ITAL-GA 2389 Topics in Italian Literature: Poetry and Poetics from Pier Paolo Pasolini to the First Decade of the Third Millenium (2 points)
Prof. Luigi Ballerini (2022 Writer-in-Residence)
February 1, 2022 - March 21, 2022
Tuesdays/Thursdays 11:00AM-12:15PM
Room 306
A mapping of the principal trends and currents that characterize the writing of poetry in Italy in the second half of the Novecento, from the founding of Pasolini’s Officina and Anceschi’s Il Verri (1956), through the “stir” created by the Novissimi (1961) and other neo-experimental poets, to the so called “crisis” of the mid-seventies, the subsequent reappearance of ego-motivated lyricists and the enduring legacy of the avant-garde. Featured poets: PP Pasolini, Roberto Roversi, Elio Pagliarani, Edoardo Sanguineti, Amelia Rosselli, Alfredo Giuliani, Giovanni Raboni. Antonella Anedda, Adriano Spatola, Giulia Niccolai, Maria Grazia Calandrone. Students will be provided with a pdf of the anthology Those Who From Afar Look Like Flies, edited by Luigi Ballerini and Beppe Cavatorta: Toronto University Press, vol. 1 Fall 2017, vol. 2 Fall 2022.
ITAL-GA 2682 Diversity and Exclusion in Contemporary Italy (NEW COURSE! 4 points)
Prof. David Forgacs
Thursdays, 3:30PM-6:15PM
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)
The main aim of the course is to develop in students a critical awareness of how various ‘others’ have been described and depicted in Italy since 1945 and how demarcation lines between ‘us’ and ‘them’ have been produced, both in scholarly discourse and popular media. The ‘others’ include poor inhabitants of cities and the rural South, people with disabilities and those classified as mentally ill, people of color, people with non-heteronormative sexual identifications, immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, Roma. The course asks how processes of definition and classification work, what forms of power back them up, and to what extent the dominant definitions may be resisted, challenged or reversed. Materials for study include written texts, photographs, documentary films and television programs. Most of the verbal materials, including spoken words, are in Italian and advanced competence in Italian is required for the course.
ITAL-GA 1982 Italian Fascism (4 points)
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Tuesdays, 9:30AM-12:15PM
King Juan Carlos Center 607
Same as HIST-GA 1982
Interdisciplinary study of the politics, culture, and social policies of the Italian dictatorship from the 1922 March on Rome through World War II. Secondary source readings are supplemented with films and texts from the period (speeches, novels, the fascist press). Topics covered include the relationship of fascism and modernity, resistance and collusion, racism and colonialism, fascist masculinity and femininity, and the project of refashioning Italians.
ITAL-GA 2312 Paradiso (4 points)
Prof. Alison Cornish
Wednesdays, 3:30-6:15PM
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, Library (Room 203)
Same as COLIT-GA 3323, Sec. 011 & ENGL-GA 2270, Sec.001
The final third of the Divine Comedy is its least user-friendly. T. S. Eliot charged this up to a certain modern prejudice against beatitude as material for poetry, since “our sweetest songs are those which sing of saddest thought.” Far less seductive than the Inferno and more abstract than the brightly-colored Purgatorio, the Paradiso has a reputation for being formidable, verbose and somehow irrelevant. All the more reason to study it together. It is simultaneously the most “medieval” part of Dante’s masterpiece, being rooted in historical and political upheavals of the moment and the most au courant philosophical debates coming out of Paris, as well as the most “modern,” radical and daring. Grounded in the necessity of happiness and the reality of evil, it is a reflection on the foundational ideals of a culture in constant tension with the world as it is. For this reason it can and has been studied from the perspectives of history, politics, philosophy, psychology, literature and art. The course will follow the trajectory of the Paradiso, delving into the questions it poses and the history it presupposes. Students are encouraged to investigate connections between Dante and their own research interests.
***CANCELED*** ITAL-GA 2155 The Sublime: History and Geography of a Rhetorical, Aesthetic, and Ethical Idea from the Middle Ages to Modernity (4 Points)
Prof. Maria Luisa Ardizzone
Tuesdays, 3:30PM-6:15PM
The history of the sublime in the West began with Francesco Robortello’s publication of the Pseudo Longinus treatise On the Sublime (Basel 1554). The course considers the sources of the sublime in the Greek and Latin rhetoric of grand style. It evaluates the importance of this notion in the biblical theological tradition, as well as in the Neoplatonic and Neoplatonic Christian authors such as Plotinus, the pseudo Dionysius, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Richard of Saint Victor, and others. Classes will be devoted to reading and discussing texts in the vernacular Italian tradition in both prose and poetry, tracing the making of this idea and its evolution from the first lyric poetry of the 13th century to authors such as Dante, Petrarch, the Platonic school of Florence, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Vittoria Colonna, Galileo, Vico, Leopardi, and Montale. In this perspective, the course also offers a kind of introduction to the theory of the sublime, as it develops from the 16th century to today, as in the work of Burke, Vico, Kant, Hegel, and Lyotard. Conducted in English.
ITAL-GA 3020 Exam Prep (4 points)
*Requires Department Consent to register. Contact Anne Wolff (al4845@nyu.edu) to register.*
ITAL-GA 2891 Guided Individual Reading (2-4 points)
Italian Studies Faculty
This is an opportunity for a student 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. *Requires Department Consent to register. Contact Anne Wolff (al4845@nyu.edu) to register.*
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Please keep in mind that the schedule is subject to change, so make sure to check Albert and the Italian Studies website frequently! For questions or concerns about the Italian Studies curriculum, please contact:
David Forgacs, Director of Graduate Studies at df77@nyu.edu
-or-
Anne Wolff, Department Administrator at AL4845@nyu.edu.