Università Roma Tre

In contemporary societies the arts affect the public discourse, becoming agency of meanings, laboratory for the civil society, space and place for shaping the public memory of very controversial events, arena where gender identities, ethnicity and social classes are socially constructed.

The first part aims at studying artistic production and politics of cultural consumption. It will focus on the following topics: theories of the author's death, theories of reception, art as social practice, the institutional definition of artistic value, cases of " non-recognition " and plagiarism politics, politics of genius, canonization and practices of social exclusion, theories of cultural capital, relationship between art and advertising .
The second part concerns art institutions. It will address the following topics: art and the public sphere, monuments in the urban space, art as memory technology, cultural consumption of the past and the role of the cinema in shaping the public memory of contested pasts, sociology of museums and politics of museum exhibition, representation of ethnic identities in museums, museums as technology of gender, multimedia art.
The third part addresses the relationship between theatre and civil society with a special focus on the case of theatre in prisons.

1) A. L. Tota, Sociologie dell’arte. Dal museo tradizionale all’arte multimediale, Carocci, Roma, 2001.

2) Additional articles and essays available on the professor’s personal web page hosted on the website www.filcospe.it