A. Seyhan, Tales of Crossed Destinies: the Modern Turkish Novel in a Comparative Context, Modern Language Assn., 2008.
Celia Kerslake, Kerem Oktem, Philip Robins (eds.) Turkey's Engagement with Modernity. Conflict and Change in the XXth Century, Palgrave McMillan 2010. In particolare: Orhan Kocak, “Westernisation against the West”: cultural politics in Early Turkish Republic, pp., 305-335, e Nuket Esen, The Turkish Novel: From Model of Modernity to Puzzle of Postmodernity, pp. 323-336.
G. MacLean, Writing Turkey: Explorations in Turkish History, Politics and Cultural Identity, Middlesex University Press, 2006.
Erdag Goknar, The novel in Turkish: narrative tradition to Nobel prize, in R. Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 4. Turkey in the Modern World, CUP, Cambridge 2008, pp. 472-503.1
Further bibliographical material will be provided during the Course
Learning Objectives
The course will cover the so called period of "post kemalism", which began in the 1980s and which got rid of the deeply rooted convinction of the universal validity of the Western model of development on which the Turkish nation itself had been constructed. It tied its cultural prospects to the development of a linguistic, historical and cultural discontinuity with respect to the Ottoman and Islamic past. The course therefore attempts by means of the analysis of selected novels to make known the panorama of Turkish social life, animated by its multiple identities, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious and of gender. The principal problems to rbing out into the open will be: the national narrative and its limits, the identity emposed so as to construct the modern nation, the introduction of the post modern perspective, the fantastic, discovery of collective memory, Orient-Western intertextuality, religion and modernity.
Prerequisites
None
Teaching Methods
A combination of lectures and seminars and the screening of films.
Further information
The course will take place in the first semester
Type of Assessment
The students are invited to present at least two papers on the questions treated during the course. The final exam consists of an oral test. The student is asked to answer to open questions, beginning from an argument of his/her choice, continuing with other questions formulated by the professor on the principal themes and questions treated in the program. In closing the student is asked to analyze, keeping in mind the specific argument of the course and using the appropriate analytical methodology, the samples of Turkish narrative in the given bibliography. For a successful exam it is necessary have written the requested papers and to show a sufficient level of preparation in all parts of the examination.
Oral exam in Italian aims to evaluate the following items:- cultural knowledge (40/100)
-argumentation ability (40/100)
- original approach to the subject (20/100)
Course program
A brief historical account
The post-kemalism and its socio-cultural consequences: laicism, Islam, nationalism, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, femminism, different sexual and gender identities
Nationalist narrative, Islamist novels, post modern, fantastic, noir, detective novels.