Classics 242 - Sicily: Mediterran. Crossroads

'(Conducted in English). Its long history as the locus of collisions among cultures--Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, Spanish, and (northern) Italian--has earned Sicily a special place in Mediterranean studies. One product of these clashes is that for millennia Sicilians have confronted questions of identity. More recently, because of immigration waves from North Africa, Sicily is once again at the center of the Mediterranean cultural debate. This course will cover almost three thousand years of of Sicilian life, as it explores the role of material culture and literature in shaping Sicilian identities. Readings (and related films) range from Empedocles to Plato; Cicero, Virgil, and Ovid to Ibn Hawkal and Al-Idrisi; Lampedusa to Pirandello, and Giordana.'