Università Roma Tre

"The Holy Terrors" of Nineteenth-Century U.S. Culture

Part I (Dr. Sabrina Vellucci)

In this course we will look at the relevance of the idea of childhood and adolescence in nineteenth-century U.S. culture. The first part will investigate the ways in which the child catalyzes issues related to national identity, progress, and democracy. The analysis of narrative texts will point out the constitutive place of race in the U.S. national imaginary and the child's role in establishing race as a central shaping element of the ostensibly egalitarian U.S. ideals.


Part II (Prof. Maria Anita Stefanelli)

Religiosity and Rebellion in Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

The poet appropriated by cinema to create a visual counterpart of teen-agers' rebellion through Dead Poets Society presents a poetics of religion taking origin from physical vitality and the idea of progress. Even if not through a direct interaction with Whitman, Dickinson's approach to God is non-conventional, and is quite far from her family's involvement in religious matters, in spite of the fact that she chose not to leave her father's home. During the course, some of her poems revolving on the "volcano" as the poetic motif that led her to sum up her life as a "loaded gun," will be examined, using also "translation" as a mode of analysis.
In addition to the critical appreciation of Whitman's and Dickinson's poems, some creative contemporary work on the two poets will be presented to the students as a revival of the two poets' independent spirit.

Part I (Dr. Sabrina Vellucci)

Texts:
Harriet Wilson, Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Vintage 2011);
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Norton Critical Edition 1998);
Henry James, What Maisie Knew (Oxford University Press 2008).

Criticism:
Caroline F. Levander, Cradle of Liberty. Race, the Child, and National Belonging from Thomas Jefferson to W.E.B. DuBois (Duke University Press, 2006);
Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to the Civil Rights (New York University Press, 2011);
Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Dependent States. The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (The University of Chicago Press, 2005).
A selection of chapters will be provided in class.

Part II (Prof. Maria Anita Stefanelli)

Texts:
Walt Whitman, Poems (any edition) (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading)
Emily Dickinson, Poems (any edition) (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading)
Kindle edition of: Paul Di Filippo, Walt and Emily

Film:
Dead Poets Society

Critical approach:
Walt Whitman, Utopia in the Present Tense: Walt Whitman and the Language of the New World, ed. Marina Camboni, Roma 1994 (a choice of essays will be selected for further reading).
Adrienne Rich, “Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson,” reprinted in On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 (New York, 1979).
Helen Barolini, “The Italian Side of Emily Dickinson,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 70, n. 3 (summer 1994) 461-79.
Daniela Gioseffi, “Adoration for Italy in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry: Emotional Symbolism and Womanly Rebellion,” iitaly (October 2, 2001): click inside the piece when prompted for a longer version of it.