F1215 Reading Calvino in Venice (F1215)

Tuesday 9.15-10.45
Thursday 9.15-10.45

 

This class will be about reading literature and applying our reading to the world in which we live. It will take the form of a reading group where the participants discuss their experiences among each other and perform various assignments. An inspiration for this class is a book about reading and the world: Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Teheran. She here describes what happened in a group of women who met at home to read literature that was deemed to be subversive by the Khomeiny regime and how this reading experience made them reflect on the state of Iran and on the course of their own lives in it.

 

We will change the setting to the part of the world we happen to be in this semester, that is to say: to Venice. Italo Calvino is our central author. His book If on a winter’s night a traveller… is a meditation on reading and the pleasures of reading and on the art of interpretation. We will study these themes also in reference to authors from cultural studies, such as Barthes and Bakhtin (texts to be posted on the blog). However, in order to become reflective readers we will not rely on theoretical literature so much as on our own experiences. This requires keeping a readers diary during the semester. All participants - the teacher included – will keep such a diary and will at one or more occasions present part of this to the others for discussion. This activity is a natural extension of the whole idea of a reading group.

 

In the second part of the course, we will turn to the book that is the centerpiece: Calvino’s Invisible Cities. This open work (Eco) is a book modeled on the travels of Marco Polo and in all its chapters a reflection of Venice, but it is also a thematic exploration of various aspects of city life that can be brought to bear upon these same aspects in the contemporary city environment, to wit:

Cities & Memory

Cities & Desire

Cities & Signs

Thin cities

Trading Cities

Cities & Eyes

Cities & Names

Cities & the Dead

Cities & the Sky

Continuous Cities

Hidden Cities.

 

What can all these themes mean in today’s city life? The connection is sometimes relatively straightforward. The notion of continuous cities, relatively new in Calvino’s day, has become a universal reality and it has even taken the form of the mega city with very large numbers of inhabitants. Often the themes require interpretation and creative thinking. What makes a city into a `thin’ one (or perhaps a `fat’ one too?) How are cities organizing the theme of death? What is a hidden city? Discussing each theme in turn, the participants will be asked to reflect on the experiences of city culture that they know themselves. Also, the question Nafisi addressed in relation to the context of Iran will assert itself: what can we say about the state of culture, politics and democracy in Italy today, and this placed in the wider context of the European Union or even of the still wider – and almost unimaginable - context of the global economy?

It is a great opportunity to conduct our reading experiment in the confines of the city of Venice itself, as Venice is the real hero of Calvino’s novel (according to some interpreters) and as we can in our turn try to make sense through reading and writing of the urban experience of this great city. This means we will definitely engage ourselves with the Biennale that is devoted to issues of architecture and design of cities, hopefully under the guidance of an expert from IUAV.

 

Evaluation Method
Participation in this class is evaluated in three ways: by taking note of your active and constructive participation, by grading your presentations relating to assignments in class and by the quality of your final paper.

 

Preliminary knowledge
The only essential requirement for this course is that a participant must like to read books, especially literary works such as novels or poems or essays, and must enjoy the act of reading. Since we focus on Calvino it is hoped that a number of Italian students will participate: they can place Calvino in the context of Italian history and politics and make texts accessible that have not been translated into English.