ITAL-UA 30 Advanced Review of Modern Italian
Section 001 - TWR 11:00am-12:15pm
Section 002 - TWR 2:00pm-3:15pm
Anderson-Tirro
Taught in Italian
Prerequisite: Intermediate Italian II (ITAL-UA 12), or Intensive Intermediate Italian (ITAL-UA 20), or placement exam.
This course is a prerequisite for other advanced courses in language, literature, and culture and society. Systematizes and reinforces the language skills presented in earlier-level courses through an intensive review of grammar and composition, lexical enrichment, improvement of speaking ability, and selected readings from contemporary Italian literature.
ITAL-UA 107 Italian through Cinema
TWR 11:00am-12:15pm
Taught in Italian
Prerequisite: Advanced Review of Modern Italian (ITAL-UA 30) or permission of the instructor.
Students entering this course should have mastered the fundamental structures of Italian. Aims to enrich knowledge of Italian language, culture, and society through screening and discussion of contemporary Italian cinema and detailed analysis of selected film scripts. Students are encouraged to use different idiomatic expressions and recognize regional linguistic variety. Special emphasis is placed on developing a more extensive vocabulary and an expressive range suited to discussion of complex issues and their representation.
ITAL-UA 108 Italian though Opera
TWR 11am-12:15pm
Scarcella Perino
Taught in Italian
Prerequisite: Advanced Review of Modern Italian (ITAL-UA 30) or permission of the instructor.
This course is designed to help students increase their understanding of the Italian language and their effectiveness in spoken Italian through exposure to famous Italian operas and to opera culture. Activities spurred directly by primary sources (reading of librettos, listening of arias) will be supplemented with critical materials on reception and on current performances. With the help of opera adaptations, recreations, popularizations, quotes, etc, operatic plots and settings will be linked thematically to present day issues, leading to discussion on contemporary social and cultural perspectives. Opera’s unique mixture of word, gesture, and music will offer students a great opportunity to internalize the language and acquire fluency.
ITAL-UA 110 Translation
TWR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Marchelli
Taught in Italian
Prerequisites: Advanced Review of Modern Italian (ITAL-UA 30) and one of the following: ITAL-UA 101, ITAL-UA 103, ITAL-UA 105, or ITAL-UA 107, or permission of the department. Introduces students to the theory and practice of translation. While engaging in the craft of translation firsthand, students gain a deeper understanding of the Italian language through the study of contemporary texts, such as Italian novels and short stories. The course also stresses the acquisition of vocabulary and complex idiomatic structures necessary for effective reading comprehension, as well as written expression. A special emphasis is on the analysis of dialogue, style, and linguistic choices of each author, in order to explore the development of the written language, slang, regional expressions, and linguistic differences that have accompanied and defined the evolution of Italian over the past 20 years.
ITAL-UA 116 Readings in Modern Italian Literature
(same as COLIT-UA 141)
MW 9:30-10:45am
Lucchi
Taught in Italian
Sample Syllabus
Introductory-level literature course that, through a close reading of authors such as Alfieri, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Verga, D'Annunzio, Moravia, and Calvino, focuses on how to understand a literary text in Italian. Covers Italian literature from the 18th century to the contemporary period.
ITAL-UA 147 Machiavelli
(same as MEDI-147)
TR 2:00pm-3:15pm
Albertini
The inventor of modern political science, Niccolò Machiavelli is one of the most original thinkers in the history of Western civilization. In this course, Machiavelli's political, historical, and theatrical works are read in the context in which they were conceived—the much tormented and exciting Florence of the 15th and early 16th centuries, struggling between republican rule and the magnificent tyranny of the Medici family.
ITAL-UA 160 Dante and His World
(same as COLIT-UA 173, ENGL-UA 143 and MEDI-UA 801)
MW 12:30pm-1:45pm
Ardizzone
Interdisciplinary introduction to late medieval culture, using Dante, its foremost literary artist, as a focus. Attention is directed to literature, art, and music, in addition to political, religious, and social developments of the time. Emphasizes the continuity of the Western tradition, its intellectual history, especially the classical background of medieval culture and its transmission to the modern world.
Readings include selections from Dante’s works as The New Life, The Divine Comedy, The Monarchy along with texts by St. Augustine, Severinus Boethius, St. Francis , Brunetto Latini, Thomas Aquinas, Boccaccio. Works of vernacular poets of 13th century and artists from Romanesque to Gothic will be considered. The course will be given in English.
ITAL-UA 173 Visions on and of Mafia
MW 2:00-3:15PM
Montalbano
From its local origins in Sicily, the Mafia has become a global phenomenon and a widespread model of organized crime that threatens and corrupts the international economy, political systems, and social environments. Though its power and underworld affect legal business, control illegal traffic, and trample human rights, nevertheless film, television, and literature stimulate a continued fascination with a romantic and even heroic vision of the Mafia. In this seminar we will explore and compare American and Italian films on the Mafia and the literary texts upon which many of them are based from the late 1940s to today. Combining the analyses of historians, sociologists, and intellectuals, along with the testimonies of victims, we will not only challenge the stereotypes through which cultural productions envision the Mafiosi but also, and more importantly, we will shift the inquiry to how the Mafiosi envision the world by asking: What is the ideology of Mafia? How do Mafiosi picture society, human beings, and law? Does Mafia have its own ethic? How does a religious imaginary shape a Mafia worldview? How does Mafia’s normative discourse govern the performance of femininity, masculinity, and homosexuality? Can we consider Mafia to be terrorism? Examining together the visions on and of Mafia through cultural, socio-political, and historical perspectives, this seminar aims to deconstruct the mythological eye and instead form an analytical eye with which to investigate and understand the Mafioso universe and power.
ITAL-UA 175 Italian Films, Italian Histories II
(same as HIST-UA 176, CINE-UT 235, DRLIT-UA 506)
M 11:00am-12:15pm; W 11:00am-1:45pm
Ben-Ghiat
Studies representations of Italian history from the unification of Italy to the present through the medium of film. We explore the possibilities and limitations of feature films for the representation of history, and ask: What happens when history becomes cinema and when cinema takes on history?
ITAL-UA 274 Pirandello and the Contemporary Theatre
(same as DRLIT-UA 280)
TR 9:30am-10:45am
Oliver
An introduction to Luigi Pirandello's major plays as they relate to the foundation of contemporary theatre. Attention is also paid to grotesque and futurist drama. Works studied include Sei personaggio in cerca d'autore, Cosi è (se vi pare), and Enrico IV.
ITAL-UA 724 Italian-American Life in Literature
(same as ENGL-UA 724)
TR 11am-12:15pm
Hendin
A study of the fiction and poetry through which Italian American writers have expressed their heritage and their engagement in American life. From narratives of immigration to current work by "assimilated" writers, the course explores the depiction of Italian American identity. Challenging stereotypes, it explores changing family relationships, sexual mores, and political and social concerns.
ITAL-UA 760-001 Giordano Bruno & the Art of Memory
(same as MEDI-UA 760-001)
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm
Cipani
The Art of Memory reached a peak of refinement and complexity during the Italian Renaissance. Far more than a mere tool for passive retention of information: memory devices had the ambition to assist in the structuring of thought, the organization of knowledge, the solving of philosophical questions, and were intended also as tools for creative output. This course examines the impact of the pervasive culture of memory on the literary production of the time, highlighting the interdependence between textual and visual codes. A main focus will be on the heretic philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno, burnt at stake by the Roman Inquisition in 1600, who conceived his imposing mnemonic system as an inner mirror of the infinite universe and of nature's creative principles. Sampling the varied textual genres of Bruno's work (philosophical dialogues, writings on magic, a satirical comedy), one of the questions this course aims to answer is the same posed to Bruno by Henry III King of France: is the Art of Memory acquired "by magic" or "by science"?
ITAL-UA 760-002 Humanism in the Renaissance
(same as MEDI-UA 760-002)
MW 11:00am-12:15pm
Freccero