Università Roma Tre

The first part aims at analysing the forms of public communication and the ways in which different institutions classify, think and speak within the public space, with a special focus on the role played by the media . Topics covered include: the articulation of public discourse in different national contexts, the processes of formation of public opinion, the relationship between media and new technologies.
The second part analyses the public communication of the past, with particular reference to its cultural shapes. To what extent cinema, theatre and museums can contribute to producing the public knowledge of very controversial pasts? To what extent the public knowledge of the Holocaust can be shaped through a movie or a comic (for example, Maus by Art Spiegelman)? A song can change the social trajectories of collective and social memories (the case of “Nick and Bart” by Joan Baez on Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti)? To what extent a theatrical performance on Ustica can contribute to the public knowledge of the event itself? Can we learn something new on September 11th thanks to a series of short films dedicated to it? These are some of the questions, which the course will focus on.

1) Rampazi, Marita e Anna Lisa Tota (a cura di), 2007, La memoria pubblica. Trauma culturale, nuovi confini e identità nazionali, Novara, UTET.
2) Tota, Anna Lisa, 2003, La città ferita. Memoria e comunicazione pubblica della strage di Bologna, 2 agosto 1980, Bologna, il Mulino.
3) Moreover, the following article (available for the students on the professor’s personal page hosted on the website www.filcospe.it): Il Vietnam Veterans Memorial: la commemorazione di un passato difficile di Robin Wagner-Pacifici e Barry Schwartz (trad. it.) in Anna Lisa Tota (a cura di), 2001, La memoria contesa. Studi sulla comunicazione sociale del passato, Milano, Franco Angeli pp. 109-148.