Fall 2021

**ALL COURSES ARE IN-PERSON**

ITAL-GA 2389: Tra Parole e immagini: poeti e artisti nel Rinascimento

This is a 7-week course:  November 2 - December 14

*2 credits*

Professor Lina Bolzoni, Global Distinguished Professor
Tuesdays, 12:30-3:30pm

Location: Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò

Una lunga tradizione esaltava la superiorità della parola sull’immagine e assegnava al poeta una superiorità, intellettuale e sociale, rispetto agli artisti. Nel Rinascimento questa gerarchia viene corrosa, va gradualmente in crisi. Non solo si affermano artisti come Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Michelangelo, Tiziano, ma l’immagine acquista via via più potere, più forza e si creano anche forti amicizie e collaborazioni fra poeti e artisti. Il seminario  analizzerà alcuni momenti di questa trasformazione, di grande importanza anche per il mondo moderno. Si leggeranno i testi che affermano la superiorità della parola (ad esempio Pietro Bembo, introduzione al III libro delle Prose della volgar lingua). Si vedranno poi esempi di artisti che sono anche scrittori:  è il caso di Leonardo da Vinci, o di Michelangelo poeta. Si studierà il formarsi, nella Roma di Leone X, del mito letterario di Raffaello, e si leggeranno i bellissimi testi che i poeti scrivono quando muore d’improvviso, giovane, bello, al culmine della sua fortuna. Si vedranno poi i testi poetici che si ispirano al ritratto e che, a partire dai due sonetti di Petrarca per il ritratto di Laura di Simone Martini, conoscono una grande fortuna.

ITAL-GA 2311: Divine Comedy: Purgatorio

Prof. Maria Luisa Ardizzone

Tuesdays, 3:30-6:30

Location: Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò

Purgatorio is the second section 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 afterlife 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 evil and the punishment that God’s justice inflicts upon the sinners. Hell is the place of eternal damnation. Purgatory, by contrast, is the place in which human beings are purged of their sins and become pure, thereby able to enter Paradise, which
the Comedy describes as the place of eternal happiness. The course considers Purgatorio not just as the place of pain and expiation but also as the place of rebirth. Purgatory introduces a new epic which sings of the human soul’s regeneration as a natural power activated by contrition and conversion. Love, here conceived as the seed of every virtue and of every vice, is the moving force of the ascent toward the happiness of the Earthly Paradise. The way in which such regenerative process takes place will be addressed and discussed during the semester. Course conducted in English.

HIST-GA 1191 / ITAL-GA 1981: War and Cinema

Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Wednesdays, 9:30am-12:30pm

Location: King Juan Carlos Center/Washington Square South

This course investigates the relationship of cinema and war around the world from the early 20th century to the present. Film has been integral to shaping public consciousness of military events as they unfold and the memory of those events. The course looks at government propaganda, commercial entertainment films and independent documentaries. Topics to be addressed include representations of ally and enemy; the aestheticization of violence and war as spectacle; the role of sound; and who counts as a combatant. This is a class on the history of war, and the history of cinema; no prior knowledge of either field is assumed.

ITAL-GA 2895: Film and Urban Space in Italy

Prof. David Forgacs

Thursdays, 1-4pm

Location: Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò

This graduate-level course investigates the relationship between the media and technologies of film and video, on the one hand, and city space on the other, with particular reference to Italian cities. What happens when the static or mobile camera meets the built environment, when it moves in, around or above buildings, when editing cuts and splices the city into “views”, when the flat rectangular screen frames three-dimensional space? How do films harness urban space to their narrative projects? How do they draw on and reorganize the pre-existing historical and social meanings of urban places? How are different elements of the urban environment photographed and manipulated? How does sound interact with images in films and video about urban space? In what ways can film and video serve as documents of urban space or act as agents of change in debates about uses of the city? Analysis of the films will be supported by reading on space in cinema and on Italian cities. As well as looking at physical space we will pay attention to social space (e.g. centre versus periphery, commercial versus residential districts, space constructed by individuals through movement and activity) and to historical stratifications and changes within filmed cities (traces of the past, rebuilding, new developments).

ITAL-GA 2891 Guided Individual Reading

*2 or 4 credits*
Taught by Italian Studies Faculty

This is an opportunity to explore a topic in further depth, a topic not offered by our course schedule, or to work with a faculty member who is a specialist on a particular topic. This is for Italian Studies graduate students only and you must contact the department administrator for permission to register for the course.

For questions or concerns about the Italian Studies curriculum, please contact:  Ara Merjian, Director of Graduate Studies at merjian@nyu.edu -or- Anne Wolff, Department Administrator at AL4845@nyu.edu.