University of Minnesota- Literature : marzo 2013

giovedì 21 marzo 2013

April Blood and the Pazzi Conspiracy

Let' s talk about Florentine history in literature.

The Pazzy Conspiracy (1478)

mercoledì 20 marzo 2013

CSI Florence: Creative Writing Workshop with Marco Simonelli

Our writer and poet, Marco Simonelli, entitled our worshop "CSI Florence"

1) First Step Nick Cave and Kylie Monogue "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (murder, love, passion, possession, beauty and the wild side, etc)

2) What is a monster? Latin root "mostrare", to show = Gods used to send monsters as an omen that something horrible would happen

Dante's Inferno, Cerbero

3) Serial killers

Jack the Ripper

4) The Monster of Florence, first murder

August 21, 1968: Antonio Lo Bianco (29) and Barbara Locci (32), lovers, shot to death with a .22 Beretta in Signa, a small town to the west of Florence, while Locci's son Natalino Mele (6) lay asleep in the back seat of the car. The child woke up and, finding his mother dead, fled in fright. At 2 a.m. he arrived in front of a house nearby and knocked on the door, telling the landlord: "Open the door and let me in, I'm sleepy and my Daddy is sick in bed. Then you have to drive me home, because my Mommy and my uncle are dead in their car." Natalino initially said he had run away alone, then changed his story and stated that his father – or maybe an uncle of his, as he used to call his mother's lovers "uncle" – had driven him to the house where he asked for help. Years later he said again that he was alone, but was too shocked to remember exactly what happened on that night. Locci was famous in the town because of her multiple love affairs, and so she had received the nickname Ape Regina (queen bee). Locci's husband, an ingenuous man named Stefano Mele, was eventually charged with the murder and spent six years in jail, but even while he was in prison, more couples were murdered with the same gun.

5) Let's reenact the first murder
Sam = killer, Erin = woman, Andrew= her lover, Jack= kid

6) Let's write our impressions... points of view (see comments)

7) Let's write a poem (see comments)

Thriller

► Uses suspense, tension and excitement

► Includes many sub genres= Mystery, Crime, Psychological, Political, etc..

► Atmosphere= violence, crime and murder.

► Society = dark, corrupt, and dangerous

► Literary devices = plot twist, red herrings, cliff hangers, multiple lines of action, etc.

Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report" (2002)

Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960)

The Monster of Florence, Italian Serial Killers and the Dark Side of Italy

Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's "The Monster of Florence"

Click here to watch the 50 minute TV show about Preston and Spezi's book

TED.COM. Jim Fallon, "Exploring the Mind of a Serial Killer" (2009)

History Channel, "The Monster of Florence" (in Italian)

Hannibal in Florence, Serial Killers and Beauty

Thomas Harris' "Hannibal" (1999) and Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001)

References:

Dante's Inferno (Pier delle Vigne)

The Pazzi Conspiracy

The Monster of Florence, serial killer

Inside and Outside Santa Croce

Following E.M. Foster's example in "A Room with a View", be inspired by Santa Croce and use it as a location for a short story. Write a short treatment.

Our Short Story - Change of Point of View

Here is the rewriting of our short story using the first person singular... let's explore and analyse the changes!

George Simenon

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our Short Story - First Draft

We are all writers and here are our short stories... the final draft will follow soon!

Agatha Christie

Arthur Conan Doyle

Travel Writing - Exercises

Here below you, in the comments, you will find our travel writing exercise....

Enjoy!

lunedì 11 marzo 2013

Conference. Experiencing Florence: American Travelers’ Accounts and Representations of the City from the Grand Tour to Mass Tourism

Experiencing Florence: American Travelers’ accounts and Representations of the City from the Grand Tour to Mass Tourism

Monday, 11 March 2013, 4:00pm, ACCENT Study Center, Piazza Santo Spirito 10

This talk will discuss the experience of Florence as conveyed by American visitors in their representations and accounts of the city from the time of the Grand Tour to mass society tourism and to the so-called experiential tourist of our days. Travelers’ impressions, stereotypes and idealized visions about Florence and its inhabitants will be discussed through the analysis of sources taken from both high and popular culture from the late 18th to the 21st centuries, including paintings, prints, travel literature, tourist guides and postcards. Special emphasis will be placed on the multi-sensorial dimension of the travelers’ accounts. Though vision is at the center of the tourist’s experience, tourism cannot be reduced to the interpretative model of the ‘tourist gaze’, as tasting, smelling, hearing and touching are involved in its doings.

Nicoletta Leonardi (Ph.D. University College London) is professor of art history and the history of photography at Italian state Academies of Fine Arts, having so far taught in Turin, Florence and Naples. She is associate curator of photography at a.titolo, a non-profit organization that commissions public art projects based on policies of active citizenship. Her research topics include the relationship between vision and technology in nineteenth century American landscape culture, photographs as material objects and as agents of sociability, pre-cinema practices of immersive viewing and virtual traveling through images, women photographers in Italy, the role of photography as a tool for research and action within contemporary urban planning. She has held several fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship and a Hasselblad Foundation Fellowship. Her writings have been published in exhibition catalogues, most recently Concrete: Photography and Architecture (Wintherthur Fotomuseum/Scheidegger & Spiess, 2013), Franco Vaccari's Exhibitions in Real Time (Spazio Oberdan/Damiani, Milan 2007), Masterpieces From the Guggenheim Collection (Guggenheim Publications/Skira 2005), De l’Europe: photographies, essaies, histoires (Luxemburg/Filigranes Editions, 2007). She is the author of Il paesaggio americano dell’Ottocento: pittori fotografi e pubblico (Donzelli Editore, Rome 2003), and the editor of L’altra metà dello sguardo: le donne nella storia della fotografia (Agorà, Turin 2001) and Feedback. Scritti su e di Franco Vaccari (Postmedia Books, Milano 2007).

San Miniato

Walking: studying, meditating, searching, observing

Santiago’s Walk (Paolo Coehlo’s Santiago’s Walk)

WHILE YOU ARE WALKING

Observe the world around you and enhance your senses and perceptions (smells, sounds, views, etc). Include those in the treatment you will write later.

OUTSIDE AND INSIDE SAN MINIATO

Explore the dark and repressed side of yourself and use it as an inspiration to write a treatment for a short story.
Write a treatment of a short story using San Miniato and the dark and repressed side of yourself
Use what you learnt in the “Artist’s Way”

venerdì 8 marzo 2013

Travel Writing

Guardian, Travel Writing Tips

"Don't tell - show. Describe the colours, sounds and smells of what you see as vividly as you can. Photograph: Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis/Massimo Borchi

• Write in the first person, past tense (or present if the action really justifies it), and make your story a personal account, interwoven with facts, description and observation.

• Many writers start their piece with a strong – but brief – anecdote that introduces the general feeling, tone and point of the trip and story. Something that grabs the reader's attention and makes them want to read on. Don't start with the journey to the airport – start with something interesting, not what happened first.

• Early on you need to get across the point of the story and trip – where you were, what were you doing there and why. If there is a hook – a new trend, discovery or angle – make that clear within the first few paragraphs.

• Try to come up with a narrative thread that will run throughout the piece, linking the beginning and end; a point you are making. The piece should flow, but don't tell the entire trip chronologically, cherry pick the best bits, anecdotes and descriptions, that will tell the story for you.

• Quotes from people you met can bring the piece to life, give the locals a voice and make a point it would take longer to explain yourself. Quote people accurately and identify them, who are they, where did you meet them?

• Avoid cliches. Try to come up with original descriptions that mean something. Our pet hates include: "bustling markets"... "azure/cobalt sea"... "nestling among" ... "hearty fare" ... "a smorgasbord of...".

• Don't use phrases and words you wouldn't use in speech (such as "eateries" or "abodes"), and don't try to be too clever or formal; the best writing sounds natural and has personality. It should sound like you. Don't try to be "gonzo" or really hilarious, unless you're sure it's working.

• Check your facts! It's good to work in some interesting nuggets of information, perhaps things you've learned from talking to people, or in books or other research, but use reliable sources and double-check they are correct.

• Write economically – don't waste words on sentences that could be condensed. Eg say "there was a..." not "it became apparent to me that in fact there existed a...".

• Moments that affected you personally don't necessarily make interesting reading. Avoid tales of personal mishaps – missed buses, diarrhoea, rain – unless pertinent to the story. Focus on telling the reader something about the place, about an experience that they might have too if they were to repeat the trip.