Catalogue 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Italian Department
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Chair: Simona Bondavalli;
Associate Professors: Roberta Antogninia, Rodica Diaconescu Blumenfeldb, Simona Bondavalli, Eugenio L. Giusti;
Advisers: The department.
a On leave 2018/19, first semester
b On leave 2018/19, second semester
Courses are conducted in Italian, except for ITAL 168 , ITAL 175 , ITAL 177 , ITAL 237 , ITAL 250 , ITAL 255 , and ITAL 275 .
Major
Correlate Sequence in Italian
Students majoring in other programs may elect a correlate sequence in Italian.
Italian: I. Introductory
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ITAL 105 - Elementary Italian Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) Introduction to the language and culture of contemporary Italy through short stories and plays, opera and popular music, film and popular culture. This sequence course (105-106) is designed for students who have no prior knowledge of Italian. The course objective is to develop listening, speaking, reading, writing skills through communicative and interactive in-class activities (e.g., games and role-playing) and at-home assignments. Through successful completion of the 105-106 sequence, students will be able to: 1) increase their awareness and understanding of the culture of the Italian-speaking people; 2) conduct meaningful dialogue in Italian, using appropriate vocabulary and grammatical structures; 3) read and understand text selections appropriate to their level; 4) write brief descriptions and narratives on given topics. Students are encouraged to attend extra-curricular activities organized by the department and by the Italian Majors’ Committee, such as opera evenings at the Metropolitan Opera House, the Italian Cinema Club, card nights, cooking classes, and guest lectures by invited scholars. Simona Bondavalli, Eugenio Giusti.
Electronic versions of required materials are not accepted.
Yearlong course 105-ITAL 106 .
Open to all classes; four 50-minute periods; one hour of drill and one hour of aural-oral practice.
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ITAL 106 - Elementary Italian Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) Simona Bondavalli, Eugenio Giusti.
Electronic versions of required materials are not accepted.
Yearlong course ITAL 105 -106.
Open to all classes; four 50-minute periods; one hour of drill and one hour of aural-oral practice.
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ITAL 107 - Intensive Elementary Italian 2 unit(s) A single-semester equivalent of ITAL 105 -ITAL 106 . Eugenio Giusti.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Open to all classes; four 75-minute periods; one hour of drill and one hour of aural-oral practice. Supplementary material from Andiamo in Italia, a web-based trip to Italy. Electronic versions of required materials are not accepted.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 168 - Food Culture and Italian Identity 1 unit(s)
How did spaghetti and meatballs become the symbol of Italian cuisine in the United States? Is it true that pasta was not invented in Italy? How did a cookbook contribute to the creation of national identity? Could abolishing pastasciutta make Italians more optimistic? Images of food and dinner tables pervade Italian art and literature, celebrating pleasures or projecting desires, passing on traditions or stirring revolutions. In this course we examine how eating and cooking habits intersect with material and cultural changes in Italy at various times, ranging from the Middle Ages to the present. We investigate how issues of personal, regional, and national identity are shaped and expressed by food habits. Fiction and non-fiction writings, recipes, documentary and fiction film, advertising, and television shows provide the basis for discussion and writing assignments. Simona Bondavalli.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
May not be counted towards the Italian major.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 175 - The Italian Renaissance in English Translation Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) In this course we examine the notion of selfhood as it first appears in the writings of early humanists (XIV century), Renaissance authors (XVI century) and works of contemporary visual artists. Cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, and gender issues are investigated through the reading of literary and theatrical masterpieces and their influence on visual artists like Botticelli, Raphael, and others. We read in English translation excerpts from Petrarch (Canzoniere and Letters), Boccaccio (Decameron), poems and letters by women humanists (Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta), Machiavelli (The Prince), Castiglione (The Book of the Courtier), Gaspara Stampa and Veronica Franco (Poems). In order to foster the student’s self-awareness and creativity, journaling, experiential practices, and a creative project, based on the course content, are included. Eugenio Giusti.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
May not be counted towards the Italian major.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ITAL 177 - Italy and the Modern Self 1 unit(s)
In this course we analyze the ways in which the experience of modernity has shaped Italian literature at the beginning of the 20th century. In particular we focus on the crisis of the self and its literary expressions: fragmentation, illness, madness, but also masquerading and performance. Frequently employed as metaphors for the alienated condition of the artist and intellectual in modern society, these ideas contribute to redefine the notion of self in a country increasingly concerned with progress and modernization while still looking to the past in search of a national identity. While the radical changes in material and social structures, gender roles, moral values challenge traditional certainties, artists and intellectuals challenge formal traditions and provide multiple definitions of the modern experience. Readings include works, in English translation, by Luigi Pirandello, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Eugenio Montale, Italo Svevo and others. As a First-Year Writing Seminar, the course is designed to help students develop analytical and critical skills, and to practice clear and persuasive writing. Students produce a variety of brief informal writing assignments and formal interpretive essays. Simona Bondavalli.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
May not be counted towards the Italian major.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 180 - Italian Food: Facts and Fiction Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) The course investigates the development of Italian culinary traditions in relation to local, regional, and national identities; the long-standing cultural association of Italy with food, both within the national boundaries and without, particularly in the US; and the representation of food across various media (film, fiction, cookbooks, television programs, advertising), since the 19th century, focusing particularly on key moments of change in the history of the modern nation, such as: the national unification, the Fascist regime and the war, the post-war economic miracle, the women’s movement in the 1970s, and immigration in the 21st century.
We examine the ways in which representations of food construct or challenge specific images of Italy and Italians, and consider the problematic notion of authenticity so frequently applied to certain dishes, ingredients, or culinary habits. We explore the lasting importance of cities in Italian food history, and the nostalgia for the countryside that urban life projects onto food marketing in the late 20th century. The changing roles of women and their relation to food preparation and consumption, as well as to the transmission of knowledge, are central to the course inquiry. The iconic status of Italy as “Slow Food nation” on one hand, and the lamented “foodification” of the country on the other also constitute topics of discussion. Simona Bondavalli.
The course is conducted in English.
Two 75-minute periods.
Italian: II. Intermediate
Italian: III. Advanced
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ITAL 301 - Senior Seminar Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) An examination of selected topics in recent Italian culture or of a single topic across several centuries. May be taken more than once for credit when topic changes. Required of all senior majors.
Topic for 2018/19b: Italophone African Narratives, from Colonialism to Post-Colonialism. From Italy’s Fascist colonial aspirations of the 1930s, through the “un-thinking eurocentrism” of the post-war generation, to the contemporary migritudine, we trace the engendering of Africa as concept and as reality in the Italian sociolect and society. Films may include Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, Antonioni’s L’Eclisse, Pasolini’s The African Orestes, Bertolucci’s Besieged, and Michele Placido’s Pummarò. Texts by African and African-Italian women writers may include works by Igiaba Scego, Cristina Ubax Ali farah, Ribka Sibhatu, and Ramzanali Fazel. Rodica Blumenfeld.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
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ITAL 302 - Senior Project Semester Offered: Fall 0.5 unit(s) The course is intended to provide Italian majors, who have chosen to produce a senior project, with a collective and regular learning environment. Through regular group and individual meetings, students receive systematic guidance from their instructor, and discuss problems they encounter in various stages of their project creation with both the instructor and their peers. Simona Bondavalli.
Prerequisite(s): One 300-level course.
Yearlong course (ITAL 302-ITAL 303 ).
Two 75-minute periods.
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ITAL 303 - Senior Project Semester Offered: Fall 0.5 unit(s) The course is intended to provide Italian majors, who have chosen to produce a senior project, with a collective and regular learning environment. They will receive systematic guidance from their instructor, and discuss problems they encounter in various stages of their project creation with both the instructor and their peers. The class meets three times a semester for two hours. One hour individual meetings are scheduled bi-weekly. Simona Bondavalli.
Prerequisite(s): One 300-level course.
Yearlong course (ITAL 302 -ITAL 303).
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ITAL 320 - The Language of Desire and the Modern Self 1 unit(s) The course explores ways in which early writers in the Italian vernacular developed the modern concept of selfhood and articulated it through the language of desire. We investigate intimate expressions of both spiritual and physical longing, and analyze how the affirmation of one’s desire requires striking a balance with, or even bending, social norms of gender, ethics, spirituality, and class. We read texts and selections from, among others, San Francis of Assisi, Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Isotta Nogarola, Castiglione, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco e Michelangelo. Eugenio Giusti.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 331 - Heroes, Paladins, and Non-existent Knights: The Italian Epic Tradition from Charlemagne to Calvino. 1 unit(s)
A study of the epic tradition from the early Carolingian cantari and Arthurian romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the leading Italian epics of the sixteenth century written at the Ferrara Renaissance court and their great influence on later literature, music, and paintings. Readings include selections from the Chanson de Roland and the Roman de Tristan, Pulci’s Morgante, Bolardo’s Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and Italo Calvino’s parody Il cavaliere inesistente, as a contemporary reference to the traditional epic poetry. This book, epitomizing Calvino’s long interest in the epic poem, provides a good basis for analyzing the archetypal character of Roland, his stoic and ascetic demeanor, and his transformation through the centuries until he becomes indeed “nonexistent.” Roberta Antognini.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , 220 or 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 338 - Literary Masterpieces: Dante’s Divine Comedy 1 unit(s) A close reading of the entire Comedy in its historical, philosophical, theological, and literary contexts. Designed for Italian majors in their senior year. Roberta Antognini.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 342 - Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron: The “Novella” as a Microcosm Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) A reading of the one hundred tales with specific emphasis on social, cultural and gender issues of the later Middle Ages, as represented in the novella genre. Particular attention is devoted to the Decameron’s frame as a connective tissue for the one hundred tales and a space for gender debate and social re-creation. Reference is made to some of the Decameron’s subtexts (Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, the Novellino, the French Fabliaux, and Courtly Literature). Critical interpretations are analyzed after the reading of the entire masterpiece. Issues related to textual censorship, and contemporary re-writings through different media are addressed. Eugenio Giusti.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
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ITAL 375 - Fictions of Youth: Youth Culture in Twentieth-Century Italian Literature 1 unit(s) The course examines the relationship between youth and literature in post-WWII Italy from a double perspective: adolescents as a literary subject, as protagonists of fiction and non-fiction, and as authors. Variously associated with innocence and vitality, innovation and peril, self-creation and anti-authoritarianism, youth long embodied individual and social ideals and fears in literature. In the twentieth century, it also increasingly suggested uncertainty and incompletion. As adolescence acquired importance in both the historical landscape and collective imagination, its symbolic connotations became progressively unstable. When young people wrote about themselves and their peers, first-hand experience mixed with inherited notions in unexpected ways. Using the Bildungsroman as a narrative model for the representation of youth in modern fiction, we study the different ways in which European and American coming-of-age novels influence modern Italian literature. The significance of youth in post-Fascist Italy, the construction of a generational identity through media and popular culture, and the creation of a new literary language for the expression of youth are some of the topics we address. Readings by Pasolini, Moravia, Tondelli, Brizzi, Santacroce, and others. Simona Bondavalli.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 379 - Food and Fiction in Modern Italy 1 unit(s) The course investigates the role of food as both subject and metaphor of modern Italian literature and film in the 19th and 20th century. While the representation of eating and cooking practices contributes to the realistic mode in fiction, food often mediates memories, anxieties, and desires in narratives of personal or national coming-of-age. Even non-fictional forms of food writing, such as cookbooks or documentary films, contribute to the narrative of Italian national unification and modernization as much as canonical novels and cinema. We analyze both written texts and film, try some of the dishes described, and explore the relationship between writing, cooking, reading, and eating, as acts of creation and fruition that shape personal, regional, and national identity. Tradition and innovation; scarcity and excess; inclusion and exclusion; taste and disgust; local, national, and global trends are among the ideas structuring class discussion and writing. In Italian. Simona Bondavalli.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 380 - Modernity in Italy 1 unit(s) This course explores different manifestations of modernity in Italian literature and culture in the early twentieth century. We will consider both objective and subjective transformations, focusing on the impact of urban life, war, Fascism, and technological modernization on literary creation and its aesthetic and social function. How do Italian writers of the early 20th century relate to modernity and define it? How are the ideas of progress, tradition, and avant-garde defined, expressed and questioned? How does the affirmation of mass culture affect the perceived role of poets? How do artists and intellectuals redefine their role in relation to bourgeois materialism, war propaganda, censorship, or spectacular politics? These are some of the questions that will inform textual analysis, class discussion and students’ writing. In studying specifically Italian modernism, we also investigate how its origins at the peripheries of the nation shape its relation to Italian history and literary tradition. The texts examined include poetry, narrative, theory, and programmatic writings by such authors as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Guido Gozzano, Aldo Palazzeschi, Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, Eugenio Montale among others. Simona Bondavalli.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 2-hour period.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 381 - Gender Effects: Women in Italian Cinema 1 unit(s) Through analysis of various filmic portrayals of the female body, narratives of female subjectivity, articulations of female desire, and experiments with female and feminist agency, we raise questions about female characters in Italian cinema, and the gendering significance of formal cinematic features. We study such films as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma, Federico Fellini’s City of Women, Lina Wertmüller’s Love and Anarchy, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged, Pappi Corsicato’s Libera. Readings of pertinent works from feminist film theory in English and Italian. Roberta Antognini.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with the permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 384 - Folk Culture 1 unit(s) When Italy became a kingdom in 1861, the question of a “national language” came to the forefront: What should standard Italian be? As language defines the identity of the speaker, another related question began to rise: What does it mean to be Italian? Throughout the 20th century the choice between the use of standard Italian and the various regional dialects became a socio-political choice. The aim of this class is to select specific case studies to look at: the construction of an “Italian identity;” how dialects have survived the unification of standard Italian; the use of folk tales and folk songs to maintain a people’s memory, rituals, and local tradition; the artistic folk revival movements of the 1960s and the 1990s; the use of dialects in cinema, music and theatre.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 , or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 385 - Three Contemporary Women Writers: Dacia Maraini, Rossana Campo, Laila Wadia Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This course explores new literary styles that reflect the new freedoms of contemporary Italian women and women writers. We study the texts of these writers from the 1970s to 1990s, from the early days of feminist activism, to recent transformations in literature and politics, asking whether postmodernism leads to the de-ideologization of feminism. Rodica Blumenfeld.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
One 3-hour period.
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ITAL 389 - The Impossible Task of Translating: An Introduction of Literary Translation from Italian to English 1 unit(s) Whether translation between two languages is at all possible is a question as old as translating itself, but no matter how many answers have been given, the truth of the matter remains that we have always translated and we will continue to do so. Translation studies have flourished in the last few years and literary translation is more and more considered a creative undertaking rather than an unoriginal and quite tedious activity. Given the intrinsic bilingualism of the foreign literature classroom, translation is particularly intertwined with teaching and learning and becomes an integral part of the course. As a result, many students choose to complete their B.A. in Italian with a literary translation. Translating is above all a decision process– careful interpretation and intelligent notation– and as such it requires passion, accuracy, careful attention to details, together with a knowledge and understanding of both the source and the target language and culture. This course aims to give students of Italian some insight into the field –historical and theoretical–as well as a solid grasp of the tools required to be a literary translator. While analyzing different translation strategies and doing practical exercises, such as contrasting and comparing different versions of the same source text, students devote time to studying not only Italian grammar but also English. By the end of the semester, they produce a final original translation, accompanied by a “translation diary,” a metatextual description of the problems encountered during their work. Our theoretical background is Umberto Eco’s considerations on translating, both as a writer and as a translator. Roberta Antognini.
Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220 , ITAL 222 ; or ITAL 217 , ITAL 218 with permission of the instructor.
Two 75-minute periods.
Not offered in 2018/19.
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ITAL 399 - Senior Independent Work Semester Offered: Fall or Spring 0.5 to 1 unit(s)
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