41 courses with the subject ITAL, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small groups.
The Jewish community of Rome is the oldest one in all of Europe, dating back to 200 B. C., and the authors of some of the most important twentieth century works of Italian literature are Jewish. In this course we will examine how some of these writers (Moravia, Bassani, Primo Levi, Carlo Levi, Ginzburg, Sereni, Bruck, Loewenthal, Janaczek, Elkann and Pipermo) have articulated the self against the background of the historical events that have shaped the past hundred years; two world wars and different social movements of the pre- and post- WWII eras. This seminar includes two film screenings.
This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small groups.
What happens to human creativity and expression when it is enhanced by machines? For over a century, writers have imagined how technology might transform what it means to be human. In this course, you will examine key visions of technological enhancement alongside the technologies you use every day - from AI writing assistants to social media platforms - to explore what is enhanced and what might be diminished by our increasingly technological lives. Through guided readings, creative exercises, short reflective writing, and class discussions, you will develop your critical analysis skills, develop a writing practice, and critique the promises and drawbacks of technological enhancement today.
ITAL 1201 is a fast-paced, introductory-level course, designed for students with no previous knowledge of Italian. Students will be guided in developing four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in the context of everyday topics (school, housing, travel personal preferences, simple exchanges about past, future and possible events, etc.). They will also be introduced to culturally acceptable modes of oral and written communication in Italian, some fundamentals of Italian history, and select current social and political issues.
This is a fast-paced, introductory course designed for students with some basic knowledge of the language. This introductory course provides a thorough grounding in all language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with practice in small and large groups. Interactive lectures cover grammar and cultural information.
The aim of this course is to help students familiarize themselves with one of the most important, and world-renowned aspects of Italian culture, or rather La Cucina Italiana. This course will combine different language learning approaches like grammar and audio/oral activities such as video clips, role play activities in class, interviews regarding food topics, etc., as well as some hand-on lessons. Class will alternate grammar and conversation lessons, while adding a few practical cooking activities that will focus on recipes and traditions that characterize different geographical regions of Italy.
The learning objectives of this course are, first, to introduce students to some of the crucial moments in the history of Italian figurative arts, architecture and fashion design, but also to a range of social issues relevant for understanding the more recent tendencies in art and design in modern Italy; second, to help students refine the way they speak and write about art, architecture and design through a review of the grammatical and lexical structures of Italian and a reinforcement of idiomatic expressions that will increase their ability to discuss, evaluate, analyze and compare issues of relevance to the field of art, architecture and desgn.
An intensive elementary Italian language course. This 6-credit course covers material presented in ITAL 1201 and ITAL 1202 in just one semester. It's offered to students who cannot study Italian in the Fall, but can only do it in the Spring semester.
This is an all-skills course designed to improve speaking and reading ability, establish a groundwork for correct writing, and provide a substantial grammar review.
This course provides a review of composition, reading, pronunciation, and grammar review, as well as guided practice in conversation. It emphasizes the development of accurate and idiomatic expression in the language.
An intermediate-level course that aims to further develop intercultural, reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities. Students will be guided in perfecting their communications skills, improving their cultural proficiency, and developing a critical eye toward printed and visual material drawn from literature, history, politics, arts in the Italophone world. Conversation skills will be practiced in daily discussions and in individual or group projects and presentations. A variety of written assignments will help students increase the range, accuracy, and stylistic appropriateness of their writing. Review of select grammar topics is part of this course, as is reading parts of contemporary novels.
An intermediate-level course that aims to further develop intercultural, reading, listening, speaking, and writing abilities in ITAL 2201. Students will be guided in perfecting their communication skills, improving their cultural proficiency, and developing a critical eye toward printed and visual material drawn from literature, history, politics, science, and arts in the Italophone world. Conversation skills will be practiced in daily discussions and in individual or group projects and presentations. A variety of written assignments will help students increase the range, accuracy, and stylistic appropriateness of their writing. Review of select grammar topics is part of this course, as is reading a short contemporary novel.
This course aims to introduce students to Italian literature mainly through readings in prose and poetry from the 20th and 21st century. The course includes significant practice in grammar, vocabulary building, and composition. Course topic for fall 2025: Gender and sexuality
In this film and culture course dedicated to Italian cinema, we will be looking at and reflecting on some of the most important films that made history both in Italy and the world from the end of the World War II to today.
This course will introduce students to sustained study of one Italian masterpiece (a literary, philosophical, historical, or scientific work, or a major achievement in the visual, performance, or media arts).Italian 2400 (first part of semester): One Italian Masterpiece. We will focus on Vittorio De Sica's moving 1953 film The Bicycle Thief with supplementary readings and discussions on Italian culture after WWII and Fascism, from architecture and urbanism to politics; from soccer to cinema itself. We will think with this film about issues such as: What is poverty and what does it mean to represent it on screen? What is the value of work? How can a community come together in the wake of war?One Italian Masterpiece (second part of the semester): We will focus on Federico Fellini's epic 1961 film La dolce vita (the sweet life), with supplementary readings and discussions on topics including: Fashion, Style and Architecture; scandal and the birth of the paparazzo; Modern Rome and Ancient Rome; culture after war and Fascism, and even: Should La dolce vita be cancelled?
Students will practice writing in Italian by engaging with a variety of genres of narrative fiction and non-fiction–short stories, personal essays and short reportages. Studied texts will include selections from Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Goffredo Parise, Umberto Eco, Natalia Ginzburg, Giuseppe Pontiggia and Andrea Bajani. The readings will be organized according to four thematic areas (narrating the city; narrating memory; narrating emotions; narrating the imaginary). Students will experiment with aspects of narrative and storytelling techniques through hands-on exercises, detailed reading responses, and by workshopping their own writing. As part of their craft, students will write both creative and analytical responses in Italian, culminating in a class anthology as their final project for the semester.
Italy has it all: beauty, food, and art. It also has mysteries — not surprising given its long and violent history, from Renaissance princes to political murders and terrorism. In this class we analyze the genre of the Italian mystery, first in film, then in literature. Films by Rosi, Antonioni, and Argento will be featured alongside the comic book mystery Dylan Dog and the short stories of Leonardo Sciascia.
From Al Capone to Tony Soprano, the mafia has been the subject of numerous films over the course of 70 years, so many in fact that one might well speak of a mafia obsession in American popular culture. Drawing upon a large number of American and Italian films, this course examines the cultural history of the mafia through film. We will explore issues related to the figure of the gangster, the gender and class assumptions that underpin it, and the portrayal-almost always stereotypical-of Italian-American immigrant experience that emerges from our viewings. The aim will be to enhance our understanding of the role of mafia plays in American and Italian culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Film screenings will include Little Caesar, Scarface, Shame of the Nation, The Godfather Parts I and II, Goodfellas, The Funeral, Donnie Brasco, episodes from The Sopranos, and Gomorrah.
This course will introduce students to sustained study of one Italian masterpiece (a literary, philosophical, historical, or scientific work, or a major achievement in the visual, performance, or media arts).
Beginning in the early days of silent cinema, a rich tradition of what are called city films, combines technological innovation with the exploration of specific urban spaces. Students in this class will learn how to think about the possibilities of limits of cinema as a way of knowing a city and its cultures, including linguistic cultures. This course will be offered in English and is open to all students. The focus will be on the relationship between the cinema and the development of urban centers, including Madrid, Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and Venice.
This course is dedicated to studying important works of literature that address what it means, in the Renaissance, to strive for excellence as a man or as a woman, especially in the public sphere and in love.Topic for Spring 2025: Baldassar Castiglione's Il libro del corteiano (1528).
This course, offered in Romance Studies in the Italian Section, is meant for students who have no prior knowledge of Machiavelli, political science, or for that matter the Renaissance. It is both an introduction to one of the greatest political thinkers of the modern period, the father for many of what has come to be called political science, and a chance to reflect upon why it is that no thinker has been more cited or called upon in the last decade. Whether it be on questions of populism or the effects of climate change how people are governed, Machiavelli seems to speak to us directly in ways that few others do.
This course introduces students to special topics in twentieth-century Italian politics, history, and culture, with an emphasis on critical thinking and interpretation. Students who have already taken ITAL 3730 for credit may retake the course, provided that its topic and readings have changed. Conducted in Italian.
Pinocchio: The Adventures of a Puppet is of course a beloved tale of a puppet who wants to become a boy. Written in 1883 by the Italian author, Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio has been the subject of numerous books and films and in this course, we will take up some of them in order to ask important questions, including: what does it mean to be human and what makes one a puppet? Beginning with a close reading of the fable, we will then read different literary and philosophical retellings. We will also look at cinematic treatments, from Walt Disney to Spielberg to Garrone.
This course focuses on significant Italian novels written in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Guided independent study of special topics.
Guided independent study of special topics.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us of the relation between biological and the political, power and resistance, and life and death. Fifty years ago, the philosopher Michel Foucault offered two terms to describe it: biopolitics and biopower. In this introduction to both, we take up Foucault's writings on biopolitics in a series of interdisciplinary contexts, including but not limited to the philosophical, anthropological, and political. In addition to Foucault, w will be reading elaborations on what has been called the biopolitical paradigm from writers as diverse as Agamben, Arendt, Arif, Biehl, Butler, Esposito, Fassin, Mbembe, and Sloterdijk. Questions to be asked include how to describe relation between biopolitics and racism and in what ways has the pandemic altered our understanding of biopolitics.
Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.
Consult director of undergraduate studies for more information.
This seminar is dedicated to an in-depth study of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-1351), a masterpiece of Italian literature whose popularity has been renewed as it has been proclaimed "the 14th-century Italian book that shows us how to survive "coronavirus" and the "medieval book to read while under quarantine." Particular attention will be dedicated to: gender; social class; the ethical dimension of literature; Boccaccio's refashioning of Italian, Latin, French, and Provencal source material. Knowledge of Italian is not required.
This course is for anyone drawn to beauty-and anyone who, within the beautiful, finds the trace of a loss. What do we grieve, what do we miss, when we find ourselves in the presence of beauty? And what, in every retrospective, prospective or otherwise non-present beauty, do we nonetheless crave and nonetheless mourn? What is the beauty hidden within mourning? We'll take a look at thinkers, poets, and artists from both modern and premodern culture, potentially including Anne Carson, Augustine of Hippo, Fra Angelico, Gillian Rose, Herve Guibert, Pepe Espaliu, and others, as we try to sit with dual summons of beauty and grief: beauty or grief.
This course calls into question the public use of history. The past is permanently mobilized according to the culture and the problems of the present. Over the last decades, "memory" - a general concept used as a synonym for remembering, history, imagination, or representations of the past - arose at the heart of the public sphere, becoming an object of struggles. In some historical circumstances, the past is suddenly "reactivated" and irrupts in the present by claiming its "rights," the end of oblivion, and rescue of the vanquished. Considering some well-known controversies about slavery, colonialism, fascism, communism, civil wars, the Holocaust, etc., the course aims at exploring how collective memories are interwoven with cultural industry, public policies (museums, commemorations, laws, etc.), and history writing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us of the relation between biological and the political, power and resistance, and life and death. Fifty years ago, the philosopher Michel Foucault offered two terms to describe it: biopolitics and biopower. In this introduction to both, we take up Foucault's writings on biopolitics in a series of interdisciplinary contexts, including but not limited to the philosophical, anthropological, and political. In addition to Foucault, w will be reading elaborations on what has been called the biopolitical paradigm from writers as diverse as Agamben, Arendt, Arif, Biehl, Butler, Esposito, Fassin, Mbembe, and Sloterdijk. Questions to be asked include how to describe relation between biopolitics and racism and in what ways has the pandemic altered our understanding of biopolitics.
In this seminar, dedicated to a close reading of Dante's Commedia (1321), we will consider how Dante's poem explores such issues as: the search for language adequate to convey experience surpassing human comprehension; the creation of a narrating I; the education of the reader; the relation between truth and enterprise; the redemptive potential of art (and its ability to deceive as well as to enlighten and console): the call to bear witness, both to life and to loss.
Long hair, colorful clothes, psychedelic music, free love, and stormy demonstrations: this is the image that the 1970s engraved in our collective imagination. Framed by two waves of strikes - victorious in 1969 and defeated in 1980 - the Italian seventies were a rebellious time. At the end of the economic boom, this decade experienced the outbreak of multiple contradictions that had accumulated in the postwar period, when a poor and rural country had rapidly turned into a modern industrial society. In these years, Italy appeared dramatically torn between tradition and modernity. This seminar will explore these transformations, focusing on the relationship between culture and help us to depict a diverse landscape beyond the dominant cliche of the years of lead. We will scrutinize multiple sources - novels, films, songs and political essays - as well as memorial and historical productions.
Guided independent study for graduate students.
Guided independent study for graduate students.
This seminar is dedicated to an in-depth study of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-1351), a masterpiece of Italian literature whose popularity has been renewed as it has been proclaimed "the 14th-century Italian book that shows us how to survive "coronavirus" and the "medieval book to read while under quarantine." Particular attention will be dedicated to: gender; social class; the ethical dimension of literature; Boccaccio's refashioning of Italian, Latin, French, and Provencal source material. Knowledge of Italian is not required.
There's a moment in the movie The Princess Bride when, listening to an adventure story, a kid worries that this might be a "kissing book." This course takes kissing books as places where "romance" and "fantasy," two overcharged words and two overlapping genres, are stages for our enjoyment. If medieval romances give us a template for narrating desire, and if medieval monastics use kissing, especially in the Song of Songs, to articulate an erotics of reading, the recent explosion of queer romance and fantasy fiction may give us a new way to read (and, who knows, maybe even kiss) with our manifold bodies and desires. Expect Chretien de Troyes, Brnard of Clairvaux, Dante, and lots of queer fiction.
Source: Cornell University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
