Introduction. Italian futurism.
Week 2: Treaty of Versailles 1919, Italy in the aftermath of WWI
Week 3: The rise of Fascism and the March on Rome, 1922
Week 4: The consolidation of Fascism, propaganda, censorship, gender roles
Week 5: Fascism at War; Colonial Italy
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: The armistice of 1943, Resistance and Liberation
Week 8 Neorealism and Italian intellectual culture
Week 9: Post-war settlement, the new constitution, 1948 elections
Week 10: 1950s political culture; Christian Democracy and Italy in the Cold War. Italy and the EEC (EU)

Term 2:

Week 1: Economic Boom, urbanisation and social change
Week 2: Movements of protest. The women’s movement. Divorce and Abortion referenda.
Week 3: Gli anni di piombo: political extremism and terrorism. Piazza Fontana bombing (1969 and murder of Aldo Moro (1978)
Week 4: Mafia and Anti-mafia
Week 5: Mani pulite and Tangentopoli scandals of 1990s
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia
Week 8: The Italian left
Week 9: Contemporary immigration
Week 10: Crisis of Democracy: from economic crisis to 2016 constitutional referendum

Term 3:

Student presentations, revision and exam preparation

A selection of visual materials, primary historical texts, novels, extracts from novels, and films will be used. These may vary according to availability of the texts but are likely to include:

Italo Calvino, ll sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947)
Antonio Pennacchi, Canale Mussolini (2010) extracts.
Antonio Tabucchi, Sostiene Pereira (1994)
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel, Lontano da Mogadiscio (1994)

Film: (in order of historical relevance)
Ettore Scola, Una giornata particolare (1977)
Roberto Rossellini, Roma citta aperta (1945)
Federico Fellini, La dolce vita (1960)
Marco Bellocchio, Buongiorno notte (2003)
Paolo Sorrentino, Il Divo (2008)
Gianni Amelio, Lamerica (1994)
Nanni Moretti, Il Caimano (2006)