Course Schedule

ITAL 101 – Elementary Italian I

Listening, speaking, reading, and writing; introduction to the basic structures and vocabulary of Italian. (Does not count toward the Italian major or minor.)

ITAL 102 – Elementary Italian II

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.)

ITAL 150B1 – The Holocaust in France and Italy

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.

ITAL 160D1 – Food for Thought in Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 201 – Intermediate Italian I

Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.

ITAL 202 – Intermediate Italian II

Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.

ITAL 230 – Introduction to Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 231 – Fashion and Culture in France and Italy

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

ITAL 240 – Italian Folklore and Popular Culture

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).

ITAL 250B – The Italian Renaissance

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.

ITAL 310 – Italian Encounters: Spoken Italian in Context

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.

ITAL 320 – Italian Encounters: Written Italian in Context

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.

ITAL 330A – Resisting Fascism

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.

ITAL 410 – Words and Worlds: Italian Literature and/or Film

Course is an advanced seminar on Italian narratives, either visual or literary.

ITAL 498H – Honors Thesis

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.

ITAL 101 – Elementary Italian I

Listening, speaking, reading, and writing; introduction to the basic structures and vocabulary of Italian. (Does not count toward the Italian major or minor.)

ITAL 102 – Elementary Italian II

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.)

ITAL 160D1 – Food for Thought in Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 201 – Intermediate Italian I

Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.

ITAL 202 – Intermediate Italian II

Continued skill development; reinforcement of basic language skills.

ITAL 230 – Introduction to Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 231 – Fashion and Culture in France and Italy

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

ITAL 240 – Italian Folklore and Popular Culture

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).

ITAL 250A – Love, Literature, and Language in the Italian Middle Ages

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.

ITAL 300 – Pandemics, Politics and Culture in France and Italy

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 Hervé Guibert among others. Taught in English.

ITAL 301 – Advanced Italian Conversation through Media

Course emphasizes advanced speaking and listening skills in Italian by analyzing different media.

ITAL 320 – Italian Encounters: Written Italian in Context

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.

ITAL 330B – Once Upon a Time In Italian American Cinema

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.

ITAL 330D – Empowered Women in Italian Literature and Culture

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.

ITAL 420 – Framing Italy

Course is an advanced seminar on historical, geographical, social, and artistic aspects of Italy.

ITAL 102 – Elementary Italian II

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.)

ITAL 140 – Magic, Religion and Science in Italy

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

ITAL 160D1 – Food for Thought in Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 230 – Introduction to Italian Culture

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.

ITAL 231 – Fashion and Culture in France and Italy

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

ITAL 300 – Pandemics, Politics and Culture in France and Italy

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 Hervé Guibert among others. Taught in English.

ITAL 330B – Once Upon a Time In Italian American Cinema

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.