Spring 2024 Undergraduate Courses

ITAL 120: Elementary Italian II

The second half of the beginning course with extensive practice in speaking, reading, writing, and listening and a thorough introduction to Italian grammar. Activities include group and pairs work, role-playing, and conversation. Introduction to Italian culture through readings and films.
 
Prerequisite: ITAL 110
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: M-F Multiple offerings

ITAL 125: Intensive Elementary Italian

An accelerated beginning course in Italian that covers in one term the material taught in ITAL 110 and 120. This course meets five times a week for 110 minutes. Admits to ITAL 130 or 140.

Professor: Michael Farina
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: M-F, 9:25-11:25a.m.

ITAL 140: Intermediate Italian II

The second half of a two-term sequence designed to increase students’ proficiency in the four language skills and advanced grammar concepts. Authentic readings paired with contemporary films. In- class group and pairs activities, role-playing, and conversation. 

Prerequisite: ITAL 120
 
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: M-F Multiple offerings

ITAL 151: Advanced Italian Workshop

What does it mean to look up at the night sky in the geocentric cosmos of Aristotle and Ptolemy? What are the effects of the heliocentric model on human imagination? How could we picture the Big Bang? This course focuses on the relationship between Italian literature and cosmology. We will read texts spanning 700 years of Italian language and culture, from epic to journalism, from chivalric romance to popularized science. Our readings will guide us on a long journey through what Italo Calvino called the cosmic vocation of Italian literature, from Dante Alighieri’s journey through the Heavens up to the works of contemporary scientists such as Guido Tonelli and Carlo Rovelli. In the last part of the course, students will actively engage with Calvino’s short stories in a workshop format. For their final project, students will be required to write their own cosmicomica, or short story that creatively reflects on a cosmic theme explored in the course.

Professor: Giacomo Berchi
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: TTh 9:10-10:15a.m.

ITAL 204: The Making of Italian Urban Landscape: From the 'borgo medievale' to the 'città ideale'

What is a city? What a city can tell us about human life? How can we position ourselves in a city? How can cities bridge social, political, cultural differences to become more inclusive? How our perception of the urban landscape has changed during the centuries? This course explores the changing of Italian urban landscape from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance from a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective, from art to economics, from literature to urban design. We go through some discourses and representations of the city; maps, views, travel and narrative literature, tourist guides, films. These sources provide different ways to tell of the experience of the Italian urban environment, the evolutions of Italian towns, the changes in size and organization, the emergence of new spaces and new functions, as well as of new challenges (public health, demographic crisis, destructions, sacks, etc.). By considering the city as both a physical and conceptual space, we eventually relate the material covered in class with the world outside: What is an ideal city? What is an invisible city? What is our relationship with real cities?  The course is conducted in Italian.
Prerequisite: ITAL 140
 
Professor: Simona Lorenzini
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: MW 2:30-3:45p.m.

ITAL 206: How to Write a Short Story like Pirandello

This course is built around two propositions. First, the best way to master the craft of writing fiction is through reading and writing short stories. Second, there are no orphans in literature: Every writer has been influenced by other writers. Learning from masters is fundamental in all crafts. Looking for inspiration and expertise in Italian Literature, there is no doubt that Luigi Pirandello (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1934) is one of the most original writers in the world. In this course, we read and listen to the best of Pirandello’s short stories. Also, we study both his style and world vision. In this class, we utilize a workshop setting and use these short stories as creative and linguistic models to improve our own writing and linguistic skills.

Prerequisite: ITAL 140 or equivalent. 1 credit for Yale College   students.

Professor: Amara Lakhous
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: TTh 1-2:15p.m.

ITAL 303: Italian Film from Postwar to Postmodern

A study of important Italian films from World War II to the present. Consideration of works that typify major directors and trends. Topics include neorealism, self-reflexivity and metacinema, fascism and war, and postmodernism. Films by Fellini, Antonioni, Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Wertmuller, Tornatore, and Moretti. Films in Italian with English subtitles. This course counts as a LxC course. 1 credit for Yale College students.

Professor: Millicent Marcus
Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: TTH 4-5:15p.m., Film Screenings W 7:30-9:30p.m.

ITAL 317: Women in the Middle Ages

Medieval understandings of womanhood examined through analysis of writings by and/or about women, from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Introduction to the premodern Western canon and assessment of the role that women played in its construction. This course counts as a LxC course1 credit for Yale College students.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: MW 1-2:15p.m.

ITAL 322: Travelers, Immigrants, and Exiles from Italy to the Americas

This course focuses on the experiences of Italian travelers and immigrants in the Americas, from New Haven to Argentina. Its goal is to promote a historical consciousness of the social, political, and cultural reality of the Italian presence in the United States and Latin America. Students engage with a variety of media: from letters and diaries to memoirs and unpublished documents, from novels and poems to music and films. Through close readings and literary analyses, the course considers the historical and cultural context of each source, eliciting reflections in at least three key areas: national identity, transcultural encounters, and the relevance of the arts for travelers, migrants, and exiles.

The course is taught in English, with an Italian section for those students who are pursuing the Advanced Language Certificate in Italian. This course counts as an LxC course.

Course Type: Undergraduate
Term: Spring 2024
Day/Time: MW 4-5:15p.m.