This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from late 19th century to the present.
Travel writing has some special features that shapes both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, Pinocchio, the leader of a national expedition, a rejected lover, a taxi driver, a migrant laborer, or a refugee, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds.
Our materials are organized around to regions: travel within Italy, at the moment of its foundation of a nation-state; travel to North America, in the 20th century; and travel to Italy from China and North Africa in the 21st century. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive relations established between different places and spaces.
BILINGUAL COURSE: English or Italian