Dear All,

It was a pleasure to see you again or meet you for the first time. I hope this semester will be a great semester for all of us. Here is what we did today and what we should be thinking about during this week:

We talked about Ferrante’s international success and some criticism against her works. We read and discussed part of Walter Benjamin’s essay on Naples. We introduced some of the recurring topics of the novel (the reflection on writing, women, maternity, Naples). We discussed the requirements for this class.

For next week:

Please read the text by Walter Benjamin (when I say “read” I actually mean “study”) and the first part of My Brilliant Friend (cover to page 119, as stated in our course schedule).

Write your blog post by Monday night at 9pm, using the category “Post 1” and inserting tags of your choice (a good post has at least 2 tags). The “meta-post” is due any time before the next class (please use category “meta-post”).

Think about one semester long project that you would like to pursue (after reading). It is ok if your topic is vague. I just want you to focus on something that you are already interested in. Possible topics include but are not limited to: translation, camorra, meta-literature, women (this are very broad topics that you will need to refine for your presentation or paper).

Think about skills that you want to learn in this course (something that you don’t master yet, but you know is useful in our discipline, that is, literary studies).

If you have questions please comment on this post so that other students can see the discussion.