Università Roma Tre

What links a street puppet performance, a hit song, a regional cookbook, and a reproduction of an impressionist painting displayed in a hotel corridor? Each can be understood as an expression of popular culture. This course investigates the shifting meanings associated with that concept and the diverse forms it has taken, with particular attention to modern Western Europe and, more specifically, Italy. We begin by examining the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century rediscovery of a supposed “popular spirit” and its connection with the “invention” of nationalism. The German völkisch movement, for example, resulted from an interaction between high- and low-culture, whereas the former appropriated popular traditions and practices in order to pursue its own goals. In a different way, nineteeenth century Italian opera proved extremely popular among both the upper and the lower classes by combining different music and literary styles and ended up playing an important role in Italy’s process of nation-building.

We will also consider the development in the same century of the modern press in its dual nature as both the voice of a large public opinion and the instrument of the powerful. In this context, and especially from the early twentieth century, after the experience of World War One, modern states became increasingly aware of the importance the importance of actively shaping, directing, and at times controlling the cultural consumption of their citizens — one of the most extreme examples being Fascist Italy’s creation of the Ministry of Popular Culture (MINCULPOP). At the same time, popular culture itself became a vehicle for political engagement, as forms of militancy were conveyed through literature, satirical cartoons, songs, photographs, radio, cinema, and later television. The relationship between propaganda from above and popular practices from below is thus not best described as simple domination versus resistance, but rather as a contested field of interaction and mutual influence. In this regard, further case studies that will be discussed in class include media in Fascist and post- Fascist Italy, including Fascist propaganda and satirical press.

The post–Second World War economic boom and the rise of a mass consumer society in Western Europe highlighted a transformation that, with regard to art, Walter Benjamin had anticipated in his seminal essay on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. The course then follows, through the examples of comedy films and popular music, how the expansion of consumer culture reshaped everyday life, political discourse, and artistic expression throughout the second half of the twentieth century.
Finally, attention will be devoted to the digital revolution of recent decades, which has profoundly altered the production, circulation, and reception of popular culture, multiplying channels of access while simultaneously raising new questions about power, creativity, and participation.

The course aims to provide students with an overview of the principal developments in Italian popular culture from the nineteenth century to the present, while also introducing them to key historiographical debates on the subject. Students will be encouraged to critically interpret, discuss, and write about both primary evidence and scholarly arguments. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which mass communication, literature, and the visual arts shaped — and were shaped by — the attitudes, emotions, and collective imagination of broad sectors of Italian society.

Student* frequentanti e non frequentanti dovranno fare riferimento ai seguenti testi per l'esame orale finale:

Estratti da: Tobias Becker, Len Platt, Popular Culture in Europe since 1800: A Student's Guide, London, 2024.
Estratti da: David Grazian, Mix It Up. Popular Culture, Mass Media, and Society, New York, W.W.Norton & Co, 2017.
Estratti da: Matthew Hibberd, The Media in Italy: Press, Cinema and Broadcasting from Unification to Digital, New York, 2008.

Ulteriori articoli o saggi obbligatori ai fini dell'esame verranno assegnati più a ridosso del corso.