Registration opens April 15, 2019 via Albert

ITAL-GA 1982 Italian Fascism

Thursdays 3:30-6:10; Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

Same as HIST-GA 1982

This course examines the Italian dictatorship. We address the relationship between culture and politics, public and private; Fascist biopolitics; anti-Fascism; fascist colonialism and racism; Fascist-era femininities and masculinities.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a historian and cultural critic. The recipient of Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other fellowships, she’s an expert on fascism, authoritarianism, war, propaganda, and Donald Trump. She writes frequently for the media on those topics and has provided podcast and on-camera political commentary for Sky News, Slate, Salon, KCRW, Democracy Now!, Al-Jazeera, and other outlets. 

ITAL-GA 2192 Ariadne's Echo: Reception and Intertextuality Across Artistic Media

Mondays 3:30-6:10; Eugenio Refini

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

Same as COLIT-GA 3918

Abandoned by Theseus, Ariadne lamenting on the shore of Naxos embodies one of the most powerful tropes in literature and the arts. The fate of the heroine who helped Theseus out of the labyrinth became itself a thread (indeed, an inexhaustible series of threads) running across the ages and populating the imagination of poets, painters, composers. After exploring in detail the classical sources that canonized Ariadne’s myth (e.g., Catullus, Ovid, Philostratus), we will turn to the reception of Ariadne in literature and music (Ludovico Ariosto, Giambattista Marino, Ottavio Rinuccini and Claudio Monteverdi, Franz Joseph Haydn, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vernon Lee, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Richard Strauss and Hugo Von Hofmannsthal). The analysis of the various case studies will focus on the rhetorical and poetical devices used by poets and composers to reenact the vocal features of Ariadne’s lament. More precisely, we will consider the ways in which the ‘acoustic’ image of the heroine’s echo conveys intertextual discourses about the dynamics of reception across artistic mediums and genres. As such, the seminar aims to illustrate the pivotal role played by the poetical – and specifically operatic – Italian tradition as a particularly productive site for the modern reverberation of Ariadne’s voice. Indeed, we will see how the Baroque appropriation of the myth in poetry and music remains active as a filter through which to cut through the layers of reception that separate modern audiences from the heroine’s prototypical lament.

ITAL-GA 2310 Dante's Inferno

Tuesdays 3:30-6:10; Maria Luisa Ardizzone

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

Same as COLIT-GA 2875 and EURO-GA 1156.001

Text: The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Inferno,. Translated by R. Hollander and J. Hollander, Notes by R. Hollander. New York: Doubleway, 2003

Inferno is the first cantica of the Divine Comedy, a very long poem traditionally judged to be one of the most important in Western culture. At the center of the poem is the human being, his condition in the after life and his punishment or reward. Taken literally, the theme is the state of the souls after the death. But allegorically, the true subject is moral life and thus the torments of the sins themselves or the enjoyment of a happy and saintly life. In the Inferno Dante represents the passions and vices of the human beings and the punishment that God’s justice inflicts upon the sinners. Hell is the place of eternal damnation. The course will provide a fresh approach to the Inferno with a focus on the problem of evil as represented in the Poem. We will investigate Dante’s dramatization of the ontology of human beings and their inclination to materiality and materialism, which the poet considers the source of evil. The course includes an introduction to Dante’s first work, the Vita Nuova, and a reading of sections of his treatises: On Vernacular Speech, Convivio, and Monarchia. The requirements of the course are as follows: active class participation, 3 response papers (3 pages), a mid-semester and final oral presentation, and a final paper 20 to 25 pages in length.  All readings will be available as photocopies. French or Latin texts will be translated.

The course grade will be broken down as follows: class participation 10%; response papers 15%(x3) ; oral presentation 15%; paper 30%. All paper topics must be discussed with me before active research and writing begins. The course will be conducted in English. 

Open to qualified undergraduates with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Contact elisa.fox@nyu.edu for department consent. Please include your N# in the email.

ITAL-GA 2891.003 Guided Individual Reading

Time: TBA

Alison Cornish

*Replacement for ITAL-GA 3020 Exam Prep. Requires Department Consent to register. Contact Anne Wolff (al4845@nyu.edu) to register.*