Summer 2014 Philosophy of Italian Culture Paper Topics

Insert non-formatted text here===Essay Questions===

1. please discuss the role of the intellectual as an observer of and agent in culture. Please consider the readings of Mazzini, Gramsci, Fo.
2. please give a "thick description" of the Piazza Fontana bombing and the Pinelli case. Please consider Geertz, Accidental death of an Anarchist, including the commentary, and Piazza Fontana: A story of a massacre.
3. please discuss the function of honour and grace as means of establishing social status and, more specifically, within 19th-century Sicily. Please refer to Readings of Wilson, Maria-Pia di Bella, and Geertz.

Second Essay

1. To what extent can Dario Fo and Sabina Guzzanti be said to be providing counterinformation? What are their stratiegies of diconstruction the official truth, and by what means do they seel to reach their target audiences?
2. What do you find valuable in Viroli's writing and the means by which he engages the reader in certain critical discourses Can you see that his argument might have a more general applicability?
3. What correlations might there be between the issues represented in "The Women's Bodies" and discrimination and violence against women? To what extent might feminist activism and difference feminism work to actively adress this problem?