Spring 2023 Graduate Courses

ITAL-GA 2311 Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatorio
 
Thursdays 3:30-6:15 p.m.

Professor Maria Luisa Ardizzone
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

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.

ITAL-GA 1560 The Politics of History in the Renaissance

Tuesdays, 3:30-6:15 p.m.

Professor Karl Appuhn
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

Historians of the Italian Renaissance have long argued that one of the signal developments of the late Renaissance period was the emergence of modern forms of historical writing and thinking. This historiographical tradition argues that a small group of (mostly Florentine) thinkers broke away from the medieval chronicle tradition as well as the imitative constraints of humanism to invent a new way of thinking about the past and its relationship to the present. In so doing, the argument goes, these thinkers not only established new norms of historical thinking, but also mobilized history as a tool for making prescriptive judgements in the realm of politics. This course will evaluate these claims through close readings of three of the most important authors in this new tradition—Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Botero. In the first part of the course we will look at some key texts in the Chronicle and Humanist traditions. In the second part we will look at Machiavelli and Guicciardini’s efforts to invent a new way of writing about the past (both recent and distant) and in the last part of the class we will see how they, joined by Botero, translated history into prescriptive political theory.

ITAL-GA 1050 Publication Workshop

Mondays 12:30-3:15 p.m.

Professor Eugenio Refini
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Room 306

This course combines elements of a substantive course and of professionalization and training in research and scholarly writing. It takes as its object a particular text, artwork or set of texts/artworks; and it engages students in a structured manner in the processes of research, analysis, writing, and revision necessary to produce publishable research on the subject. The Spring 2023 iteration of the course will be devoted to the intersections of literary, artistic, and musical cultures of the Baroque. Students will study seventeenth-century works relevant to the reception of the classical myth of Ariadne. By exploring a variety of manuscript and printed sources, they will have a chance to take active part in Professor Refini’s current research project, which will lead to two distinct yet interconnected outcomes: (1) online publication of a catalogue raisonné of the materials relevant to the project, including lyrics, music, iconography; (2) participation in the planning and production of an academic event and workshop to be hosted by Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. Given the interdisciplinary nature of this class, students with different interests (textual studies, music, performance, figurative arts, etc.) will be able to focus on materials relevant to their expertise. No prerequisites needed.

ITAL-GA 2389 The Misadventures of Engagement: an Introduction to the Civil Commitment of Writers in Italy, From Alessandro Manzoni to Roberto Saviano

Wednesdays, 12:30-3:15 p.m.; 2-credit course; begins 3/21/23

Professor Filippo La Porta
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Room 306

Over the past two decades, with the decline of the Postmodernism and the "return to reality", writers seem to be returning to some form of engagement. This course focuses on the “engagement” or the civil commitment of writers, with specific reference to Italian authors. An historical background (from Manzoni to Saviano) will be offered, followed by a reflection on the countless variations of commitment, and (preliminary) conclusions (we will discuss how a writer’s commitment is first of all addressed to writing, caring for the word, while his civil commitment belongs more to other spheres of existence).

We will start from a clarification of the concepts that will be used: What is "commitment"? What is "literature"? Who is an "intellectual"? etc., through discussion and short written assignments to be done in the classroom. The students will acquire critical and analytical skills.The final paper will be about the question of how to interpret the idea of commitment today. During the course, the students will be asked to present their critical analysis of texts in the bibliography. Books or excerpts will be provided.

ITAL-GA 1981.001 Studies in Italian Culture: World War II

Wednesdays 9:30am-12:15p.m.

Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat
King Juan Carlos Center, Room 607

This course examines the Second World War in a global framework. We look at the social, cultural, military, and political contexts of the war from many national perspectives, from its pre-history in Asia, to Fascist aggressions in Europe that caused mass mobilizations, to the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan that led to its end.

ITAL-GA 1981.002 Studies in Italian Culture: Italian Feminism: Theory, Literature, Social Practice

Mondays, 3:30-6:15 p.m.

Visiting Professor Joseph Perna
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

Just over fifty years ago, a series of collectively-authored texts began to proliferate in Italy: Manifesto programmatico del gruppo Demau, Autoritratto, Manifesto di Rivolta Femminile, Wages Against Housework. Insisting upon a new genealogy of cultural critique, philosophy, and experience, these texts elaborated a method of feminist thought that has only become more urgent (and more generative) over the subsequent decades. 

This course examines Italian feminism and the major debates it has informed across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We’ll take a mimetic approach to this body of work, engaging sexual difference and affidamento as social practices that can reorganize reading and writing. Authors will include Carla Lonzi, Teresa de Laurentis, the Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Silvia Federici, Adriana Cavarero, Luisa Muraro, Elsa Morante, Elena Ferrante, and Fleur Jaeggy.

ITAL-GA 1981.003 The Politics of Space between Surrealism and Fascism: The Case of Giorgio de Chirico

Wednesdays, 3:30-6:15 p.m.

Professor Ara Merjian
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)

How can painting lend visual form to philosophical concepts – not as mere illustration, but as a practice and performance of philosophical thought? How may singular figurations – of myth, of reverie, of play, of non-sense – shape disparate ideological projects? How did avowedly apolitical images help shape some of the most politically charged images and spaces of the twentieth-century? What sorts of cultural and aesthetic tropes did Surrealism and fascism – as respective interpretations of modernity, however ostensibly inimical – share?

The interdisciplinary approach of this course welcomes not only individuals with art history backgrounds, but also those interested in urban and architectural history, literary studies and philosophy, classics, architectural history, as well as those interested in twentieth-century French and Italian modernism at large. Students will be encouraged to link their research papers to their relevant interests, whether in philosophy, literature, art history, architecture, theater studies, etc.; and/or related movements and tendencies with which de Chirico’s work was contiguous.

ITAL-GA 3030 Research Preparation in Italian Studies

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3:30-4:45 p.m.

Professor David Forgacs
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Room 306

Course description TBA.