Italian Studies Courses

Italian Studies | Courses | French & Italian Faculty

(All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise noted.)

Note on Elementary and Intermediate Italian: No more than six credits may be earned for any combination of courses at the Elementary level (Italian 110 through 126). No more than six credits may be earned for any combination of courses at the Intermediate level (Italian 230 through 246).

110 Elementary Italian I (1st sem)

The four basic skillsóspeaking, reading, writing, and understanding Italian. For those with no previous experience in the language.

120 Elementary Italian II (2nd sem)

Continuation of ITAL 110; further development of the four skills: speaking, understanding, reading, and writing Italian. Prerequisite: ITAL 110.

126 Intensive Elementary Italian 6 cr

Acquisition of the four language skills: speaking, understanding, reading, and writing Italian. No previous knowledge of Italian required. Covers same material as 110, 120 with greater efficiency. Successful completion of ITAL 126 followed by 246 allows satisfaction of CAS language requirement in one year.

230 Intermediate Italian I (1st sem)

Review of first year grammar and further development of the four skills: speaking, reading, writing, and understanding. Prerequisite: ITAL 120 or consent of instructor.

240 Intermediate Italian II (2nd sem)

Toward fluency in reading, writing, and speaking Italian. Introduction to a variety of texts; grammar review as appropriate. Prerequisite: Italian at the 230 level.

246 Intensive Intermediate Italian 6 cr

Improvement of basic language skills for the motivated student. Particularly for those who plan to continue in Italian and/or to study in Italy. Follows and builds on ITAL 126 (or ITAL 110 and 120). Successful completion satisfies the CAS foreign language qualification and prepares for more advanced courses.

280 Language Suite Conversation
(both sem) 2 cr with additional 1-cr Honors option

Designed as part of the living-learning community in Thatcher Language House. Improves knowledge of the Italian language with emphasis on oral skills. Builds vocabulary, develops ability to understand and communicate more freely in the language by focusing on social and cultural issues.

324 Introduction to Italian Literature (AL) (1st sem)

Selections from a variety of literary texts; attention to methods of literary study and critical perspectives. Prerequisite: intermediate-level proficiency or consent of instructor. Taught primarily in Italian. Not suitable for native speakers.

350 Italian Film (AT) (2nd sem)

Re-examines Italian neo-realism and the filmmakers' project of social reconstruction after Fascism. How Italian film produces meaning and pleasures through semiotics and psychoanalysis, as a means to understand the specific features of Italian cinema, its cultural politics, and the Italian contribution to filmmaking. Taught in English.

371 Advanced Grammar and Composition (1st sem)

Intensive and systematic review of the structural patterns of Italian; development of competence and ease in writing Italian expository prose of various types and levels. Prerequisite: ITAL 240 or equivalent.

450 Italian-American Film: Visions of Everyday Violence (1st sem)

Films made by Italian-American directors influenced by Italian neo-realism and other European traditions. Also Italian-American actors. Key directors from the East Coast School (Scorsese, De Niro, Ferrara) contrasted with those whose work is derived from the Hollywood code (Coppola, Leone, Tarantino). The problem of "everyday violence" examined from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective in terms of paranoia, psychosis or the alternative of healthy sublimation. Questions of genre (Western mythology), urban seriality, and European immigration explored in terms of identity and psychopathology. Italian directors engaged in Hollywood genres and Americans exploiting Italian characters (Wertmuller, Jarmusch, Leone). Film screenings in English. Taught in English.

481 Italian Civilization (1st sem)

Historical, literary, philosophic ,and artistic aspects of Italian civilization. Understanding of Italian life, culture, and institutions.

487 Contemporary Italian Culture and Society

The construction of modernity in Italian culture and society. Emphasis on contemporary European developments and issues of economic integration. Topics include: literary and social movements (Scapi-gliatura, Futurism, and Fascism); institutions of art, architecture, design, fashion, politics, psychoanalysis, religion, and television; the status of women; questions of antisemitism and Jews. Documents examined include journalism, video interviews, and the writings of Eco, Gramsci, Landolfi, Musatti, Pasolini, Pirandello, Tabucchi, Saba, Svevo, Zanotto, others. Taught in English; majors study texts in Italian.

497 Italian Critical Thought and Interpretation

Examines the influences of Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche and Freud on contemporary Italian critical theory. Writers of literary theory, psychohistory, and postmodernism discussed in relation to deconstruction. Texts include Agamben, Eco, Corti, Ginzburg, Orlando, Timpanaro, and Vattimo, as well as Derrida and Lacan.

507 Dante

Close reading and discussion of Dante's Vita Nuova and the Commedia. Examines why after almost seven centuries the Divine Comedy remains compelling and how it helped shape the European literary imagination. Includes questions of medieval poetics, historiography, political theory, religion, philosophy, and art raised by Dante's work. Taught in English, text with facing Italian and English. Italian majors expected to read substantial portions in Italian.

514 The Early Renaissance

The early Italian epic and the world of Quattrocento Italian chivalric myth. Works studied include Luigi Pulci's Morgante and Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, as well as other, minor literary works. Topics include the female warrior, magic, incantations and sorcery, the birth of an Italian self, historical vs. literary chivalric practices, the ideal knight, the destruction/creation of chivalric myth, the blurred boundaries between chivalric game and war, dragons and winged horses, the education of a knight, and various other topics to be chosen as a class. Students write several papers and deliver oral presentations. All work, oral and written, in Italian.

524 The High Renaissance (AL)

A critical review of high Renaissance culture in 16th-century Italy: poetry and magic, the prince and the courtier, history and political thought. Readings from Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Castiglione.

554 Neoclassicism and Romanticism

Italian literature of the late 18th and early 19th centuries within the context of European culture of the period: tragedy and revolution, poetry and self-portraits, the poetics of solitude. Readings from Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi.

565 20th-Century Italian Novel: Transition

The struggle of the individual and of groups to survive in a world often at war and almost always hostile. Works from such writers as Buzzati, Calvino, Cassola, Morante, Moravia, Vittorini, Levi, Ginzburg, Sciascia. Prerequisite: ITAL 325 or equivalent. Taught in Italian; nonmajors may write in English.

567 Modern Poetry

Italian poetry from Carducci to the present. Readings from Saba, Montale, Ungaretti, Zanzotto.

597C Calvino

Explores the wide range of the fiction of Italo Calvino, one of the most acclaimed and inventive European writers of the second half of the 20th century. Calvino's vision of modern man and of the dilemma of the individual in relation to society, and the role of the ficiton-writer as both social conscience and social critic. Taught in English; all texts available in English. Italian majors and minors encouraged to read some of the works in Italian.

597S Medieval and Renaissance Siena
(1st sem)

Interdisciplinary study of the city of Siena, its history and culture, from 1200 to the end of the Sienese Republic in the mid-16th century. Topics include Dante's Siena in the Commedia; literary and artistic achievements; urban and religious architecture; trade and the origins of European banking; contrade and the Palio; "civic religion" and its monuments; the Black Death of 1348; public and private piety and excess; Siena's humanist Pope; St. Catherine and the cult of holy women; the 16th-century "academies"; Siena under the dominion of Florence and of Spain. Slides, videos, and substantial individual projects. Taught in English.

Italian Studies | Courses | French & Italian Faculty