All courses satisfy distribution requirements unless otherwise indicated.
Courses are normally conducted in Italian. Courses offered in translation are listed at the end of the Italian course descriptions.
Students contemplating a junior year in Italy should elect an Italian course in the first semester of their first year.
ITAL-101 Elementary Italian I
This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants.
ITAL-102 Elementary Italian II
This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants.
ITAL-113 Bridge to Italian 201 Part 2
This course is particularly designed to create a new path for students who have taken Italian 112 only. They will be provided with the skills necessary to: understand, speak, and write Italian at the advanced beginner level, learn about contemporary Italian society, and develop the competence, interest and enthusiasm for the language that will inspire them to proceed to more advanced levels.
ITAL-115 Conversation in Italian I
This 2-credit course will improve your conversational skills and your confidence and will help you communicate more effectively in Italian. The course will cover a range of topics, from college life, to culture, fashion, social media, the home, and family. Materials include podcasts, short readings, and videos.
ITAL-201 Intermediate Italian
After reviewing essential grammar and vocabulary, Intermediate Italian will expose students to new and more complex lexicon and communicative grammatical structures. Through authentic materials (videoclips, music, newspaper articles, websites etc.), the course emphasizes reading, writing, listening, and speaking. A realistic picture of modern Italy replaces stereotypical images of Italy with contemporary representation. Class time emphasizes group conversations and builds accurate use of the language in an interactive and dynamic way. Projects will give a solid foundation that provide opportunities for cultivating interests and help prepare students for more advanced study of Italian.
ITAL-209 Conversation and Composition
Offers practice of colloquial and idiomatic speech patterns in Italian to emphasize correct pronunciation and intonation. Includes oral presentations. Uses newspapers, magazines, and literary texts to discuss issues and lifestyles concerning Italian society.
ITAL-213 Italian Excellence: Science, Arts, Design
This course focuses on Italian excellence in the sciences, arts, and culture, with particular attention to fashion, design, the food industry, sustainability, the visual arts, and architecture. This course is multidisciplinary; students will be able to practice Italian while exploring connections between Italian culture and other disciplines. The course is student-centered, includes a digital project, and is taught using a wide variety of materials: articles, short stories, videos, documentaries, and social media. Designed primarily for the students who live on the Italian floor, the course aims to foster a sense of community and to expand students' perspectives and intellectual curiosity, whether they plan to study abroad or not.
ITAL-215 Conversation in Italian II
This 2-credit course will improve your conversational skills and your confidence and will help you communicate more effectively at an intermediate level in Italian. The course will cover a range of topics, from politics, to the professional world, to the environment, to college life, social media, and the arts. Materials include podcasts, short readings, and videos.
ITAL-221 Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I
ITAL-221DM Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I: 'Dante's Inferno Between Myth and History'
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy is one of world literature's foundational works. In his 700-hundred years old masterpiece, Dante poses and confronts universal questions that are still at the core of our daily existence: God, love, ethics, gender relationships, politics, social harmony, literature, the afterlife, and the relations between human and nonhuman forms of life. In this course, we will read, analyze, discuss, and enjoy Dante's great poem by focusing on the first of its three parts, the Inferno. In particular, we will be covering Dante's take on mythology and history.
ITAL-221FC Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I: 'Italian Food Culture'
This course explores food culture in Italian family and society. Food is essential for Italian culture, and the food industry is an important part of the Italian economy. We are going to explore and analyze the strong relationship between food, culture and business in modern Italian society, with examples ranging from Carlo Petrini's Slow Food movement, Eataly, food in ancient Roman times, food as autobiography, food in art, and the coffee revolution. We will read and discuss literary and historical texts, films, and cookbooks.
ITAL-221LC Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I: 'Children Stories: 'Italian Children Culture: Italian Literature for Children 1800-Today'
This course explores the development of Italian identity through books and stories aimed at children in the 1800s, 1900s, and today. From Collodi's Pinocchio, to Rodari's theory of story-telling, we will examine gender roles and narratives, racism, colonialism, and the influence of television, cinema, and social media.
ITAL-221WA Introduction to Italian Culture and Literature I: 'Power and the Italian Renaissance: Writers, Artists, Architects'
What is the role of writers, artists, and intellectuals in society? Why are they called to actively participate in their communities' social and political life? Should they turn their works into instruments of propaganda, or should they instead lead public opinion and influence policymakers? In this course, we will investigate the intersections between political power and some of the most important works of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Readings will include La Compiuta Donzella, Dante, Lorenzetti, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Leonardo, Isabella d'Este, Machiavelli, Elisabetta Gonzaga, Castiglione, and Moderata Fonte.
ITAL-295 Independent Study
ITAL-306 All in the Family
Starting with Ancient Rome, familial ties always played a strong role in Italian society. This course examines the concept of family through the centuries and through cultural, literary and historical changes. We will cover the Roman family, the idea of family in the Risorgimento, the Fascist family, the modern and post-modern family, Michela Murgia's idea of queer family, and more. Authors and directors include Murgia, Boccaccio, Goldoni, Manzoni, De Filippo, Franchi, Sfinge, Saraceno, Visconti, Scola.
ITAL-311 Advanced Topics in Italian
ITAL-311FA Advanced Topics in Italian: 'Fascism'
This course explores aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century culture in relation to Benito Mussolini's Fascist dictatorship. From Italian Futurism and imperialism, to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's historic political victory, we will follow the development of fascism and neo-fascism and discuss literary trends, architecture, activism and visual arts with some of the authors who lived through it.
ITAL-361 Seminar in Romance Languages and Cultures
This interdisciplinary seminar will focus on a comparative study of Romance languages or literatures. Topics will vary from semester to semester. Seminar discussions will be conducted in English, but students wishing to obtain language credit are expected to read works in at least one original language. Papers will be written in either English or the Romance language of the student's choice.
ITAL-361AV Seminar in Romance Languages and Cultures: 'About Vanguards and Revolutionary Ideas'
This course addresses cultural relations between Latin America and Romance languages and cultures through the concept of vanguard: the Latin American poetic vanguardias of the early twentieth century and controversies with the Italian and Spanish vanguardias; the influence of the Négritude anti-colonial movement in Latin American decolonial thinking and the political avant-garde movements and guerrillas of the '60s and '70s; the intersections between French surrealism and Latin American magic realism; and the emergence of the Cinema Novo and New/Third Cinema (the vanguard of political cinema in Latin America) in the context of Italian neo-realism and the French nouvelle vague.
ITAL-361MT Seminar in Romance Languages and Cultures: 'The Mind of the Traveler: Journeys, Expeditions, Tours'
Travel literature has always been a precious source for the study of culture, politics, arts, and last but not least, people. From Tacitus to Marco Polo, from Stendhal to Camilo Jose Cela, we will read and discuss authors who traveled for political, personal, and recreational reasons. We will also pay special attention to tales of emigration and immigration in the third millennium.
ITAL-395 Independent Study
