Topics for 2023-24 are as follows:

• Topic 1: Family, Memory, History: Primo Levi and Natalia Ginzburg
• Topic 2: Medieval Selves: Dante and Petrarch
• Topic 3: 20th/21st-Century Women's Autobiography: Sibilla Aleramo and Igiaba Scego
• Topic 4: Painting the Self: Sofonsiba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi

Topic 1: Family, Memory, History: Primo Levi and Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg (1916-91) and Primo Levi (1919-87) were from the same generation, both from Turin, both with Jewish backgrounds. In different ways, their lives were both caught up in the extreme turmoil of Fascism, the war and the Holocaust and they both  experimented with unusual autobiographical modes of writing to reflect on that history and to situate themselves in worlds of  family, work and memory. Together they provide fascinating insights into the forms of autobiography in the modern period. This topic looks at two key works by Levi and Ginzburg, separately and in comparison.

Core Texts

• Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare (1963)

• Primo Levi, Il sistema periodico (1975)

Topic 2: Medieval Selves: Dante and Petrarch

This topic will look at two of the major figures of Italian medieval literature and the ways in which each uses poetry as a means of self-representation. Both the Vita nuova and the Canzoniere tell tales of love for a very particular woman, the death of that woman, and the poet's subsequent search for direction in her absence. But above all, both texts virtually invent an idea of authorship and of what a poetry collection looks like that is influential to this day.

Core texts

• Dante, Vita Nuova. Students should if possible buy Vita Nova, trans. by Andrew Frisardi (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2012). Otherwise any other edition with a facing-page English translation will do.
• Petrarch, Canzoniere. Students should if possible buy the edition published by Indiana University Press, ed. and trans. Mark Musa. Otherwise any other edition with facing page English translation will do. Read as much of the Canzoniere as you can. Lectures, supervisions, and exams will focus on the following poems: 1–12, 16, 35, 60–62, 70, 74, 81, 82, 90, 126, 128, 134, 159, 264, 267, 268, 286, 302, 320, 365, 366.

Topic 3: 20th/21st-Century Women's Voices: Sibilla Aleramo and Igiaba Scego

Sibilla Aleramo’s Una donna (1906) was one of the first feminist texts written in Italy. It is both an autobiography and a feminist manifesto. Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono (2010) confronts Italy’s unacknowledged colonial past, examines notions of what it means to be Italian, telling a highly personal story about the relation of identity to the places in which we live. In this module, we will investigate questions of race and gender, conceptions of selfhood and self-determination, and the political and social implications of writing autobiography.

Core texts

• Sibilla Aleramo, Una donna (1906)
• Igiaba Scego, La mia casa è dove sono (2010)

Topic 4: Painting the Self: Sofonsiba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi

Even though painting was an art largely reserved for male practitioners in the early modern period, a few noteworthy women artists emerged in Italy in the sixteenth century.  This topic will examine the works and careers of Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi as means of exploring how female artists grappled with the intersecting challenges of cultural expectations, economic and legal constraints, and concepts of representation within the genre of self-portraiture.

Core objects:

• Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c. 1559 (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena)
• Lavinia Fontana, Self-Portrait in the Studio, 1579 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence)
• Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1615-17 (National Gallery, London)
• Artemisia Gentileschi, Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, c. 1638-9 (Royal Collection Trust, Hampton Court Palace)