October 1-5, 2007. Germans in Italy: Culture - Consumerism - Tourism
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Teaching Personnel
Prof. Dr. Eckhard Schumacher, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich
Prof. Dr. Heide Volkening, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich
Prof. Dr. Heide Volkening, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Munich
Germans in Italy: Culture – Consumerism – Tourism
In his famous theory of tourism, The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Dean MacCannell analyzes the connections between modern subjectivity, cultural aspects of tourism and the semiotics of authenticity. For MacCannell the tourist is not only an actual person or a social group, "at the same time," he argues, "'the tourist' is one of the best models available for modern man-in-general."
Our seminar will take up theories of tourism such as MacCannell's and discuss them with regard to german literary texts and movies that deal with the experience of travelling in Italy. Starting with a kind of blueprint of the german-italian experience in the 18th century, namely with Johann Wolfgang von Goethes Italienische Reise, we will analyze the ways in which the tourist gaze constitutes a modern myth (in the sense of Roland Barthes' Mythen des Alltags) of 'Italianität' and how the tourist in turn is constituted by the experience of strangeness and cultural difference.
Other texts will include canonical examples of german 'Reiseliteratur' as Heinrich Heine's Die Bäder von Lucca and Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig, popular genres as the bestselling Italienreise – Liebe inbegriffen by Barbara Noack (1957) and its successful cinema-adaptation by Wolfgang Becker (1958), and books by german authors written during their stay at Villa Massimo in Rome, such as Rolf Dieter Brinkmann's Rom, Blicke (1979), Andreas Neumeister's In dubio pro disco (1999), and Feridum Zaimoglu's Rom intensiv. Mein Jahr in der ewigen Stadt (2007).
Contact
Cristina Di Gioia
Tel +39 041 2719511
Fax +39 041 2719510
