Undergraduate Courses AY 2019-2020

July 3, 2019

ITAL 150a, Advanced Composition and Conversation.            
Julia Pucci
Discussion of social, political, and literary issues in order to improve active command of the language. Development of advanced reading skills through magazine and newspaper articles, essays, short stories, films, and a novel; enhancement of writing skills through experiments with reviews, essays, creative writing, and business and informal Italian. Classroom emphasis on advanced speaking skills and vocabulary building. 

ITAL 151b, Advanced Italian Workshop: Translating, Writing, and Acting 
Sandro De Thomasis
Development of advanced writing and speaking skills. Close readings and extensive practice writing in a variety of genres, which may include autobiography, biography, joke, letter, essay, poem, news article, comic strip, children’s book, and short story. Popular narrative genres such as the giallo and romanzo rosa. Creation and performance of short dramatic texts. 

ITAL 162a, Introduction to Italian Literature: From the Duecento to the Renaissance 
Simona Lorenzini     
This is the first course in a sequence studying Italian Literature. The course aims to provide an introduction and a broad overview of Italian literature and culture from the Duecento to the Renaissance, specifically focusing on authors such as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Ariosto, and literary and artistic movements such as Humanism and Renaissance. These authors and their masterpieces are introduced through readings, works of art, listening materials, videos, and films. Great space is left for in-class discussion and suggestions from students who may take an interest in specific authors or subjects. This course is interactive and open, and the authors mentioned here are only indicative of the path that we follow. At the end of the course, students can analyze and critique literary works of different genres and time period.

Prerequisite: ITAL 140 or equivalent

ITAL 172b, Introduction to Italian Literature: From the Baroque to the Present 
Simona Lorenzini 
This course is the second course in a sequence studying Italian Literature. This course introduces students to the masterpieces of Italian literature, in prose and poetry, from the Baroque to the 21st century. We closely read sample writings representative of the most important authors and literary movements, including Galileo, Manzoni, Pirandello, and Ferrante, and the ways in which they encompassed science, medicine, culture, law, gender. Through critical readings, textual analysis, and class discussions, students appreciate the intellectual and artistic traditions that shaped the birth of the Italian nation. Texts and authors are examined in their historical, social, and cultural context. The course is conducted in Italian. Students are required to take notes during the lectures and learn new vocabulary specific to the topic studied.
Prerequisite: ITAL 140 or equivalent.

ITAL 226b, Poets of the Duecento
Giuseppe Mazzotta
The course explores and traces the multiple ways in which the experiments and lyrical achievements of the Duecento (thirteenth century) shaped and made possible the remarkable achievements of the Italian Trecento. The core of the course consists in the reading of the Sicilian School of poetry, some Provencal troubadours and above all, of the remarkable achievements. The course explores and traces the multiple ways in which the experiments and lyrical achievements of the Duecento (thirteenth century) shaped and made possible the remarkable achievements of the Italian Trecento. The core of the course consists in the reading of the Sicilian School of poetry, some Provencal troubadours and above all, of the remarkable achievements of gifted poets, such as Francis of Assisi, Cavalcanti, Sordello etc.

ITAL 303b, Italian Film from Postwar to Postmodern
Millicent Marcus
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.

ITAL 310a, Dante in TR
Christiana Purdy Moudarres
A critical reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy and selections from the minor works, with an attempt to place Dante’s work in the intellectual and social context of the late Middle Ages by relating literature to philosophical, theological, and political concerns. 

ITAL 315a, The Catholic Intellectual Tradition
Giuseppe Mazzotta and Carlos Eire
Introductory survey of the interaction between Catholicism and Western culture from the first century to the present, with a focus on pivotal moments and crucial developments that defined both traditions. Key beliefs, rites, and customs of the Roman Catholic Church, and the ways in which they have found expression; interaction between Catholics and the institution of the Church; Catholicism in its cultural and sociopolitical matrices.

ITAL 317b, Women in the Middle Ages
Christiana Purdy Moudarres
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.
 

ITAL 367a, Saying Goodbye: Meditations on Art, Death and Afterlives, the Bible Through Shakespeare and Sor Juan
Jane Tylus
How do we take leave of the people, places, and work that we love? Our objectives will be to strive to understand the important role that leave-takings play in life and artistic expression, especially between 1300-1700; to probe the differences between religious faiths of early modernity with respect to rituals of saying goodbye and the afterlife; to sharpen our skills as readers, spectators, and listeners of works that engage with complex questions regarding the meaning of life and one’s lifework; and to contextualize our readings within more contemporary conversations by theologians and theorists about dying, grief, and letting go.  We will also examine rites of passage and departure, even as our main focus will be figures such as Dante, Michelangelo, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, whose differing faiths during a period of religious crisis produced various kinds of finished - and unfinished - works. Our class will be held in the Beinecke library, where we will be regularly consulting first editions and in some cases (Donne’s letters and poems) autograph copies, as well as evaluating the material evidence for ways that manuscripts and books reveal how authors parted with their works (dedications, envois) and how readers commented on their own encounters with leave-takings.

Prerequisites: none, other than a passion for thinking about big questions like mortality and the worth of one’s work