The course is designed to introduce students to the transformation of Italian culture and society from the time of unification to the present through the lens of urban change. Focusing on the case of the city of Rome, the program will present and discuss the different phases, challenges, and trends in the development of Italian contemporary cities: from the time of unification and the fascist era to the period of the economic boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s; from the moment of local progressive governments during the 1970s to the period of economic restructuring and postmodernity beginning in the 1980s. Emphasis will be placed on urban planning and politics, immigration, social movements, consumption and mass culture.
Prerequisites:
An introductory course either in sociology or anthropology.
Learning outcomes:
At the end of the course students will be:
• knowledgeable about the cultural and social changes since 1870 and through the last fifty years with particular attention to the rise of mass culture and new social movements.
• familiar with immigration waves and their urban effects, from the internal migration of the 1950s-1960s to the external migrations of the 1990s-2000s.
• familiar with urban planning and political issues of modern Italian cities, Rome in particular.
• in control of basic skills of urban fieldwork: observation, description, analysis.
Method of presentation:
lectures, discussions, on-site visits, films.
LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATION: English
Field study:
VISITS TO URBAN AND SUBURBAN AREAS (subject to modification):
Prati, Eur,, Borgate in the Casilina area, Parioli, Corviale, Pigneto, Ponte di Nona, Porta di Roma
Required work and form of assessment:
Participation (20%); Assignments (15%); Midterm exam 20%; Term paper (15%); Final exam (30%);
Details of required work:
EXAMS: are based on short answer questions or brief essays. Both the Midterm and the Final Exam draw from course lectures, reading assignments, field studies and students’ papers. The Final Exam will be cumulative.
ASSIGNMENTS: distributed as follows: field research data gathering and week readings.
PAPER: a review of scholarly literature based on an aspect of Italian culture and society (detailed informations on the paper will be provided in class).
SUGGESTED MATERIALS: Map of Rome (1/10.000 minimum); spiral notebook for note-taking during on-site excursions; loose-leaf notebook for handouts and supplemental materials; writing support and writing utensil while on site; camera.
content:
Week 1. Introduction: Background on Italian social, political, and cultural history
Introduction to the course, presentation of the main course topics, required and recommended readings. Discussion of societal trends in Italy in the last 140 years and their effects on the urban structure of the country.
Introduction to group field research projects in Rome.
Readings: Forgacs & Lumley, pp. 52-71; Moliterno, pp. 130-131, 272-274, 504-505, 612-616.
Week 2. The city as the political capital vs. the city of the working class: Roma Capitale between the XIX and XX centuries
The implementation of major urban plans in the city as the showcase of the new unitarian state and the first projects of housing policy for both the bureaucratic middle-class and the working class.
Field visit: Quartiere Prati
Readings: Agnew, pp. 42-69
Week 3. The city as the political capital vs. the city of the working class: Roma Capitale in the fascist era
Mussolini’s plans to make the city the capital of the new empire. “Sventramenti” and the relocation of the underclass in the new borgate to be built outside the established city boundaries. The city as a scene of new mass organizations and propaganda efforts set up by the regime.
Field visit: Eur
Readings: Piccinato, (1) pp.213-225, Painter, pp.21-38; 59-90
Week 4. Rebuilding the cities: urban reconstruction and post-war society
The Second World War left many Italian cities devastated and countless people homeless. Between building speculation and planning efforts Italian cities start to grow again. Reconstruction strategies in badly damaged Milan and almost untouched Rome.
Field Visit: Parioli
Readings: Ginsborg, pp. 246-247; Piccinato, (2) pp.237-259
Week 5. Living the dolce vita: Italian cities and the “boom”
In 1962, for the first time in its history, Italy reached full employment of its labour force. With increasing prosperity many Italians were able to purchase such consumer goods as cars, tv sets, scooters. The popular economy car, FIAT 500, and scooters like Vespa and Lambretta became a symbol of modern lifestyle based on mass motorization.
Readings: Ginsborg, pp. 210-253
Week 6. Review and Midterm Exam
Week 7. Mass Migration and Urbanization
Starting with the 1950s new massive migration waves bring millions of people from the rural south to the industrial north and to the capital. While inhabited shacks were still to be found in Milan and Turin, the borgate – informal neighbourhoods – were sprawling around the centre of Rome. The cultural and social effects of this great transformation and social contradiction have been the subject of extensive intellectual debate.
Field Study: borgate of the Casilina area
Readings: Foot, 51-86
Week 8. Cities in movement: social movements and cultural change
While Economic growth brings mass culture and consumerism to wider sectors of Italian society, new social and political demands arise in factories and universities. Large cities will be the setting for a long-lasting presence of social and cultural movements challenging established political hierarchies and cultural values.
Readings: Pasolini, 36-42; Lumley, (handout); Tarrow, (handout)
Week 9. Healing the fractured city. The “left” and the new urban policy
Between 1970s and 1980s, under the left tenure of City Hall, borgate in Rome were eventually reclaimed through recognition of property titles and massive public expenditure. Many new public and social housing projects were intended to respond to housing shortages and to help integrating borgate in the city.
Field Study: Corviale
Readings: Cavanaugh, pp. 120-155; Piccinato (1), Costa, pp. 263-294.
Week 10. The post-modern city/international migrations and neighbourhood change.
The urban problems faced by a society with high living standards for many Italians but with dramatic poverty levels for immigrants coming from the Mediterranean area, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, have become a relevant issue both at the political and social levels. The question of a “globalized” and multiethnic Italy will be addressed.
Field Study: Pigneto
Readings: Mudu, pp. 442-440; Annunziata (1), 601-622;
Week 11. The post-modern city: the new Suburban sprawl.
During the 1990s and 2000s, a new wave of growth brings to the development of suburban areas through new housing, shopping malls and entertainment facilities. The quality of new developments and their social and environmental sustainability is currently under scrutiny by academic circles and opinion-makers.
Field Study: Ponte di Nona
Readings: Annunziata (2), pp. 63-81
Week 12. Student presentations
Final Exam
Required readings:
Agnew, John. Rome, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1995, pp.42-69;
Annunziata, Sandra (1). “The desire of ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Rome: the case of Pigneto in Rome”, in The Ethnically Diverse City, Frank Eckardt and John Eade (eds), in Future Urban Research Series, vol. 4. Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011. Pp 601-622;
Annunziata, Sandra (2). “Evolving neighbourhood: public sphere without public space in a newly built private neighbourhood in Rome” in Cremaschi M., Eckardt F. (eds), Changing Places, Urbanity, Citizenship, and Ideology in the new European neighbourhoods,Tekne, Amsterdam, 2011. PP 63-81;
Costa, Frank J.. “The Evolution of Planning Styles and Planned Change: The Example of Rome,” Journal of Urban History, 3,3, 1977. Pp. 263-294;
Foot, John. Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture, Identity, Berg, Oxford, 2001. Pp 51-86;
Foot, John. Italian Cityscapes: Culture and Urban Change in Italy from the 1950s to the Present Day, with Robert Lumley, Exeter University Press, 2004
Forgacs, David, and John Lumley, eds. Italian Cultural Studies: an introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp- 52-71;
Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy 1943-1980. London: Penguin, 1990, pp.210-253;
Lumley, Robert. States of emergency: cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, Verso, 1990
Moliterno, Gino, ed. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London: Routledge, 2000. Moliterno, pp. 130-131, 272-274, 504-505, 612-616.
Mudu, P., 2006. “Patterns of Segregation in Contemporary Rome”, in “Urban Geography”, vol. 25, n. 5, pp. 442-440;
Pasolini, Pierpaolo, In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology, City Light Books, San Francisco California, 2010, pp. 36-42;
Piccinato, Giorgio (1), “Rome: Where Great Events not Regular Planning Bring Development. In Gordon”, David LA, Capital Cities in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, 2006, pp.213-225;
Piccinato, Giorgio (2), “A brief history of Italian town planning after 1945”, Town Planning Review, Centenary Volume 1910-2010, 81, 3, 2010, pp. 237-259;
Painter, Borden, Mussolini's Rome. Rebuilding the Eternal City , Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 21-38, 59-90;
Tarrow, Sidney, Democracy and disorder: protest and politics in Italy, 1965-1975, Clarendon Press, 1989 (to be defined).
Film viewings
Ettore Scola, Una giornata particolare (1977);
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Accattone (1960), Mamma Roma (1962);
Federico Fellini, La Dolce vita (1960);
Carlo Lizzani, La vita agra (1964);
Michelangelo Antonioni, La notte (1961);
Luchino Visconti, Rocco e suoi fratelli (1960);
Elio Petri, La classe operaia va in paradiso (1971);
Marco Tullio Giordana, La Meglio Gioventù (2005);
Daniele Lucchetti, La nostra vita (2010).
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Alessandro Coppola (Milano, 1978) earned his M.A. in History at the University of Roma III and his PhD at the Urban Studies Department of the same University. He teaches Urban Ethnography at the International Master in Urban Planning at Politecnico di Milano. He previously taught Urban Policy and Social Work at Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia and gave seminars on urban policy and immigration in France at Università La Sapienza di Roma. He has worked at the Department of Mezzogiorno and Cohesion Policy of Cgil (Confederazione Generake Itaiana del Lavoro), the largest Italian trade union congress in Italy; he has been an International Fellow in Urban Studies at the Institute of Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a research associate at the Department for the study of Human Environments at City Univeristy of New York. His current writings and researches focus on American urbanism, neighborhood politics, urban policy and planning. His first book on French banlieues has won the Feudo di Maida prize in 2007; a new book on shrinking cities in the American Rustbelt is due to for publication in January 2012. Beside scholarly publications, he has been writing extensively for magazines and newspapers such as Aspenia, Lo Straniero, Il Manifesto, Rassegna Sindacale and L’Unità. He has lived in Milan, Rome, Paris, Baltimore and New York City.
Culture And Urban Change In Contemporary Italy
The course is designed to introduce students to the transformation of Italian culture and society from the time of unification to the present through the lens of urban change. Focusing on the case of the city of Rome, the program will present and discuss the different phases, challenges, and trends in the development of Italian contemporary cities: from the time of unification and the fascist era to the period of the economic boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s; from the moment of local progressive governments during the 1970s to the period of economic restructuring and postmodernity beginning in the 1980s. Emphasis will be placed on urban planning and politics, immigration, social movements, consumption and mass culture.
An introductory course either in sociology or anthropology.
At the end of the course students will be:
• knowledgeable about the cultural and social changes since 1870 and through the last fifty years with particular attention to the rise of mass culture and new social movements.
• familiar with immigration waves and their urban effects, from the internal migration of the 1950s-1960s to the external migrations of the 1990s-2000s.
• familiar with urban planning and political issues of modern Italian cities, Rome in particular.
• in control of basic skills of urban fieldwork: observation, description, analysis.
lectures, discussions, on-site visits, films.
LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATION: English
VISITS TO URBAN AND SUBURBAN AREAS (subject to modification):
Prati, Eur,, Borgate in the Casilina area, Parioli, Corviale, Pigneto, Ponte di Nona, Porta di Roma
Participation (20%); Assignments (15%); Midterm exam 20%; Term paper (15%); Final exam (30%);
Details of required work:
EXAMS: are based on short answer questions or brief essays. Both the Midterm and the Final Exam draw from course lectures, reading assignments, field studies and students’ papers. The Final Exam will be cumulative.
ASSIGNMENTS: distributed as follows: field research data gathering and week readings.
PAPER: a review of scholarly literature based on an aspect of Italian culture and society (detailed informations on the paper will be provided in class).
SUGGESTED MATERIALS: Map of Rome (1/10.000 minimum); spiral notebook for note-taking during on-site excursions; loose-leaf notebook for handouts and supplemental materials; writing support and writing utensil while on site; camera.
Week 1. Introduction: Background on Italian social, political, and cultural history
Introduction to the course, presentation of the main course topics, required and recommended readings. Discussion of societal trends in Italy in the last 140 years and their effects on the urban structure of the country.
Introduction to group field research projects in Rome.
Readings: Forgacs & Lumley, pp. 52-71; Moliterno, pp. 130-131, 272-274, 504-505, 612-616.
Week 2. The city as the political capital vs. the city of the working class: Roma Capitale between the XIX and XX centuries
The implementation of major urban plans in the city as the showcase of the new unitarian state and the first projects of housing policy for both the bureaucratic middle-class and the working class.
Field visit: Quartiere Prati
Readings: Agnew, pp. 42-69
Week 3. The city as the political capital vs. the city of the working class: Roma Capitale in the fascist era
Mussolini’s plans to make the city the capital of the new empire. “Sventramenti” and the relocation of the underclass in the new borgate to be built outside the established city boundaries. The city as a scene of new mass organizations and propaganda efforts set up by the regime.
Field visit: Eur
Readings: Piccinato, (1) pp.213-225, Painter, pp.21-38; 59-90
Week 4. Rebuilding the cities: urban reconstruction and post-war society
The Second World War left many Italian cities devastated and countless people homeless. Between building speculation and planning efforts Italian cities start to grow again. Reconstruction strategies in badly damaged Milan and almost untouched Rome.
Field Visit: Parioli
Readings: Ginsborg, pp. 246-247; Piccinato, (2) pp.237-259
Week 5. Living the dolce vita: Italian cities and the “boom”
In 1962, for the first time in its history, Italy reached full employment of its labour force. With increasing prosperity many Italians were able to purchase such consumer goods as cars, tv sets, scooters. The popular economy car, FIAT 500, and scooters like Vespa and Lambretta became a symbol of modern lifestyle based on mass motorization.
Readings: Ginsborg, pp. 210-253
Week 6. Review and Midterm Exam
Week 7. Mass Migration and Urbanization
Starting with the 1950s new massive migration waves bring millions of people from the rural south to the industrial north and to the capital. While inhabited shacks were still to be found in Milan and Turin, the borgate – informal neighbourhoods – were sprawling around the centre of Rome. The cultural and social effects of this great transformation and social contradiction have been the subject of extensive intellectual debate.
Field Study: borgate of the Casilina area
Readings: Foot, 51-86
Week 8. Cities in movement: social movements and cultural change
While Economic growth brings mass culture and consumerism to wider sectors of Italian society, new social and political demands arise in factories and universities. Large cities will be the setting for a long-lasting presence of social and cultural movements challenging established political hierarchies and cultural values.
Readings: Pasolini, 36-42; Lumley, (handout); Tarrow, (handout)
Week 9. Healing the fractured city. The “left” and the new urban policy
Between 1970s and 1980s, under the left tenure of City Hall, borgate in Rome were eventually reclaimed through recognition of property titles and massive public expenditure. Many new public and social housing projects were intended to respond to housing shortages and to help integrating borgate in the city.
Field Study: Corviale
Readings: Cavanaugh, pp. 120-155; Piccinato (1), Costa, pp. 263-294.
Week 10. The post-modern city/international migrations and neighbourhood change.
The urban problems faced by a society with high living standards for many Italians but with dramatic poverty levels for immigrants coming from the Mediterranean area, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, have become a relevant issue both at the political and social levels. The question of a “globalized” and multiethnic Italy will be addressed.
Field Study: Pigneto
Readings: Mudu, pp. 442-440; Annunziata (1), 601-622;
Week 11. The post-modern city: the new Suburban sprawl.
During the 1990s and 2000s, a new wave of growth brings to the development of suburban areas through new housing, shopping malls and entertainment facilities. The quality of new developments and their social and environmental sustainability is currently under scrutiny by academic circles and opinion-makers.
Field Study: Ponte di Nona
Readings: Annunziata (2), pp. 63-81
Week 12. Student presentations
Final Exam
Agnew, John. Rome, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1995, pp.42-69;
Annunziata, Sandra (1). “The desire of ethnically diverse neighbourhood in Rome: the case of Pigneto in Rome”, in The Ethnically Diverse City, Frank Eckardt and John Eade (eds), in Future Urban Research Series, vol. 4. Berliner Wissenschaftsverlag, 2011. Pp 601-622;
Annunziata, Sandra (2). “Evolving neighbourhood: public sphere without public space in a newly built private neighbourhood in Rome” in Cremaschi M., Eckardt F. (eds), Changing Places, Urbanity, Citizenship, and Ideology in the new European neighbourhoods,Tekne, Amsterdam, 2011. PP 63-81;
Costa, Frank J.. “The Evolution of Planning Styles and Planned Change: The Example of Rome,” Journal of Urban History, 3,3, 1977. Pp. 263-294;
Foot, John. Milan since the Miracle. City, Culture, Identity, Berg, Oxford, 2001. Pp 51-86;
Foot, John. Italian Cityscapes: Culture and Urban Change in Italy from the 1950s to the Present Day, with Robert Lumley, Exeter University Press, 2004
Forgacs, David, and John Lumley, eds. Italian Cultural Studies: an introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp- 52-71;
Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy 1943-1980. London: Penguin, 1990, pp.210-253;
Lumley, Robert. States of emergency: cultures of revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978, Verso, 1990
Moliterno, Gino, ed. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London: Routledge, 2000. Moliterno, pp. 130-131, 272-274, 504-505, 612-616.
Mudu, P., 2006. “Patterns of Segregation in Contemporary Rome”, in “Urban Geography”, vol. 25, n. 5, pp. 442-440;
Pasolini, Pierpaolo, In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology, City Light Books, San Francisco California, 2010, pp. 36-42;
Piccinato, Giorgio (1), “Rome: Where Great Events not Regular Planning Bring Development. In Gordon”, David LA, Capital Cities in the Twentieth Century, Routledge, 2006, pp.213-225;
Piccinato, Giorgio (2), “A brief history of Italian town planning after 1945”, Town Planning Review, Centenary Volume 1910-2010, 81, 3, 2010, pp. 237-259;
Painter, Borden, Mussolini's Rome. Rebuilding the Eternal City , Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 21-38, 59-90;
Tarrow, Sidney, Democracy and disorder: protest and politics in Italy, 1965-1975, Clarendon Press, 1989 (to be defined).
Film viewings
Ettore Scola, Una giornata particolare (1977);
Pier Paolo Pasolini, Accattone (1960), Mamma Roma (1962);
Federico Fellini, La Dolce vita (1960);
Carlo Lizzani, La vita agra (1964);
Michelangelo Antonioni, La notte (1961);
Luchino Visconti, Rocco e suoi fratelli (1960);
Elio Petri, La classe operaia va in paradiso (1971);
Marco Tullio Giordana, La Meglio Gioventù (2005);
Daniele Lucchetti, La nostra vita (2010).
Alessandro Coppola (Milano, 1978) earned his M.A. in History at the University of Roma III and his PhD at the Urban Studies Department of the same University. He teaches Urban Ethnography at the International Master in Urban Planning at Politecnico di Milano. He previously taught Urban Policy and Social Work at Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia and gave seminars on urban policy and immigration in France at Università La Sapienza di Roma. He has worked at the Department of Mezzogiorno and Cohesion Policy of Cgil (Confederazione Generake Itaiana del Lavoro), the largest Italian trade union congress in Italy; he has been an International Fellow in Urban Studies at the Institute of Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a research associate at the Department for the study of Human Environments at City Univeristy of New York. His current writings and researches focus on American urbanism, neighborhood politics, urban policy and planning. His first book on French banlieues has won the Feudo di Maida prize in 2007; a new book on shrinking cities in the American Rustbelt is due to for publication in January 2012. Beside scholarly publications, he has been writing extensively for magazines and newspapers such as Aspenia, Lo Straniero, Il Manifesto, Rassegna Sindacale and L’Unità. He has lived in Milan, Rome, Paris, Baltimore and New York City.