ITAL B001  BEGINNING ITALIAN I  (1.0 Credit)

Tommaso Ghezzani

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course provides a solid introduction to the Italian language and culture. It is intended for students with no previous knowledge of Italian and aims at giving them a complete foundation in Italian grammar and pronunciation, with particular attention to listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills. Students refine communicative and cross-cultural comparison abilities by completing tasks such as role-plays, music projects, and creative compositions, in pairs and/or small groups, to stimulate dialogue and create a dynamic and vibrant learning environment. Classes are student-centered and designed to foster students' language skills, keeping in mind their different ways of learning. The course is based on five weekly 50-minute sessions: four sessions with the instructor and one with a TA, to work on written and oral assignments and hone language communicative skills. This course promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion by adopting a free OER textbook.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B002  BEGINNING ITALIAN II  (1.0 Credit)

Tommaso Ghezzani

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course is the continuation of ITAL001 and is intended for students who started studying Italian the semester before. It aims at making students be able to: (1) speak and write in Italian at an elementary level; (2) effectively communicate with other Italian-speaking people by giving advice, expressing desires, and sharing their opinions; (3) produce authentic works in Italian such as audio messages, social media posts, songs, etc.; (4) understand and comment on aspects of Italian culture in the target language; (5) refine intercultural communication skills. Classes are student-centered and designed to foster students' language skills, keeping in mind their different ways of learning. The course is based on five weekly 50-minute sessions: four sessions with the instructor and one with a TA, to work on written and oral assignments and hone language communicative skills. This course promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion by adopting a free OER textbook. Prerequisite: ITAL B001 or placement.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

ITAL B101  INTERMEDIATE ITALIAN THROUGH CULTURE I  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course is the first half of a two-semester sequence and provides students with a broader basis for learning to communicate effectively, accurately, and comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. This course builds on the students' existing skills in Italian, increases their confidence and their ability to read, write, speak, understand the language, and introduces them to more refined lexical terms, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. While the principal aspect of the course is to further develop language abilities, the course also imparts a foundation for the understanding of modern and contemporary Italy. Students will be exposed to newspaper and magazine articles, literary and cinematic texts, Italian songs and internet materials which will facilitate a transition towards content courses. By the end of the first semester, students will have gained an appreciation for many aspects of Italian culture in its broad spectrum and will be able to communicate orally and in writing about a wide variety of topics.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B102  INTERMEDIATE ITALIAN THROUGH CULTURE II  (1.0 Credit)

Giulio Genovese

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course is the second half of a two-semester sequence designed to help students attain a level of proficiency to communicate effectively and accurately in Italian. This course builds on the students' existing skills in Italian, increases their confidence and their ability to read, write, speak, and understand the language, and introduces them to more refined lexical terms, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. While the principal aspect of the course is to further develop language abilities, the course also imparts a foundation for the understanding of modern and contemporary Italy. Practice is given in all four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and students will conduct a collaborative reading of an Italian novel in order to analyze aspects of the Italian culture. By the end of the second semester, students will have reached full command of all the most advanced and sophisticated structures of the language, will have gained an appreciation for Italian culture and will be able to communicate orally and in writing about a wide variety of topics. Prerequisite: ITAL B101 or placement.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

ITAL B200  PATHWAYS TO PROFICIENCY  (1.0 Credit)

Division: Humanities

This is a language and culture course designed to offer advanced students of Italian the opportunity to strengthen their writing skills and conversational fluency. Throughout the semester, students will explore Italy’s literature, cinema, history, and contemporary culture. Problems relating to syntax, morphology, and vocabulary will be addressed as they arise from compositions and selected reading passages. Grammar review will be contextualized to support the principal focus of the course, which is vocabulary building, written and oral skills straightening, and intercultural competency. This course is arranged thematically with units focused on issues such as LGBTQIA+ rights, changing standards of femininity and masculinity, race, migration, and disability. Each week students will explore the theme of the unit through different media: films, newspaper and magazine articles, novels, poems, songs, YouTube videos, blogs, etc. Prerequisite: ITAL102 or placement.

ITAL B201  PROBLEMATICHE DI OGGI: CONVERSARE INSIEME/ITALY TODAY  (0.5 Credit)

Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

Do patriarchal societies still exist today? Who are the neo-fascists? What does it mean to be a woman, an immigrant, or a queer person in the land of ultra-traditionalism, of the Pope, and the Camorra? Which Italian are we speaking in Italy? This course will explore these questions through a variety of materials in Italian: stories, TV shows, poems, newspaper articles, public art, essays, videos, and songs. We will deal with issues of identity, gender violence, historical memory, politics, and patriarchy. We will immerse ourselves in the culture of patriarchal contemporary Italy through key-themes: conversando insieme. Prerequisite: ITAL 102, or equivalent.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B207  FROM HELL TO HEAVEN: DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Division: Humanities

This course offers the opportunity to read in its entirety Dante's Divine Comedy, one of the greatest masterpieces of world literatures, as well as some other Dantean works like La Vita Nuova and Il Convivio. We will follow Dante on his journey through the three realms of his vision of the afterlife: the descent into Hell, the climb up the mountain of Purgatory, and the final ascent to Paradise. Dante's masterpiece lends itself to study from various perspectives: literary, allegorical, cultural, historical, political, philosophical, and theological. Some of the themes that will frame our discussions are personal journey and civic responsibilities, human passions and gender, governmental accountability and church-state relations. The course is taught in English and is accessible also to students without a background in Medieval literature and with no knowledge of Italian. Students who are interested to take this course towards a minor or a major in Italian will complete their assignments in the target language, having this class count as a 200-level course in Italian.

ITAL B213  THEORY IN PRACTICE: CRITICAL DISCOURSES IN THE HUMANITIES  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

Division: Humanities
Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Renaissance treatises and paintings to stories written under fascism and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

ITAL B218  EARLY-MODERN INTERSECTIONS: A NEW ITALIAN RENAISSANCE  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

The period or movement commonly referred to as the Renaissance remains one of the great iconic moments of global history: a time of remarkable innovation within artistic and intellectual culture, and a period still widely regarded as the crucible of modernity. Although lacking a political unity and being constantly colonized by European Empires, Italy was the original heartland of the Renaissance, and home to some of its most powerful and enduring figures, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo in art, Petrarch and Ariosto in literature, Machiavelli in political thought. This course provides an overview of transnational Italian culture from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century by adopting a cross-cultural, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary approach. The course places otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins, with the main aim to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, courtly culture, the canonization of the language), not only from the point of view of its protagonists but also through the eyes of its non-male, non-white, non-Christian, and non-heterosexual witnesses. The course ultimately challenges traditional accounts of the Italian Renaissance by crossing also disciplinary boundaries, since it examines not only literary, artistic, and intellectual history, but also material culture, cartography, science, technology, and history of food and fashion.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B221  WHAT IS AESTHETICS? THEORIES ON ART, IMAGINATION, AND POETRY  (1.0 Credit)

Tommaso Ghezzani

Domain(s): A: Meaning, Interpretation (Texts)

This course investigates how global thinkers, poets, and artists reflected in their works on the roles and powers of art, poetry, and human creativity. The course approaches this theme through a cross-cultural and trans-historical approach, which encompasses the Italian Humanism, which argued for the first time for the importance of aesthetic knowledge, as well as the Age of Enlightenment, which founded ‘aesthetics’ as a specific scientific discipline. Readings from these writers will show how artistic products, human imagination, and poetry are not just light-hearted activities but powerful cognitive tools which can reveal aspects of human history. If the human being is deemed to be a combination of reason and feeling – soul and body – art and poetry, which border both the rational and irrational realms, appear the most appropriate scientific tool to reveal the human essence and its destiny. The discussion will focus on pivotal global writers and philosophers such as Giambattista Vico and Giacomo Leopardi, who pioneered aesthetic, historical, literary, and anthropological ideas which are still crucial in the current theoretical debate on arts and poetry. All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B233  TRANSLATING ITALIAN: A WORKSHOP  (1.0 Credit)

Staff

This course fosters students’ translating skills on a variety of literary, scientific, journalist, and cinematic texts, which focus on issues of gender and sexuality, race, migration, and disability. In addition, it offers a review and a comparative study of Italian and English grammars, syntaxes, and styles. During the semester students will acquire technical skills and understand the difficulties and complexities of translation. They will question the role culture plays in translation, how authors and their translators negotiate the meaning, and the limits and consequences of inaccurate translations. In addition to refining their vocabulary, students will strengthen their reading and writing skills in Italian. This course is taught in Italian. Prerequisite: ITAL 102 or permission from the instructor. Prerequisite: ITAL 102 or permission of instructor.

ITAL B238  ITALY ON SCREEN: A JOURNEY THROUGH ITALIAN CINEMA  (1.0 Credit)

Giulio Genovese

This course will introduce students to contemporary Italian history and culture by viewing and discussing those films produced in Italy that most reflect the diversity of its nation and society, from the Unification to today. Group work, in-class discussions, and academic readings will foster students’ visual analysis, cross-cultural reflection, and critical thinking skills on topics such as organized crime, gender inequality, masculinity, racial and ethnic discrimination, migration, mental disability, and queer identities. Students will familiarize themselves with renowned directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Marco Tullio Giordana, in addition to acquiring an interdisciplinary understanding of Italian cinema. Taught in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit. Cross-listed with Film Studies.

ITAL B302  ITALO CALVINO TRANSNATIONAL WRITER  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

Italo Calvino is one of the best-known Italian writers in the world - but in addition to being the author of numerous novels and short stories, Calvino was a translator, and editor and – perhaps most importantly – a reader. His activity provides us with a window into the Italian editorial landscape and its connection with foreign literary markets and traditions. Analyzing Calvino’s letters to his colleagues at the publishing house Einaudi, his famous risvolti, introductions, and book reviews, we will reflect on the journey of texts from their selection and translation, to their publication, to their promotion and reception. We will discuss books as complex and stratified objects, reflecting on how editorial choices shape the reception and interpretation of a text. In exploring Calvino’s engagement with other people’s books, we will focus on the international dimension of his work, his personal and professional connections with France - where he lived for several years - with South America, Russia, and the United States. Such an emphasis on Calvino as a transnational reader and writer reflects and illuminates the peculiarity of the Italian editorial and literary ecosystem, in which translation has a central role.

ITAL B303  BOCCACCIO, THE PLAGUE, AND EPIDEMIC ILLNESS: LITERATURE AND MEDICINE  (1.0 Credit)

Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

What are the responses to human suffering during outbreaks of epidemic illness? How can literature be a valuable tool for plague prevention in time of pestilence? This class explores crucial questions on how narrative works in medical contexts, with a focus on the Decameron and the black plague of 1348. Giovanni Boccaccio is the first writer to unite the literary topos of narration during a life-threatening situation with an historical epidemic context in Medieval Italy. How does he tell his stories in time of illness and death? How do writers and other storytellers respond to dominant versions of health and medicine? Taught in Italian.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

ITAL B316  MOUNTAINEERING HEROES: MASCULINITY AND NATION-BUILDING  (1.0 Credit)

Narration is an intrinsic component of the practice of mountaineering: ascents are conducted in isolation and need to be documented in order to be validated. In the 20th century, with the professionalization of this practice, mountaineering narratives became widespread across a broad range of genres and platforms – from the memoirs of illustrious alpinists to novels and short stories, to propaganda material and articles in popular magazines. In this course, we will focus on Italian mountaineering heroes, exploring how their construction and evolution was shaped by models of masculinity and (less frequently) of womanhood, colonialism and nation-building ideals, and by shifting understandings of the relationship between humans and the environment. We will discus the symbolical and political role of alpine ascents in the Italian unification and in the first world war. We will study Fascist alpinists and the legacy of Fascist, individualist and white supremacist rhetoric in today’s mountaineering narratives. At the same time, however, we will encounter groups of alpinists and climbers who challenged this rhetoric, seeking to reframe ascents as play, rather than conquest, influenced by youth movements and the novel American alpinism.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have to option of attending an additional hour of class taught in Italian or in Russian

ITAL B320  NOVEL, HISTORY, AND THE MAKING OF ITALY: ALESSANDRO MANZONI AND THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT  (1.0 Credit)

Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

This course deals with 19th century Italian poetry and literary movement for Italian unification inspired by the realities of the new economic and political forces at work after 1815. As a manifestation of the nationalism sweeping over Europe during the nineteenth century, the Risorgimento aimed to unite Italy under one flag and one government. For many Italians, however, Risorgimento meant more than political unity. It described a movement for the renewal of Italian society and people beyond purely political aims. Among Italian patriots the common denominator was a desire for freedom from foreign control, liberalism, and constitutionalism. The course will discuss issues such as Enlightenment, Romanticism, Nationalism, and the complex relationship between history and literature in Alessandro's Manzoni classic novel The Betrothed. This course is taught in Italian. Prerequisite: one 200 level Italian course.

ITAL B324  DIVERSITY, GENDER, AND QUEERNESS IN MODERN ITALIAN POETRY  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli

This course offers an overview of one of the great literary traditions of post-unification Italy: that of modern and contemporary poetry. Our readings will center mostly on some major protagonists of this genre, like the Nobel prize-winning Eugenio Montale, Umberto Saba, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, but we will also look at a series of much lesser-known works by female, queer and transgender poets, like Sandro Penna, Amelia Rosselli, and Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto, who negotiated their own voices within this tradition. While thinking, discussing and writing in Italian, we will examine poetic texts in the original and with a specific focus on the representation of religious and racial “otherness”, the language of expression, and gender perspectives. Our authors and texts will be contextualized in their historical and social background, in order to have an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of Italy’s 20th-21st century cultural life and gain insight on Italian Modernity as a whole. Elements of metrics and rhetoric will be used and explained in order to analyze poetry in its own essence.

ITAL B326  LOVE, MAGIC, AND MEDICINE: POETICAL-PHILOSOPHICAL BONDS  (1.0 Credit)

Tommaso Ghezzani

The course investigates how the concepts of love, magic, and medicine emerged and developed throughout early modernity and beyond. In exploring the fields of Philosophy, Medicine, and Magic, global thinkers, poets, and artists drew not only from classical sources, but were also deeply influenced by a wide range of models, such as fictional ancient sources, Islamic philosophy, and the Jewish Kabbalah. In this interesting syncretism, love was considered as an inspiration experienced by the entire universe, and magical practice was understood as a philosophy in action, which had the power to establish a bond of a loving nature between the different realms of reality. Magicians were therefore conceived as wise philosophers capable of joining this network of correspondences and controlling them (art)ificially. As a result, the figures of poets and artists interestingly merged into those of magicians of physicians, and poetry was conceived both as a magic able to arouse mental images stronger than real visions, and as a medicine able to exert a mental and physiological agency on the body. The course will approach these themes through a multi-disciplinary and trans-historical approach, which will include in the discussion a wide variety of figures, such as global early modern and modern philosophers, physicians, poets, artists, and composers.All readings and class discussion will be in English. Students will have an additional hour of class for Italian credit.

(Offered: Spring 2025)

ITAL B335  THE ITALIAN MARGINS: PLACES AND IDENTITIES  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli, Roberta Ricci

Thompson Fullilove’s scholarship will be the theoretical foundation of this survey of 20th century topics—from literary representations of mental health to the displacement of marginalized communities, from historical persecution in Europe to contemporary domestic violence in Italy. The main goal of the seminar will be to challenge the rhetoric of ‘otherness’, ‘encounters’, ‘marginalization’, ‘anti-canon’, and ‘exoticism’ that is typical of broader readings of Italy’s modern traditions, adopting Thompson Fullilove’s inter-sectional and trans-historical paradigms to re-imagine Italian Studies, to center the gender gap, and overcome the stigma of mental illness and madness. Rooted in the perspectives of trans-codification, trans-historical tradition, and cultural translation, this course attempts to address such questions both in theory and practice using Freudian literary criticism (The interpretation of Dreams, 1899; The Uncanny, 1919; Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920; The Ego and the Id, 1923; Civilization and its Discontents, 1930). We will start with a seminar, devoted to the analysis and discussion of primary sources and then follow with a scholarly (and creative) workshop. Tailored activities related to social activism (Praxis) will also fulfill the course requirements. Prerequisite: 200 level course or permission of instructor.

ITAL B380  MODERNITY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: CROSSING NATIONAL BOUNDARIES IN 20TH C. ITALY AND EUROPE  (1.0 Credit)

Luca Zipoli, Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

Designed as an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of Italy’s 20th century cultural life, the course is organized around major artistic and intellectual trends, viewed in their historical and global perspective in connection with Avant-garde literary movements and philosophical ideas: i.e. surrealism, metaphysics, Dadaism, psychoanalysis, futurism, decadence, modernism. While thinking and writing in Italian, we will examine films, novels, and poetry to gain insight on Modernity with attention also to gender perspectives. Elements of metrics and rhetoric will be used to analyze poetry in its own essence. Prerequisite: One 200-Level course in Italian.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B398  SENIOR SEMINAR  (1.0 Credit)

Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

This course is open only to seniors in Italian and in Romance Languages. Under the direction of the instructor, each student prepares a senior thesis on an author or a theme that the student has chosen. By the end of the fall semester, students must have completed an abstract and a critical annotated bibliography to be presented to the department. See Thesis description. Prerequisite: This course is open only to seniors in Italian Studies and Romance Languages with a GPA of 3.7.

(Offered: Fall 2024)

ITAL B399  SENIOR CONFERENCE  (1.0 Credit)

Roberta Ricci

Division: Humanities

Under the direction of the instructor, each student prepares a senior thesis on an author or a theme that the student has chosen. In April there will be an oral defense with members and majors of the Italian Department. See Thesis description. Prerequisite: This course is open only to seniors in Italian Studies and Romance Languages.

(Offered: Spring 2025)