All Reading and Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

This course will analyze the construction of subjectivity in first person narratives by Italian authors, both autobiographical and not.  Our task will be to examine the literary forms and conventions that make possible the existence of an “I.” Our primary question will be, how is the “I” produced across narratives of varying genre, structure and historical time period?  Specifically, we will ask, to what extent do these narratives depend upon a confessional structure and figural conversion, in which an “older I” recounts the experiences of a “younger I”?  And to what extent do we find figurations of a similarly split subjectivity, in which the “I” recounts itself as “other”?  On what other or others does the integrity, or division, or fragmentation, of the “I” depend?  In addition to conversion, do we find instances of resistance to conversion and/or a denial of temporality and change?  Finally, does gender matter? How does gender affect the construction of an “I” in narrative text, along with the story that one tells of the self?

 Prerequisites:  Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading & Composition requirement or its equivalent.  Students may not enroll in nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite.

Instructor pending appointment.