Course Descriptions
Listening, speaking, reading, and writing; introduction to the basic structures and vocabulary of Italian. (Does not count toward the Italian major or minor.)
Listening, speaking, reading and writing; an introduction to the basic structures and vocabulary of Italian, continuation. (Does not count toward the Italian major or minor.)
Course represents an accelerated course covering the material of both 101 and 102 (and not merely an accelerated 102 class) therefore, it is not recommended for those students who have already taken 101. Does not count toward the Italian major or minor.
This course approaches the study of magic in medieval and Renaissance Italy as a crossroads where different pathways converge. First, it is a point of intersection between religion and science. Second, studying Italian society through the lenses of magic, religion and science provides a crossroads where popular culture meets with learned culture. As we cover topics from love potions and spells, astrology, alchemy and natural philosophy, students explore fundamental ideas and concepts, beliefs and practices that characterized pre-modern European intellectual thought. Taught in English
The course examines the origins, development, and implementation of discriminatory racial policies in France and Italy as well as their impact on Jewish citizens during and after World War II through the study of historical texts, survivor testimonies, war memoirs, memorials, commemorations and film.
The Mediterranean Sea has been a dynamic crossroad for people, goods, and ideas for thousands of years. Beginning with the medieval commercial revolution to modern rebellions, we will examine the historical patterns of political development, trade and economic growth, migration and cultural change, war and conflict that shaped French and Italian maritime cities, colonies and global networks from Venice to Livorno, Marseille to Algiers. Taught in English.
This course surveys Italian culture from late antiquity through the Middle Ages. Topics include perspectives on law, religion, commerce and trade, communal politics, family structure, and history of everyday life. Taught in English.
Food has always been an important thread woven through the fabric of Italian culture. Italian cuisine, as diverse and heterogeneous as it is inside the country from North to South, largely contributed to the building of a strong Italian identity, as testified in recent times by the worldwide success of large-scale marketplaces such as Eataly. This course will investigate food's role in shaping Italian society and its cultural practices by looking at images of food in visual art, literature and film. Our historical review will focus on the many symbolic meanings circulating around the representation of food in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and the 20th and 21st centuries. Food will be a lens through which we will read the political, social, and economic changes that have affected Italy in its millennial history.
Qualified students working on an individual basis with professors who have agreed to supervise such work.
Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.
Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.
Course represents an accelerated course covering the material of both 201 and 202 (and not merely an accelerated 202 class) therefore, it is not recommended for those students who have already taken 201.
This gateway course introduces students to Italian thought and culture through multiple perspectives and disciplines including history, philosophy. literary traditions and cultures, arts and architecture, film, cultural studies and geography. By the end of the course, students will have acquired a broad historical understanding of Italian culture and a deeper sense of the interdisciplinary perspectives that contribute meaning to individual and collective Italian identities. Taught in English.
The study of fashion is an important conduit for the expression of social identity, political ideas, and aesthetic taste. This course considers the history of style, fashion and dress in France and Italy from a cultural and fashion studies perspective. After a general introduction to models of interpretation and conceptual terms, FREN/ITAL 231 surveys topics in French and Italian fashion design and history from the 1300s to the present day
Through multiple interdisciplinary approaches, this course focuses on the dynamics between Italian folklore, or materials that are produced outside of the authoritative and sanctioned Culture, and their depictions in 20th-21st-century popular culture. It will explore the oral narratives (fairy tales, legends, saints' legends) and customary crafts of ordinary Italians and Italian Americans, their variations through the transmission process and their depictions in contemporary media. To better understand folkloristics materials, we will situate them in their cultural contexts: specifically, the culture of the historical Italian peasantry and working-class people as well their geographical placements (North, South, and the implications thereof).
This course investigates the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy, a time of great tumult with events such as the 100 Years War, the Avignon Papacy, and the Black Plague of 1348. The course focuses on the great writings of the age, for instance, Dante's Inferno, Petrarch's lyric poetry, Boccaccio's Decameron, as well as the first women writers in Italy. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian or Italian Studies (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
This course investigates the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, a time when renewed interest in the Classical past completely altered Western Culture: the arts flourished, the sciences developed, and philosophers re-conceived of the value of the individual. This course focuses on the great artists and writers of the age, for instance, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Gaspara Stampa, and Veronica Franco. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian or Italian Studies (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
How did the Italian historical context and theatrical spaces impact the creation and reception of theatrical texts? How did these texts shape the context of the Italian society? What is intermediality? How do media re-narrate, re-interpret, and adapt literary texts? How do media cross linguistic, space/time, and cultural borders? What gets lost in the translation of texts across different media? What is produced instead? These are some of the questions we will explore to improve our understanding of intermediality, or the relations among different media (theatre, opera, film), using the humanist's tools and methodologies (historical and social contextualization, close reading, critical analysis, scholars' production).We will engage with the history of Italian theater from 16thto 20thcentury, contextualizing, reading, and analyzing plays and libretti by Machiavelli, Da Ponte, Goldoni, Mascagni, Pirandello, Fo, and Ginzburg. We will combine a traditional approach to canonical texts of the Italian theatrical tradition with an interdisciplinary methodology that compares literary and visual texts.
This course explores Italian writers, lives and culture through Italian literature and/or film. We will learn about the various historical, socio-cultural, political and economic challenges and factors represented in these works. We will examine the representation of gender, social class, family, and national identity, and how inequity and power can shape and can be shaped by these identities. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
Qualified students working on an individual basis with professors who have agreed to supervise such work.
How has humanity responded to and represented pandemics, epidemics and other episodes of contagion in history? What are the roles of race, class and gender in the shaping of disease incidence? How does infectious disease define a life? What is the nature of individual existence when touched by plague? This course considers these questions and others through the study of historical, literary and cultural representations of some of the most influential pandemics and epidemics, covering a wide range of geographical places and time periods in French and Italian history from the Black Death in Tuscany during the Middle Ages to subsequent outbreaks of bubonic plague from Milan to Marseille in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the spread of cholera and syphilis in the nineteenth century from Paris to Provence. In addition, the course explores the AIDS epidemic in twentieth-century France and the impact of COVID-19 on Italy in the twenty-first. Students examine a variety of primary and secondary sources, fiction and memoirs from French and Italian writers including Giovanni Boccaccio, Alessandro Manzoni, Albert Camus, and Herve Guibert among others. Taught in English.
Course emphasizes advanced speaking and listening skills in Italian by analyzing different media.
Course emphasizes advanced reading and writing skills in Italian.
Course emphasizes advanced spoken language through the study of Italian popular culture, which can include history, music, media studies, cultural studies, literature, the visual arts, and everyday Italian life.
Course emphasizes advanced written language as found in Italian culture through a variety of genres, which can include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, opera, cinema, music and history.
This course examines how artists dealt with the Italian armed resistance against Fascism particularly during the last two years of World War II, and its continuing importance in post-war Italy. The course analyzes how the representation of the Resistance in literature, art and film have evolved and why, with reference to numerous artistic, literary, and cinematic works. The course aims also at inspiring reflections on the relevance of rethinking the history of that period in light of present political developments in Italy and Europe.
What role did cinema play in the encounter between Italian and American culture? How are aesthetic goals such as economy, coherence, and implied perception, and methods such as montage, ellipsis, and points of view being pursued in films that represent the Italian American Experience? To answer these questions, every week we will watch a film made by and/or dealing with the Italian American community. Students will engage with issues of migration, gender, family relations, cultural conflict, and ethnic identity formation by exploring works by directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Spike Lee, and Stanley Tucci. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
This course will provide an historical introduction to post-war Italian cinema by concentrating on examples of classic genres and movements, such as Neorealism, Auteur cinema, Comedy Italian style, Spaghetti Western, and Contemporary Italian Films. Great emphasis will be given to Neorealism. Films by Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni, and Sorrentino will be watched, analyzed, and discussed from both a filmic and a historical stance. We will examine issues of representation and production of societal values, e.g., gender, family relations, and national identity. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
Comprehensive study of images of Italian women in literary, historic, religious texts, the visual arts, and their effects on the cultural productions of women writers and artists. We will examine issues of gender, education, social class, desire, religion, law, and the family. This course may be applied toward the major or minor in Italian or Italian Studies (please speak with an advisor for more information). Taught in English.
Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of training and practice in actual service in a technical, business, or governmental establishment.
Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of training and practice in actual service in a technical, business, or governmental establishment.
Qualified students working on an individual basis with professors who have agreed to supervise such work.
Qualified students working on an individual basis with professors who have agreed to supervise such work.
Course is an advanced seminar on Italian narratives, either visual or literary.
Course is an advanced seminar on historical, geographical, social, and artistic aspects of Italy.
This course examines Dante's masterpiece, "The Divine Comedy", the poet's life and other works. The primary focus is on "The Divine Comedy" and its influence on European literature and culture. Other texts will be included.
Italian Business is an advanced seminar in Italian language and general business culture for 400-level students. It will be structured in weekly modules in which students explore both cultural and practical aspects of the Italian economy within the European Union. For example, they will investigate how traditions and customs affect the country's economy and will learn commercial terminology and business practices. Moreover, the seminar will include Italian films dealing with the world of business. These films aim to familiarize students not only with business situations but also with pivotal moments in Italian economic history such as the economic boom, the Mattei case, and the Parmalat scandal. The seminar will provide an introduction to Italian economy from the 1950s to the present, focusing on key factors in the transition from an agricultural-based economy to a leading country in world trade and exports ('Made in Italy' brand, vehicles, clothing, furniture, food, wine, etc.). The seminar will also focus on the acquisition and reinforcement of the essential, practical content, vocabulary and style of every-day business situations and transactions. Each module will offer a specific business situation in which students in pairs or small groups introduce themselves in a business meeting, make travel arrangements, write their resume and cover letter, prepare for a job interview, create a business plan and launch a new product. Finally, while students will be familiarizing themselves with the language and the practices of Italian business, they will also review contextually-relevant, advanced grammatical structures in writing and speaking.
An in-depth study of an aspect of Italian literature or culture. Variable topic course. May be repeated for credit as topic changes.
A culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies. Senior standing required.
An honors thesis is required of all the students graduating with honors. Students ordinarily sign up for this course for two sequential semesters. The first semester the student performs research under the supervision of a faculty member; the second semester the student writes an honors thesis.
Qualified students working on an individual basis with professors who have agreed to supervise such work.