This course employs the latest language teaching methodology to provide students with an interactive learning experience. Students will be introduced to the basics of the Italian language, as well as to contemporary Italy and its culture. In class, students will practice the four skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing - through a variety of activities.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Bartalesi-Graf, Laviosa
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Winter
Notes:
This course employs the same language teaching methodology used in ITAS 101. Students will advance their language proficiency and their knowledge of contemporary Italian society through daily practice, both in the classroom and on their own. In addition, they will watch and discuss an Italian contemporary film, and read some short stories in Italian. Oral presentations are also incorporated in the curriculum.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ITAS 101 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Laviosa
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This innovative course is designed for complete beginners who wish to advance fast in their language proficiency, and complete their language requirement in one year. Through the daily practice and reinforcement of all language skills, students will reach an intermediate level mastery of the Italian language and a basic understanding of modern Italian society in one semester, since this course is the equivalent of 101 & 102, and qualifies students for 201 or 203 (201 & 202 combined). ITAS103 employs the latest teaching technology tools to provide students with an interactive learning experience Methods employed include in-class conversation and role-playing activities, as well as the latest technology in blended learning. No textbook necessary: the course employs an online platform that provides free access to all course materials (videos, readings, grammar charts, as well as self-corrected exercises and tests).
Units: 1.25
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Bartalesi-Graf
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This seminar is dedicated to the representation of Italian cities in Italian literature, art, and cinema from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. By presenting cities as spatial narratives, we will introduce students to some of the most important moments in Italian history and will invite them to examine the representation of urban landscape as a privileged vantage point to understand Italian culture. The seminar is designed to introduce students to the field of Italian Studies and to provide them with a solid background in Italian history and culture.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None. Open to First-Years only.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Other Categories: FYS - First Year Seminar
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes: Mandatory Credit/Non Credit
The aim of this course is to develop students' fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture as well as the writing of compositions are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ITAS 101- ITAS 102, or ITAS 103.
Instructor: Laviosa, Staff
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
The aim of this course is to develop students' fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture as well as the writing of compositions are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions. Three periods.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ITAS 201
Instructor: Laviosa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This intensive three-week course is a rigorous linguistic and a valuable full-immersion cultural experience in Italy. Like ITAS 202 on campus, the course consists of a fast-paced grammar review with practice of all language skills through readings of literary texts and newspaper articles, oral discussions, presentations on Italian current events, and compositions on cultural topics examined in class. The course includes a rich program of guest speakers, both Italian university professors and artists, and attendance at film screenings and theatre performances.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 14
Prerequisites: ITAS 201. Application required. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 202.
Instructor: Laviosa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Winter
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Winter
Notes: Not offered every year. Wintersession offerings are subject to Provost's Office approval.
This course is for students who have taken ITAS 103 or both ITAS 101 and ITAS 102. The course covers the same material as ITAS 201 and ITAS 202, and employs an online platform that provides free access to all course materials (videos, films, readings, grammar charts, as well as self-corrected exercises and tests). The aim of the course is to improve and strengthen the skills acquired in Elementary Italian through the study of various themes in contemporary Italian society. This is an intensive course developed especially for students with a strong interest in Italian Studies. No textbook necessary: all materials are available and downloadable online.
Units: 1.25
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: Either ITAS 103, or ITAS 101 and ITAS 102.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes:
This course offers an overview of Italian Jewish culture and literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Students will read prose and poetry, essays and articles, as well as watch films that address issues such as religious and cultural identity, the right to difference, anti-Semitism and the Shoah. The course will also give students an overview of the formation and transformation of the Jewish community in Italian society. In addition to well-known Jewish Italian writers like Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani, students will read pertinent works by non-Jewish writers like Rosetta Loy and Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: JWST 211
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Considered since the Renaissance as a homoerotic haven, Italy was for a long time the favorite destination of many gay writers in flight from the rigid sexual mores of their home countries. In Italy’s warmer Mediterranean climate, rich and sensuous figurative arts, and ancient costumes, they found a culture that seemed more at ease with a nuanced idea of human sexuality. After all, Italy is the country that gave birth to famous artists who became icons of LGBTQ+ culture, such as the painter Caravaggio and the poet Pasolini, and that, unlike other Western nations, never had laws criminalizing homoeroticism. Today, paradoxically, Italy is the Western European country which is most lagging behind in passing legislation in support of LGBTQ+ rights. From the lack of a full legal recognition of gay marriage and adoption rights to the failure to approve a hate-crime bill for the protection of LGBTQ+ individuals, Italian society still shows great reluctance to grant full equal rights to LGBTQ Italians. With these historical contradictions in the background, this course will retrace the steps of the rich, complex, and often tortuous path of LGBTQ+ culture in Italy from the early representations of sodomy, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in works by Dante and Poliziano, to the shaping of a political and social discourse around homosexuality in literary texts by twentieth century writers, such as Saba, Bassani, Ginzburg, and Morante, to the emergence of a political debate on current LGBTQ+ issues, such as AIDS, homophobia, transgender and transexual rights, in works by contemporary artists, such as Tondelli, Bazzi, and Lavagna.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: PEAC 210
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
This course examines the films of a number of major Italian women directors across two artistic generations: Cavani and Wertmüller from the 1960s to the 1970s; Archibugi, Comencini, and others from the 1990s to the 2010s. Neither fascist cinema nor neorealism fostered female talents, so it was only with the emergence of feminism and the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s that a space for female voices in Italian cinema was created. The course will explore how women directors give form to their directorial signatures in film, focusing on their films' formal features and narrative themes in the light of their socio-historical context.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Crosslisted Courses: CAMS 224
Prerequisites:
Instructor: Laviosa
Distribution Requirements: ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course is dedicated to the representation and exploration of landscape in the Italian poetic tradition. By studying how the varied and beautiful Italian landscape found expression in the literary works of major poets, students will be exposed to a rich body of work and the tradition it both follows and renews. In particular, the course will focus on a series of specific themes, giving special attention to language and style. These will include: the opposition between rural and urban landscapes; the tension between dialects and the national language; the complex dynamics of tradition and innovation; issues of sustainability in the representation of Italian landscape. Through initial exposure to selected classical poets, including Dante and Petrarch, students will gain in-depth knowledge of the main formal structures of Italian poetry, from the classical sonnet, going on to free verse. In addition, we will read poems by the Italian greats of the twentieth century, i.e., Ungaretti, Saba and Montale, as well as works by contemporary poets, such as Bassani, Caproni, Sereni, Cavalli and Valduga, which deal with issues of preservation of the Italian natural landscape.
The course will be taught in English.
Students who wish to take the course to fulfill the major or minor in Italian should register for ITAS 320.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: None. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 320.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes: This course is also offered at the 300-level as ITAS 320 with an extra weekly meeting in Italian.
Throughout its history, the Italian language has expressed itself optimally through song. In this interdisciplinary course, we explore the connections between song and lyrical poetry in works from the Middle Ages through hip-hop. Students will gain an overview of Italian history and culture, and will learn how poetry and music have contributed to the shaping of Italian national identity. In addition to field trips to hear an Italian opera and to work with rare prints and manuscripts in Special Collections, students will analyze poetry and its musical enhancement, and manipulate digital humanities resources. No previous knowledge of music or Italian is required.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Crosslisted Courses: MUS 223
Prerequisites: No previous knowledge of music or Italian is required. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 123/MUS 123.
Instructor: Parussa, Fontijn
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The course explores the theme of human rights in Italian society during the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. First, it is designed to discuss the rights of literature, i.e., the role that literature can play in the understanding of human rights. Second, it will provide students with a survey of the discussion of human rights in Italian literature. By presenting literary texts as narratives that have contributed to the debate on human rights, the course will introduce students to the most important moments in the history of human rights in Italy, from the first political organizations which fought for equal rights for factory workers, to the struggle of the feminist movement for women's emancipation throughout the twentieth century, to the approval of laws that legalized divorce and abortion during the 1970s and 80s, up to the new legislation on domestic violence, marriage, and adoption rights for LGBT people, and today’s debate on the issue of citizenship for immigrants.
The course will be taught in English. Students who wish to take the course to fulfill the major or minor in Italian should register for ITAS 324. The course will provide reading and writing assignments in Italian, as well as individual discussion sessions in Italian, for students who are taking the course at the 300-level.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: None. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 324.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 300 level as ITAS 324, with readings and writing assignments in Italian.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
Units: 0.5
Max Enrollment: 25
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring; Fall
A survey of the directors and film styles that paved the way for the golden age of Italian cinema, this course examines, first, Italian cinema of the first two decades of the twentieth century, going on to fascist cinema before embarking on an in-depth journey into the genre that made Italian cinema famous, namely, neorealism. We will analyze major films by Rossellini, Visconti, and De Sica (among others) with a view to understanding the ethical, social, political, and philosophical foundations of the neorealist aesthetic.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Ward
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature; ARS - Visual Arts, Music, Theater, Film and Video
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course is devoted to one of the most important masterpieces of world literature, the Divine Comedy by Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Designed as a journey across the Christian afterlife, the Comedy has redefined the understanding of morality, political engagement, and the sacred across the centuries. We will analyze and discuss the Comedy in its entirety focusing on Dante’s own dilemmas: What does it mean to love a person, one’s community, or an idea? Is there a logic to the universe? How can we reconcile justice, curiosity, and desire? And why should we care? Our interdisciplinary discussion will explore fields such as literature, history, ethics, and theology. No previous knowledge of Italian literature or medieval studies is required.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Crosslisted Courses: MER 263
Prerequisites: None.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall
Notes:
The course is designed to introduce students to the literature, film, politics, history and social issues of twenty-first century Italy. In addition to reading and viewing representative texts and films, the course will also pay close attention to contemporary events through on-line newspapers, magazines and TV channels.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 202 or ITAS 203, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The course aims, first, to give students who wish to continue their study of Italian the chance to practice and refine their skills, and second, to introduce students to one of the major themes of Italian culture, namely, the role played by Italian intellectuals in the construction of Italy as a nation. We will read how Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli imagined Italy as a nation before it came into existence in 1860; how the nation came to be unified; and how the experience of unification has come to represent a controversial point of reference for twentieth-century Italy. Other figures to be studied will include Bembo, Castiglione, Foscolo, Gramsci, Tomasi di Lampedusa, D'Annunzio, Visconti, Levi, Blasetti, and Rossellini.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Unlike other European literatures, contemporary Italian literature lacks a major work of fiction representing the nation’s cultural identity. Rather, Italian literature boasts the small book, brief unclassifiable narratives that express the variety and complexity of Italian culture. Realistic novels or philosophical short stories, memoirs or literary essays, these works are a fine balance between a number of literary genres and, as such, are a good entranceway into the multifaceted and contradictory identity of Italy as a nation. The course will combine a survey of contemporary Italian literature with a theoretical analysis of how Italian identity has been represented in works by Calvino, Bassani, Ginzburg, and others. The course will be taught in English.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: None
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
The 1960s was a period of great change in Italy. The major consequence of the economic boom of the late 1950s was to transform Italy from a predominantly agricultural to an industrialized nation. Through a study of literary and cinematic texts, the course will examine this process in detail. Time will also be given to the consequences of the radical changes that took place: internal immigration, consumerism, the new role of intellectuals, resistance to modernity, neo-fascism, student protest. Authors to be studied will include Italo Calvino, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ermanno Olmi, Umberto Eco, and authors from the Neo-Avant Garde movement.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 202 or ITAS 203.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course is dedicated to the representation of female desire in Italian culture. From Dante's Francesca da Rimini to Pasolini's Medea, passing through renowned literary characters such as Goldoni's Mirandolina, Manzoni's Gertrude, and Verdi's Violetta, the course will explore different and contrasting voices of female desire: unrequited and fulfilled, passionate and spiritual, maternal and destructive, domestic and transgressive. In particular, the varied and beautiful voices of women in love will become privileged viewpoints to understand the changes that occur in Italian culture in the conception of desire and other intimate emotions, as well as in the notion of gender and sexuality. Students will read texts by men and women from a wide variety of literary genres and artistic forms including not only prose and poetry, but also theatre, opera, and cinema. They will also read important theoretical essays on the conception of love in Western cultures by Barthes, de Rougemont, Giddens, and Nussbaum.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ITAS 201 or ITAS 202 or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course examines the two fundamental political and cultural experiences of twentieth-century Italy: the 20-year fascist regime and the resistance to it. We will study the origins of fascism in Italy's participation in World War I and its colonial ambitions, and then follow the development of fascism over the two decades of its existence and ask to what extent it received the consensus of the Italian people. We will go on to examine the various ways in which Italians resisted fascism and the role the ideals that animated antifascist thinking had in the postwar period. Authors to be studied include: Marinetti, D'Annunzio, Pascoli, Croce, Gobetti, Rosselli, Bassani, Ginzburg, Carlo and Primo Levi, and Silone.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Italian Mysteries introduces students to the Italian tradition of mystery and detective writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with particular attention paid to its philosophical and semiotic dimensions. It also exposes students to some of the political mysteries that have characterized Italy since the end of World War II and which have become the subject of much contemporary mystery writing, films, and documentaries. From an aesthetic standpoint, we will ask why a new generation of young writers has been drawn to these mysteries as subjects of their writings and examine the variety of narrative forms they use to investigate them. Authors to be studied will include Carlo Emilio Gadda, Umberto Eco, Carlo Luccarelli, Dario Fo, Simone Sarasso, Giuseppe Genna, and the writing collectives known as Luther Blisset and Wu Ming.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273 or ITAS 274.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
This course is dedicated to the representation and exploration of landscape in the Italian poetic tradition. By studying how the varied and beautiful Italian landscape found expression in the literary works of major poets, students will be exposed to a rich body of work and the tradition it both follows and renews. In particular, the course will focus on a series of specific themes, giving special attention to language and style. These will include: the opposition between rural and urban landscapes; the tension between dialects and the national language; the complex dynamics of tradition and innovation; issues of sustainability in the representation of Italian landscape. Through initial exposure to selected classical poets, including Dante and Petrarch, students will gain in-depth knowledge of the main formal structures of Italian poetry, from the classical sonnet, going on to free verse. In addition, we will read poems by the Italian greats of the twentieth century, i.e., Ungaretti, Saba and Montale, as well as works by contemporary poets, such as Bassani, Caproni, Sereni, Cavalli and Valduga, which deal with issues of preservation of the Italian natural landscape.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: ITAS 202 or permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 220.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Spring
Notes: This course is also offered at the 200-level as ITAS 220. The course will meet with ITAS 220 for a portion of the weekly meetings which will be taught in English. ITAS 320 will have an additional weekly discussion session in Italian, and provide reading and writing assignments in Italian. Students who wish to take the course to fulfill the major or minor in Italian should register for ITAS 320.
The course explores the theme of human rights in Italian society during the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries. First, it is designed to discuss the rights of literature, i.e., the role that literature can play in the understanding of human rights. Second, it will provide students with a survey of the discussion of human rights in Italian literature. By presenting literary texts as narratives that have contributed to the debate on human rights, the course will introduce students to the most important moments in the history of human rights in Italy, from the first political organizations which fought for equal rights for factory workers, to the struggle of the feminist movement for women's emancipation throughout the twentieth century, to the approval of laws that legalized divorce and abortion during the 1970s and 80s, up to the new legislation on domestic violence, marriage, and adoption rights for LGBT people, and today’s debate on the issue of citizenship for immigrants.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 20
Prerequisites: Four semesters of Italian, or equivalent.
Instructor: Parussa
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes: This course is also offered at the 200 level as ITAS 224, in English.
Beginning with Boccaccio and going on to Manzoni, Verga, and beyond, the course introduces students to the major figures of the Italian narrative tradition. We then go on to study twentieth-century narrative texts, all the time seeking answers to the question of why narrative is such a fundamental human need. Why, for example, do we narrate our experience of life and the sense we have of ourselves, even in the form of diaries? Do the stories we tell faithfully reflect reality or do they create it? The course concludes with a reflection on narrative technique in cinema illustrated by the films of Antonioni. Other authors to be studied may include Calvino, Ceresa, Rasy, Pasolini, Celati, and Benni.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274.
Instructor: Staff
Distribution Requirements: LL - Language and Literature
Typical Periods Offered: Spring
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered
Notes:
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 15
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors.
Instructor:
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: Permission of the department.
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.
Units: 1
Max Enrollment: 25
Prerequisites: ITAS 360 and permission of the department.
Instructor:
Typical Periods Offered: Spring; Fall
Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Fall; Spring
Notes: Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester.