Seminars

 

Gillian Beer (Cambridge)
Utopia: experimental islands (in English)
  tutor: Francesca Montanino (Siena)

Thomas More’s Utopia is an artificial island, cut away from the mainland, and most utopias have closed borders. Islands intensify as well as isolate; they lend themselves to experiment. They are prisons or refuges, museums or future societies, scenes of isolation or places where privacy is impossible. The sessions will juxtapose writing from periods and genres to explore, for example, what light a utopia casts on the society out of which it emerged and how dystopias signal enduring ideals. Can an island utopia tolerate change? Must rules dominate? What part does religion play? And gender? Why is utopia a ‘no-place’ yet is preoccupied with the details of place?  Must it be fiction? Why is popular cinema so interested in it (recently, for example, ‘Avatar’ and ‘Up’)?
The exact order of materials for the individual sessions will be indicated well before you arrive. The books, poems, and extracts below will be our shared material for discussion.

Books: all these are available on the internet
Genesis, chapters 1,2,3
Thomas More, Utopia, Book 2 (first published in Latin; in English, 1551) especially the introduction to Book 2, and ‘Of their trades and manner of life’  and ‘Of their slaves and of their marriages’
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c.1610-11)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, (1719) - especially chapters 10 and 11
Andrew Marvell, ‘The Garden’, ‘Appleton House’, ‘Bermudas’ (poems) (c.1650)
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)chapter 4, ‘Natural Selection’
Samuel Butler, Erewhon  (1872) - especially ‘The Book of the Machines’
H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau  (1896)
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and some of the later controversy around this work
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Elizabeth Bishop, ‘Crusoe in England’ (poem) in Geography III (1971)
Derek Walcott, ‘Crusoe’s Island’ (poem sequence) in The Castaway (1965)

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Maria DiBattista (Princeton) and Barry McCrea (Yale)
The Great Good Place (in English)
 tutor: Stefano Bonchi (Siena)

Utopias literally exist nowhere, but their moral and social hopes for an improved, ideally perfected Life congregate and are realized in a specific site: the Great Good Place. The phrase comes from the title of Henry James’s only utopian fiction, a story in which "The Great Good Place” is equated with having “The Great Want Met.” Our seminar will explore the Great Wants that Utopian fictions at once acknowledge and satisfy through their imaginative reclamation or transformation of place.  Our texts will be James’s story, paired with Borges’ cerebral fantasias, “Tlôn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and “The South”; Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House and Nabokov’s Pale Fire. We will conclude by examining two contrasting cinematic depictions of the great and good places of modernity: the urban Soviet utopia of  Vertov’s The Man with a Movie Camera and the numinous, but already fallen natural paradise of Murnau’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas.

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Roberto Bigazzi (Siena)
Donne e uomini del dopoguerra: utopie di rinnovamento (in italiano)
 tutor: Giovanni de Leva (Siena)

Il romanzo italiano del dopoguerra, tra gli anni Quaranta e Cinquanta, si impegna in una analisi storica e insieme utopica della società con l’obbiettivo di ricostruire una identità nazionale diversa da quella fascista: così, dal passato emergono le virtù del lavoro nell’Agostino della Malora di Fenoglio (1954) o la coscienza politica del Metello di Pratolini (1955), o il sogno di una nuova armonia sociale nel Barone rampante di Calvino (1957); accanto ai protagonisti maschili, le donne, in piena luce o anche solo intraviste, danno vita a prospettive ancora più utopiche, che trovano la loro limpida espressione nello straordinario Quaderno proibito (1952) di Alba de Céspedes. 

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Giuseppe Piccioni (Film director) e Anna Masecchia (Siena)
Fuori dell'Eden
 La coppia come luogo dell'utopia (in italiano)

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Durante gli incontri seminariali verranno analizzati alcuni film in cui, grazie al codice ben delineato di un genere – la commedia sentimentale hollywoodiana – oppure grazie alla commistione di generi cinematografici differenti, sia stata rappresentata l'utopia del superamento di convenzioni, barriere e determinismi sociali a partire dal momento topico dell'incontro di una donna e di un uomo.
Approfittando spesso di uno spazio-tempo in cui gli schemi del vivere quotidiano si sospendono (la notte, il viaggio, il set cinematografico), i personaggi di questi film, e con loro gli spettatori, compiono un percorso esperenziale grazie al quale possono infine guardare con occhi nuovi al fuori campo, verso ciò che resta escluso dalla rappresentazione.

It Happened one Night (Accadde una notte), Frank Capra, 1934; Cluny Brown (Fra le tue braccia), Ernst Lubitsch, 1946;
Le jour se lève (Alba tragica), Marcel Carné, 1939; La syrène du Mississipi (La mia droga si chiama Julie), 1969, e Le dernier metrò (L'ultimo metrò), 1980 di François Truffaut;
The Graduate (Il laureato) Mike Nichols, 1967; Getaway!, Sam Peckinpah, 1972; Carlito's way, Brian De Palma, 1993;
Some come running (Qualcuno verrà), Vincente Minnelli, 1958; Chiedi la luna (1991), Fuori dal mondo (1999), Luce dei miei occhi (2001), La vita che vorrei (2004) e Giulia non esce la sera (2009) di Giuseppe Piccioni.

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José M. González García (Madrid)
España y América: Utopías del Renacimiento y del Barroco (in spagnolo)

 tutor: Michele Campanini (Siena)

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El espíritu de la utopía se hizo presente en numerosos textos filosóficos, religiosos, políticos y literarios en la España de los siglos XVI y XVII. Además, la América hispana fue terreno de búsqueda de diferentes espacios utópicos. Colón creía haber localizado el paraíso terrenal. La búsqueda de ciudades míticas o utópicas como El Dorado o la Ciudad de los Césares movió a muchos aventureros y conformó el imaginario americano. Y también hubo intentos serios de realizar en el Nuevo Mundo las utopías de la libertad, del gobierno justo o de la ciudad ideal, inspiradas en ocasiones en la Utopía de Tomás Moro. La lucha de Bartolomé de las Casas por la libertad de los indios, la organización social y laboral de los indígenas de Michoacán por el obispo Vasco de Quiroga, o la experiencia comunitaria de las misiones de los jesuitas en la Amazonía constituyen algunos de los frutos hispanos de la utopía en los siglos del Renacimiento y del Barroco.
Desde una perspectiva multidisciplinar, este Seminario se apoyará en textos fundamentales, así como en la iconografía y en la música de la época. Y también tendrá en cuenta algunas versiones cinematográficas actuales referidas a estos temas.

Programa del Seminario

Bibliografía

1) Marcel Bataillon, Erasmo y España, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1950. (Varias ediciones). Capítulos III y VI. Apéndice “Erasmo y el Nuevo Mundo”.
2) Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha, numerosas ediciones, 2ª parte, capítulos 42 a 45, 47, 49, 51, 53 y 54.
 3) Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, Madrid, Cátedra, 1992.
4)Marcel Bataillon, "Estudios sobre Bartolomé de las Casas", Barcelona, Península, 1976.

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Florian Mussgnug (University College London)
Tragic Utopia: Visions of the Future in the Atomic Age (in English)

In August 1945, Utopian writing and thought entered a new age. Expectations of thermonuclear war and fears of global annihilation had a profound impact on public and private life, and gave a new sense of urgency to Utopian literature. For many nuclear physicists, government leaders and writers of the 1940s, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of portentous significance: a radically new world order was not only desirable but inevitable, since the only alternative to enlightened world government was certain death. This seminar examines literary responses to the bomb and explores the historical development of utopian thought in times of nuclear fear,  and into the present. Overtly utopian novels such as George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949) will be compared to more subtly pessimistic works, which affirm the necessity of utopian desire without expressing its content directly. Even profoundly negative visions of the future, such as Doris Lessing’s The Sirian Experiments (1980), Bernard Malamud’s God's Grace (1982), and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) are not without hope: by shedding light on our most profound fears, they drive back the menacing shadow of global death. 

Reading List
George R. Stewart, Earth Abides (1949)
Doris Lessing, The Sirian Experiments (1980)
Bernard Malamud, God's Grace (1982)
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (2003)
Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (2009)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)

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Laurent Darbellay et Julien Zanetta (Université de Genève)
La vie comme œuvre d'art: utopies esthétiques (en français)

 tutor: Sara Nocciolini (Siena)

 

Dans ce séminaire, on se propose d’aborder la problématique de l’utopie sous l’angle de la vie comme idéal esthétique. Plus précisément, on se concentrera sur des situations narratives de repli face au monde, et d’enfermement plus ou moins radical dans un espace intérieur où peuvent se mettre en place différents types de (sur)stimulation sensorielles et esthétiques.
On étudiera les multiples motivations de cette quête d’utopie esthétique - misanthropie, vieillesse, passion amoureuse, quête désespérée d’émotions esthétiques, goût de la collection, esprit malfaisant –, ainsi que les liens entre ces reclus esthètes et raffinés et la figure du dandy. Il s’agira également de penser les caractéristiques de cet espace idéal à la fois clos et résolument esthétisé, propice aux expériences les plus intenses, les plus extrêmes, les plus folles. Enfin, on s’intéressera aux enjeux descriptifs et narratifs de ces huis-clos «esthétiques».

Le corpus principal du séminaire sera composé de textes littéraires et de films :

Œuvres littéraires :
- Honoré de Balzac, La Fille aux yeux d’or, 1835
- Théophile Gautier, Fortunio, 1837
- Edmond de Goncourt, La maison du collectionneur, 1881
- Joris-Karl Huysmans, A rebours, 1884

Films :
- Albert Lewin, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945
- Luchino Visconti, Gruppo di famiglia in un interno, 1974

En dehors du corpus principal, on exploitera un certain nombre d’autres textes, en particulier la Préface de Mademoiselle de Maupin de Théophile Gautier, les Paradis artificiels de Charles Baudelaire, les réflexions sur le dandysme de Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, ainsi que le Voyage autour de ma chambre de Xavier de Maistre. On verra également comment d’autres films, en particulier de Luchino Visconti, peuvent enrichir notre réflexion.

Le séminaire est donné en français