Course 2015-2016 a.y.

Course Objectives

The purpose of the course is to illustrate and develop the notion of cultural mediation, as a central practice and crucial professional skills of any cultural manager and enterpreneur. This notion is developed through a critical consideration of the way in which cultural consumption and productions, globalisation and intercultural relations hane interacted in european modernity and contemporaneity.
The course has two main objectives:

• to broaden the notion of cultural mediation as a professional environment and as an entrepreneurial practice where different disciplinary perspectives find a synthesis: markets and consumer behaviours, cultural management, sustainability, political statements, cultural and artistic quality, reputational and status perspectives, ethical responsibilities.
• To offer to the students who want to develop such attitude the possibility to sketch a personal entrepreneurial vision that includes practices, cultural horizons, and social benefits they intend to develop in their professional future.
  

Course Content Summary

The course is developed through a theoretical and practical approach in three main sections.
I section - Cultures , Cultural consumptions, Social transformation - Lecturer: Baia Curioni

In this preliminary section we elaborate:

• the notion of culture in its different perspectives (including the definition of  mass culture,  discourse, subcultures, countercultures);
• the notion of cultural consumption and cultural markets (considering economic and sociologic theory);
• the notion of cultural mediation within a networking perspective.
  The purpose of this first section is to challenge the common definition of culture and cultural markets and the very notion of markets in the case of cultural dissemination and reproduction. The debate is oriented toward a discussion of the ethical and political responsibilities embedded in cultural actions. 

II section -  Cultural Action: The challenge of Violence - Lecturer: Francesca Recchia
This section is divided into three main components: a theoretical introduction discussing different critical approaches to violence and their social implications and it includes discussions and readings around the work of Arendt, Foucault, Agamben. A second component  looks at the repercussion of state, ethnic and religious violence on the urban fabric, it uses Stephen Graham's work as a theoretical guide and  addresses , among  others, questions of security, militarisation and terrorism. The last component deals with questions of representation and interpretation in the global domain, resting on the fine line between the visible and the invisible; the issues discussed  include drones strikes and extra judiciary renditions.
Through structured discussion in the class, this section aims to address the complexity and limits of cultural action and mediation particularly in contexts where intervention is more critical as in the case of open violence.
These cases can be used in the perspective of developing the personal vision about culture and cultural action.

III section -  Cultural mediation as cultural entrepreneurship: the role of ideologies and the role of the arts. Lecturer: Baia Curioni
This section starts from the evidence raised through the discussion of the cases going back to a more general theoretical and historical frame of intercultural confrontation and otherness. In particular, the section elaborates on the role of ideologies (considering the contribution of Edward Said) and the possible role of the arts. The underlying argument is a thought on the possibility and nature of peace. The section also contributes to the definition of the individual visions and cultural projects.

Detailed Description of Assessment Methods

Textbooks