The New Italians: Longing, Belonging, and Imagining the Future



The course primarily explores two emotional dimensions through readings in literary criticism: longing and imagination. From the Fascist period to the present day, through literature and film, we will analyze the feeling of longing—beginning with a dictatorship that demanded conformity to the ideal of the “new man” and “new woman,” and moving to contemporary contexts to examine the case of Afro-descendant Italians and their desire to share empowering testimonies and success stories on social media, with the aim of proposing new ways of being Italian.