Advanced Language Courses

Advanced Review of Modern Italian (ITAL-UA 30)

Section 1: MW + A 11:00-12:15

Section 2: TRF 12:30-1:45

Conversations in Italian (ITAL-UA 101)

Section 1: TRF 11:00-12:15

Most courses can count toward the "Culture & Society" or "Literature" component of the Italian Studies major/minor, Romance Languages major, and Italian and Linguistic major. Contact italian.undergraduate@nyu.edu if you are unsure what requirements a course fulfills.

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

ITAL-UA 116 Readings in Modern Italian

Mondays & Wednesdays 12:30-1:45; Professor Elena Ducci

Introductory-level literature course that, through a close reading of authors such as Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, Verga, Deledda, Ortese, Calvino, Morante and Ferrante, focuses on how to understand a literary text in Italian. Covers Italian literature from the 18th century to the contemporary period.

Conducted in Italian

ITAL-UA 140 Traduttore-Traditore

Wednesdays 9:30-10:45; Professor Gianna Albaum

This 2-credit course offers an opportunity for students of Dante’s Divine Comedy (UA 270) who know Italian to read, discuss, decipher, memorize and work with the original Italian text in a number of creative ways aimed at improving comprehension and expressive skills while becoming deeply familiar with a great classic.

*Note: This is a 2-credit course.*

Prerequisite: Intermediate Italian; Students must be enrolled in ITAL-UA 270

Email Italian.undergraduate@nyu.edu for a permission code to enroll.

ITAL-UA 155 Francesco Petrarca: Rime

Mondays & Wednesdays 2-3:15; Professor Maria Luisa Ardizzone

Petrarch is one of the greatest Italian and European poets. His achievements in lyric poetry has made him the most acclaimed and imitated poet of Europe during the Renaissance and a model for lyrical poetry for centuries. He has been one of the early humanists. The course proposes a reading of his, Rime and of other works. We focus on the Canzoniere as the work that re-invents the way to write poetry using classical and medieval sources. The course offers the student the opportunity to gain a perspective on classicality, on medieval tradition, and on the genesis of humanism. This class will be taught in English.

ITAL-UA 171 Poesia, Magia, Arte nel Rinascimento

12:30-1:45 Mondays and Wednesdays; Professor Lina Bolzoni

Note: This is a 7-week course from October 27th-December 14th

Poesia, magia, arte, sono tre aspetti essenziali della cultura del Rinascimento. Il seminario mostrerà come questi tre aspetti siano legati fra di loro, in modo affascinante, dal tema dell’amore. Ci sarà una introduzione dedicata al modo in cui, da Petrarca fino al pieno Cinquecento, viene costruito il mito del Rinascimento, basato sul grande tema della rinascita, del ritorno al mondo classico. Si leggeranno poi poesie d’amore, con particolare attenzione alle poesie scritte da donne.Il tema della magia sarà trattato sotto due aspetti:

1. La nuova figura del mago, il sapiente che conosce i segreti della natura, che può penetrare nell’animo altrui e controllare le passioni

2. I rapporti tra magia e poesia: le figure delle maghe nei poemi cavallereschi, la maga Circe in Giordano Bruno, la poesia ‘magica’ di Tommaso Campanella

Infine si leggeranno testi che mostrano i rapporti nuovi che si creano tra poeti e artisti, come ad esempio alcune delle poesie dedicate ai ritratti e le poesie in cui Michelangelo paragona l’opera d’arte con l’amore.

Conducted in Italian.

ITAL-UA 173 Italian Narcofictions

Mondays & Wednesdays 3:30-4:45; Professor Gianna Albaum

"Look at the cocaine, you‘ll see the powder," writes investigative journalist Roberto Saviano. "Look through the cocaine, you‘ll see the world." This course explores the world of drugs and organized crime through the lens of Italian literature and film. We will start from the Hollywood myth of the Italian gangster and examine a range of works including crime fiction, addiction diaries, narco-dramas, and investigative journalism. Drugs, far from a deviant phenomenon, are a driving force in the global economy, and offer a way of thinking about many of the dynamics that structure contemporary Italy, including migration, political corruption, inequality, waste, the global south, and ecological crisis.

Course readings will include works by Saviano, Tondelli, Camilleri, Segre, and Wu Ming. We will also examine a number of contemporary Italian and Italian-American films, including work by Coppola, Garrone, Leone, Bertolucci, and Caligari.

ITAL-UA 174 Italian Films, Italian Histories

Mondays & Wednesdays 9:30-10:45; Professor Stefano Albertini

This course explores the depiction of Italian history through cinema from ancient Rome through to the Risorgimento. Issues will include the use of film as a tool for forging national identity and an analysis of how the politics of the time in which the films were made determine their interpretation of the past. (Taught in English).

ITAL-UA 270 Dante's Divine Comedy

Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00-12:15; Professor Alison Cornish

This course is dedicated to a one-semester guided reading of the Divine Comedy in its entirety. The text will be read in facing-page translation for the benefit of those who know some Italian and those who do not. Lectures and discussion are in English. Students will learn about the historical, philosophical, and literary context of the poem as well as how to make sense of it in modern terms. Evaluation will be by means of bluebook midterm and final, testing knowledge of key terms, concepts, and passages, two short papers, and active participation in lectures and discussion.

Conducted in English

ITAL-UA 285 New Trends in 21st Century Italian Literature

Tuesdays & Thursdays 9:30-10:45; Professor Chiara Marchelli

This course will explore the contemporary Italian literary scene and its voices, movements, inspirations and internal diversity. From the “regional” literature to the literature of the new diaspora, from today’s women’s voices to the delineation of new literary trends outside the borders of Italy, this class will focus on the various, rich, complex and often contradictory scene of the 21st century Italian literature and its developing identities. We will read, compare and analyze works by contemporary and modern authors such as Michela Murgia, Amara Lakhous, Dacia Maraini, Paolo Cognetti, Melania Mazzucco, with an eye for thematic convergences, influences, personal voices and narrative styles. The selection of readings is representative of the emergence of a new literary scene that cuts across traditional categories, is strongly influenced by new trends and processes, and represents the changing intellectual, cultural and social landscape of Italy. All discussions and readings are in English, but supplementary readings in Italian will be provided for Italian majors and minors, or students who wish to complete the readings in Italian.

ITAL-UA 307 Narrating the Mediterranean

Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-1:45; Professor Amara Lakhous

The distance between the two banks of the Mediterranean, connecting Europe and Africa, is only fourteen kilometers, the length of the Strait of Gibraltar. In reality, this is false. The actual distance is much longer due to complex pasts, present and future realities of (neo)colonialism, xenophobia, violent conflict, etc. What do we have to do to reduce this distance? How can we narrate the Mediterranean today? What is the relationship between the past, present and future? What are the connections between colonialism, (de)colonization, and immigration? The course aims to teach students how (post)colonialism, immigration and conflict have influenced past and current sociopolitical contexts of the Mediterranean. Through class discussions and critical writing assignments, the course considers the relationship between Mediterranean history/politics and its unique forms of artistic production and narration that have emerged in recent years.

ITAL-UA 400 From Polenta to Marinara: History of Italian Food

2:00-3:15 Wednesdays; Professor Roberto Scarcella-Perino

In this course we will cover the Italian varieties of food in their past and present forms. First, we will explore the history of food from past civilizations, leading up to World War I, just after the great immigration to the New World. Time periods examined will be ancient Rome, Medieval, Renaissance, Risorgimento, leading to the modern era. This course includes topics ranging from Pellegrino Artusi’s famous cookbook in the contest of Italian unification, the relationship between Italian Futurism and food. The second part of the course will introduce students to the regional varieties of Italian food. We will examine the ways in which food shapes contemporary Italian society, from the more intimate family kitchen to the most elegant Italian restaurant in New York City.

* 2-credit course*

Conducted in English

Note: For the first week, half the seats will be reserved for Italian Studies majors and minors. Afterwards, remaining seats will open to all other majors.

ITAL-UA 401 La Bella Figura: Self and National Identity in Italian Fashion

3:30-4:45 Wednesdays; Professor Laura Bresciani

Italian identity, culture, and economy remain are connected to fashion as both an institution and industry. Well before Italy’s belated unification in 1861, fashion played a key role in the construction of national style and courtly life from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the twentieth-century design houses that reshaped not only commercial and aesthetic trends, but solidified Italy’s association with post-war design culture more broadly. This course explores the development of Italian fashion from its roots in Medieval Communes to the dynamics of the modernity and the post-modernity of the 19th and 20th centuries, concluding with a close look at contemporary fashion as a creative force of socio-cultural change.

* 2-credit course*

Conducted in English

Note: For the first week, half the seats will be reserved for Italian Studies majors and minors. Afterwards, remaining seats will open to all other majors.

ITAL-UA 999 Honors Thesis Seminar

Time: Fridays, 9:30-12:15; Professor Gianna Albaum

This collective, interdepartmental course lends practical, methodological, and strategic support to the writing of the Senior Honors Thesis. We will read theoretical works on the process of research and the craft of academic writing, as well as short scholarly texts, upon which we will exercise our own critical readings and analyses.

Conducted in English

FYSEM-UA History of Italian Opera

8-10:30 Mondays; Professor Roberto Scarcella-Perino

The course covers the evolution of opera from Monteverdi to the early 20th century. The genres analyzed in this course are favola in musica, intermezzo, opera seria, opera buffa, grand opera, dramma lirico. Operatic production styles are considered with regard to the recordings used in the course; class discussion is meant to help students develop a critical approach to opera appreciation.

Graduate Courses

Qualified undergraduate students who are interested in enrolling in a graduate level Italian Studies course complete the HERE. NOT ALL GRADUATE COURSES ARE OPEN TO UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS. Visit our Graduate Course page here for the applicable semester to see which courses are open to  qualified undergraduate students. The Director of Undergraduate Studies, Director of Graduate Studies, and instructor of the course will review the submitted form and decide if enrollment is appropriate. Completion of the below form is NOT confirmation of your acceptance into the course. Please allow approximately 2 weeks for review.

Qualifications

• GPA of 3.5 or higher
• For courses taught in Italian, demonstrated proficiency in the language

*Note:

• Any credits taken above the undergraduate maximum of 18 credits will be subject to applicable fees.

 Questions? Contact italian.graduate@nyu.edu.