Global Arc

This course will explore the direction Italian culture has taken from WWI to the present, bringing into focus notions of identity and nationhood. Its purpose is to consider both historical developments and the impact of change in the formation of the Italian democratic state. We shall examine the ways film artists have identified visual images with specific socio-political factors. Close reading and extensive practice of writing in a variety of genres. Focus on composition of short essays.

We will concentrate on the theory and practice of translation, focusing on the stylistic differences present in various genres and periods. An intensive grammatical and syntactical analysis of every piece translated will be conducted through class discussion. Students will be required to write original compositions following the stylistic mode of the various pieces translated. Texts to be translated will include selections from English and American writers, from the 18th (J. Austen) to the 20th century (J. Heller), and poetry as well as prose.

Intensive study of the Inferno, with major attention paid to poetic elements such as structure, allegory, narrative technique, and relation to earlier literature, principally the Latin classics. Course conducted in English in a highly interactive seminar format. Prerequisites: One 200-level ITA course or permission of instructor required.

This course covers the study of the entirety of Dante's "Commedia" in connection with Dante's other poetic and prose works in the vernacular. Highly interactive seminar, taught in Italian.

An investigation on modern and post-modern experimentalism focused on gender issues and gendered perspectives. The main object of analysis will be Italy, from futurism to the current revivals of vanguardism, but a variety of trans-national and international voices will substantiate the historical landscape. We will address a number of case studies and their socio-cultural contexts: from aviatrixes and futurist women to the bodies of surreal metamorphic creatures in paintings and stories, to neo-avant-garde movements in the Sixties and Seventies, to post-punk books, non-textual literature, and audio/video-poetry.

Intensive practice of written and spoken Italian through close analysis of grammatical and syntactic structures, literary translation, and the stylistic study of representative literary works from the Middle Ages to the present. Focus on rhetorical structures and on Italian linguistic change. Prerequisite: a 200-level course in Italian or instructor's permission. Two 90-minute classes.

Topics will range from the study of a single author (such as Leopardi, Manzoni, Verga) to the thematic, artistic, and cultural analysis of either a genre or a literary movement (such as Romanticism, Verismo). One three-hour seminar. Prerequisite: a 200-level Italian course or instructor's permission.

A study of the influence of Marxist ideology on major Italian directors from the Cold War to the present. Representative films include: Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Visconti's The Leopard, Pasolini's Teorema, Wertmuller's Seven Beauties, Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. The approach will be interdisciplinary and will combine the analysis of historical and political themes with a cinematic reading of the films. One lecture, one two-hour preceptorial, one film screening.

This course will explore the ways in which national identity was imagined and implemented within Italian literature, culture, and cinema before, during, and after the period of Italian Unification in the mid-XIX century. Examples are drawn from a wide range of literary, artistic, and cultural media. Prerequisite: 200-level Italian course or instructor's permission. One three-hour seminar.

This course will deal with the development of the Italian language from the Early Middle Ages to the present. Special attention will be given to the passage from Latin to Italian from the 10th to the 14th century; to the fundamental "Questione della lingua" in the 16th-century; the establishment of Italian literary language; the problems of Standard Italian versus dialects; and the influence of foreign languages (mainly American English) in the 20th and 21st century.