Fiche personnelle: Cristina Iuli
Cristina Iuli
| Pays: | Italie |
|---|---|
| Ville: | UPO -- VERCELLI |
Cours
HOW TO STUDY AMERICAN LITERATURE
(Free adaptation based on Paolo Simonetti’s “How to Study (American) Literature” https://corsidilaurea.uniroma1.it/it/users/paolosimonettiuniroma1it)
1. The most important thing is to READ the primary texts (novels, short stories, poems on the syllabus) from beginning to end, all of them, carefully. No audiobooks, no films, no summaries, no AI abstracts, no reading guides, no YouTube lectures, no author interviews, no bullet points from the Internet. Even critical essays are useless if you haven’t first read the primary texts in their entirety. Reading means studying the text, non unlike what you would do with a history book, or any other book. If you don’t like reading, if you find it boring, if you can’t focus enough to read a book cover to cover, you shouldn’t be studying literature. Choose another course. Without reading the texts, you will not pass the exam.
2. For, the main test of your exam will be a close reading of key passages of the assigned readings. Close reading is the opposite of superficial reading, let alone of reading summaries of a text. To close read a text means to read that text carefully, rereading it as many times and as thoughtfully and thoroughly as it is necessary to understand how it works and why it makes us laugh or cry or makes us suspicious or anxious or uncertain about our biases, prejudices and settled beliefs. In other words, it helps us become better thinkers.
3. In class, we spend a lot of time reading and analyzing passages from the texts. The written and oral exams are based on discussing excerpts from these works, so you must complement your reading of the primary texts with the critical essays on the syllabus, which are designed to help everyone engage more deeply with the works and their authors. Knowing the plot is important, but obviously it is not enough.
4. The exam assesses not just your knowledge but also your critical thinking and your ability to engage directly with the texts. I will ask you questions to understand how you approached the readings and whether you have considered certain issues (if you haven’t, I will evaluate how you answer when I raise them). Reciting critics’ names, dates, or vague notions by heart is not enough.
5. The entire syllabus must be studied—no exceptions. If you have questions about the syllabus or the exam format, book an office hour appointment. I cannot answer hundreds of emails asking the same questions.
6. Exams and office hours (except in extremely rare, documented cases) are held in person, with no exceptions. If you find this inconvenient (and I totally understand and sympathize), there are online universities that will soon put us out of business anyway.
7. In case it wasn’t clear from point #1, let me repeat: There is no point in registering for the exam if you haven’t read even one of the primary texts. You won’t pass, and you’ll waste your time—and mine.
(Free adaptation based on Paolo Simonetti’s “How to Study (American) Literature” https://corsidilaurea.uniroma1.it/it/users/paolosimonettiuniroma1it)
1. The most important thing is to READ the primary texts (novels, short stories, poems on the syllabus) from beginning to end, all of them, carefully. No audiobooks, no films, no summaries, no AI abstracts, no reading guides, no YouTube lectures, no author interviews, no bullet points from the Internet. Even critical essays are useless if you haven’t first read the primary texts in their entirety. Reading means studying the text, non unlike what you would do with a history book, or any other book. If you don’t like reading, if you find it boring, if you can’t focus enough to read a book cover to cover, you shouldn’t be studying literature. Choose another course. Without reading the texts, you will not pass the exam.
2. For, the main test of your exam will be a close reading of key passages of the assigned readings. Close reading is the opposite of superficial reading, let alone of reading summaries of a text. To close read a text means to read that text carefully, rereading it as many times and as thoughtfully and thoroughly as it is necessary to understand how it works and why it makes us laugh or cry or makes us suspicious or anxious or uncertain about our biases, prejudices and settled beliefs. In other words, it helps us become better thinkers.
3. In class, we spend a lot of time reading and analyzing passages from the texts. The written and oral exams are based on discussing excerpts from these works, so you must complement your reading of the primary texts with the critical essays on the syllabus, which are designed to help everyone engage more deeply with the works and their authors. Knowing the plot is important, but obviously it is not enough.
4. The exam assesses not just your knowledge but also your critical thinking and your ability to engage directly with the texts. I will ask you questions to understand how you approached the readings and whether you have considered certain issues (if you haven’t, I will evaluate how you answer when I raise them). Reciting critics’ names, dates, or vague notions by heart is not enough.
5. The entire syllabus must be studied—no exceptions. If you have questions about the syllabus or the exam format, book an office hour appointment. I cannot answer hundreds of emails asking the same questions.
6. Exams and office hours (except in extremely rare, documented cases) are held in person, with no exceptions. If you find this inconvenient (and I totally understand and sympathize), there are online universities that will soon put us out of business anyway.
7. In case it wasn’t clear from point #1, let me repeat: There is no point in registering for the exam if you haven’t read even one of the primary texts. You won’t pass, and you’ll waste your time—and mine.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
"Introduction to American Poetry". This course traces American poetry’s evolution from the mid-19th century through the 21st century, focusing on how poets articulate individual and collective identity within shifting social and political systems. Beginning with Whitman and Dickinson, the syllabus centers on how race, ethnicity, and politics shape poetic form and voice across Modernism, the postwar period, and experimental waves. The course ends with contemporary digital and performative poetics, emphasizing poetry as a system of language, identity, and technology.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
"American Poetry from Self to Systems: the Poetry of Expansion". This course traces the evolution of American poetry from the mid-19th century to the 21st century, focusing on how poets articulate individual and collective identity within changing social and political systems. Starting with Whitman and Dickinson, the program highlights the specificity of poetic language and its interconnections with fundamental cultural and political themes and conflicts in the history of the United States. The course offers an overview of the poetic discourse that spans the 20th century, focusing on key voices in the American canon, from Modernism to the postwar period and contemporary times, concluding with examples of contemporary digital and performative poetics, emphasizing poetry as a system of language, identity, and technology.<br /><p class="category">Catégorie <a href="https://www.dir.uniupo.it/course/index.php?categoryid=1973">Didattica A.A. 2025/2026 / Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici / Corsi di Laurea Magistrale / LINGUE, CULTURE, TURISMO - VERCELLI - I anno</a></p>
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
This is a course on American Cultural Studies. It examines some key concepts in the culture of the United States by looking at how those concepts have circulated in in popular music. It assumes the centrality of black popular music in American cultural history, focusing in particular on the legacy of black feminist performers and on the function of popular music in the context of the social and historical turbulences of the postwar years.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
Huckleberry Finn Lives!
This is a "hands on" course that presupposes the constant active participation of students, who, guided the professor and tutor, will engage in a comparative analysis of a great, classic novel in American Literature and two of its contemporary rewritings, namely, Nancy Rawles's "My Jim" (2005) and Percival Everett's "James" (2024).
After exploring the social, racial, and historical context in which Twain’s great classic is set, we will engage as a class in the analysis of what was at stake in the characterization of an adolescent, poor, white boy in 1884, paying particular attention to the unsaid, common knowledge (prejudices, rules of behavior, ideologies, power structure, etc.) readers had to share to understand the novel’s deep structure of meaning.
This is a "hands on" course that presupposes the constant active participation of students, who, guided the professor and tutor, will engage in a comparative analysis of a great, classic novel in American Literature and two of its contemporary rewritings, namely, Nancy Rawles's "My Jim" (2005) and Percival Everett's "James" (2024).
After exploring the social, racial, and historical context in which Twain’s great classic is set, we will engage as a class in the analysis of what was at stake in the characterization of an adolescent, poor, white boy in 1884, paying particular attention to the unsaid, common knowledge (prejudices, rules of behavior, ideologies, power structure, etc.) readers had to share to understand the novel’s deep structure of meaning.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
-- “There has never been a document of culture which was not at one and the same time a document of barbarism.” Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy of History
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
This class engages in the comparative analysis of two great classic novels of American literature and two of their contemporary rewritings of them. After exploring the social, racial and historical context in which Mark Twain's and William Faulkner's novels are set, we will engage as a class in the analysis of the definition of the characters, paying particular attention to the unsaid, the oversaid, and the common knowledge (prejudices, rules of behavior, ideologies, power structure, etc.) presupposed in the definition of believable and interesting characters from a literary point of view. This first part of the course will provide the preliminary knowledge from which to tackle two contemporary rewritings of the novels analyzed.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
This is a course on American Cultural Studies. It examines some key concepts in the culture of the United States by looking at how those concepts have circulated in in popular music. It assumes the centrality of black popular music in American cultural history, focusing in particular on the legacy of black feminist performers and on the function of popular music in the context of the social and historical turbulences of the postwar years.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
This hands-on course introduces students to the representation of race and race relations in the United States through traditional and digital methodologies. The course requires active participation by students who, guided by the instructors, will read and compare texts, familiarize with some of the debates in the field of Digital Humanities, learn to use two of the main platforms for writing and digital research and will create a digital critical edition of John Henry Hewlett's forgotten novel, Cross on the Moon, using the digital publishing platform Manifold.
This course integrates literary theory, cultural studies, race studies, archival research, and digital humanities foundational training.
This course integrates literary theory, cultural studies, race studies, archival research, and digital humanities foundational training.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
This hands-on course introduces students to the representation of race and race relations in the United States through traditional and digital methodologies. The course requires active participation by students who, guided by the instructors, will read and compare texts, familiarize with some of the debates in the field of Digital Humanities, learn to use two of the main platforms for writing and digital research and will contribute to creating a digital publications on keywords of race representation using the platform Manifold.
This course integrates literary theory, cultural studies, race studies, archival research, and digital humanities foundational training.
This course integrates literary theory, cultural studies, race studies, archival research, and digital humanities foundational training.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli
The aim of the course is to introduce students to themes and issues in the history of American Literature by focusing on a wide formal and thematic spectrum of American short stories. Each class will be partly a lecture introducing a given writer in the context of his/her social and historical background, and partly a close reading and discussion of the texts assigned for each class. Students will also be introduced to terms and concepts for literary analysis, paying special attention to the formal elements of a given short story: structure, narration, characterization, point of view, voice.
- Enseignant: Cristina Iuli