Scuola di Studi Superiori "Ferdinando Rossi" dell'Università degli Studi di Torino - SSST

The course aims to offer skills and competences in World Literatures in English and Russian Literature, literary ecology and the literary representations of the nuclear impact on humans and non-humans.
The course, divided into three modules, aims at encouraging a trans-disciplinary dialogue between Human Sciences and STEM disciplines.
Module 1)
The module will analyze novels by postcolonial writers from Canada, Pakistan and New Zealand with a focus on the literary representations of the explosions in Hiroshima and of nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean, involving human and non-human beings.
Module 2)
The module will focus on the history of Western imperialism in the Pacific, in particular on the areas in the American and French colonies used to carry out nuclear experiments. A selection of literary texts on this subject will be analyzed, recording the reactions of the indigenous population throughout time and the effects of nuclear tests on people’s health and the natural environment to this day.

Module 3)
This module explores how Soviet and post-Soviet literature reflects and responds to the nuclear era, with a
focus on nuclear experimentation and the Chernobyl disaster. Through close readings of literary texts and hybrid works, the module examines how nuclear technology and catastrophe shape personal, political, and cultural identities in Russian-language literature.

Module 1 - Representations of nuclear explosions in postcolonial literature

Teaching staff:

Prof.ssa Carmen Concilio (18 ore)
SSD ANGL-01/A (ex L-LIN/10) Letteratura inglese

--Joy Kogawa, Obasan (any edition)
--Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (any edition)
--Witi Ihimaera, The Wale Rider (any edition)

Module 2 - Nuclear Power in the Pacific

Teaching staff: Prof.ssa Paola Della Valle (18 ore)
SSD ANGL-01/A (ex L-LIN/10) Letteratura inglese

--Keown Michelle, Andrew Taylor and Mandy Treagus (eds.). Anglo-American Imperialism and the Pacific, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018.
--Della Valle Paola. “Eco-poesia nel Pacifico, ieri e oggi: il nucleare e i cambiamenti climatici in Hone Tuwhare e Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner” in Semicerchio, LVIII-LIX (2018/1-2), pp. 63-68.
--De Loughrey Elizabeth. “Solar Metaphors: ‘No Ordinary Sun”, in ka mate ka ora: a new zealand journal of poetry and poetics, N. 6, 2008, pp. 51-59.
--Jetnil-Kijiñer Kathy. Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson (AZ) 2017.

--Tuwhare Hone. No Ordinary Sun, John McIndoe, Dunedin (NZ), 1977 [1964].
--A selection of poems from the Pacific area.

Module 3 - Atomic Imaginings: Russian Literature and the Nuclear Age

Teaching staff: Prof.ssa Nadia Caprioglio (9 ore)
SSD SLAV-01/A (ex L-LIN/21) Slavistica

Primary sources
- Alexievich, Svetlana, Chernobylskaya molitva (1997). Engl. trans. Voices from Chernobyl, Funks Grove, IL, Dalkey Archive Press, 2005; Voices from Chernobyl, London, Penguin Random House, 2016. It. Transl. Preghiera per Černobyl’, Roma, E/O, 2002 (and later repr.) — oral history and testimonial narrative about Chernobyl.
- Dneprov, Anatoly “Purpurnaya mumiya” (1965). Engl. transl. “The Purple Mummy” — early allegory of nuclear risks.
- Izmailov, Hamid, Wunderkind Erzhan (2011). Engl. transl. The Dead Lake, Bath, Peirene Press, 2024. It. transl. La fiaba nucleare dell’uomo bambino, Milano, Utopia, 2021 — narrative on nuclear experimentation.
- Murder, Michael and Anaïs Tondeur, The Chernobyl Herbarium, London, Oper Humanities Press, 2016. It. transl. Chernobyl Herbarium, Milano, Mimesis, 2021 —autobiography and visual texts about Chernobyl. 

Additional Suggested Readings
will be published on the Moodle page dedicated to the Course for all three modules.

- Brown, Kate, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
- Morton, Timothy, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2013.
- Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2011.
- Ghosh, Amitav, Countdown, New Delhi, Orient Longman, 1999.
- Ghosh: https://amitavghosh.com/category/countdown-interviews/ .
- Roy, Arundhati, War is Peace, Nottingham, Russel Press, 2001 / Guerra è pace, Milano, Guanda, 2002.
- Cal Flyn, “Nuclear Winter: Chernobyl, Ukraine”, in Islands of Abandonment, London, William Collins, 2021, pp. 90-112 (on Moodle).
- Wolf, Christa, Störfall, Munich, Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 2002 / Il guasto, Roma, e/o, 1986.