116-478 The Sicilian Connection

Formerly available as 116-088. Students who wish to take this subject but who have previously completed Italian Special Subject A or B should contact the coordinator.

Completion of 37.5 points of Italian at intermediate or post-VCE level for third year. Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in Italian. European studies students wishing to enrol in this subject would normally have completed 37.5 points of European studies at second/third year.

Sicily's geographical position as an island located at the crossroads between Africa and continental Europe, the Orient and the Occident, the ancient and the modern worlds, has made it a place with a separate identity and deeply ingrained contradictions. Yet to some extent the distinctness of Sicilian identity has been nourished from the outside as it has served one part of culture in defining its identity by metamorphising, as Leonardo Sciascia would say, the 'other'. This subject examines the 'insularity' of the Sicilian mindscape as don Fabrizio refers to it in Il gattopardo. The subject explores Sicily's role in Italy's ongoing quest for national identity. Through the study of texts and film, images commonly associated with Sicilian identity, such as the Mafia and the notion of gallismo, will also be explored.