Writing #9

Writing assignment #9 asks that you contribute a chapter to a travel writing collection. This anthology* captures the theme of Italian identity and will illuminate the complicated and ongoing discussion of "what and who is Italian?"

Think through all that you have experienced here in Rome and other cities you have visited these past view months (both inside and outside of Italy). What is your take away and what do you want others to know about Italy and this topic? What have you discovered about the topic of identity and borders through the various components presented in the class: stories (Clash of Civilizations with author visit; Multicultural Literature short stories); theoretical readings on identity (South/North reading; "The Other"; etc.); films (Facing Windows and The Golden Door); presentations on border studies, contemporary art, Caritas and the migrant experience, Campo Nomadi and the Romas (Gypsies) in the city, Jewish presence/identity in Rome; excursions to discover street art, urban gentrification and the periphery, Riones and Rome communities; presentations from your AH course; independent research; and, as always, your own personal explorations and what you have seen through your perspective as an American in Italy.
Consider the questions with which we started the course:
•Where are the covert and overt borders in Rome? (Physical, psychological, cultural, and national borders).
•How is "insider" or "outsider" status determined?
•Borders are at the same time becoming more rigid and also more fluid. What are the dynamics behind this and how is this fluidity and ambiguity expressed.

Your chapter in this collection will give another glimpse into identity politics in Italy and will showcase your now more informed perspective on this moving target, this ambiguous, contradictory, paradoxical topic of identity. And, finally, show us the connections that this topic of identity has between the local, national, and global contexts.

From your reading in THE OTHER by Ryszard Kapuscinski, pages 91-92):

"Perhaps we are tending towards a world so completely new and different that the experience of history to date will prove inadequate for understanding it and being able to move about in it. In any case the world we are entering is the Planet of Great Opportunity--not an unconditional opportunity, but one that is only open to those who take their tasks seriously, proving by this token that they take themselves seriously....we shall constantly be encountering the new Other, who will gradually start to emerge from the chaos and confusion of modern life. It is possible that this Other will be born out of an encounter between two opposing trends that form the culture of the modern world--one that is globalising our reality, and another that is preserving our dissimilarity, our differences, our uniqueness....Who will this new Other be? What will our encounter be like?"


This writing assignment is due by Saturday, March 13.
* title suggestions welcome

Please note: Writing Assignment #10, your last writing for this course, will be posted on the blog by Thursday March 12. It will be due when you return to Seattle, but no later than March 27.