This course investigates Italian history and culture through the prism of Dante Alighieri’s Comedy, one of the most important works in European literature. The three canticles of the Comedy offer a meditation on the social and political life of the Italian city-states, a critique of contemporary Christianity, and a commentary on art and literature at the end of the Middle Ages. The format of the course will consist of lectures on historical and cultural issues critical to the Divine Comedy and discussions of selected cantos of the great poem. We will also take advantage of the information available on The World of Dante.

Lectures will take place M and W, discussion sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. All reading assignments for the week will be listed under the discussion session. The discussions themselves generally will concentrate on specific cantos of the poem. We will set specific topics for discussion in the course of our lectures each week.

This course provides students with the opportunity to review the Italian grammar and, at the same time, deepen their understanding of contemporary Italian culture, society and politics

In this course, we will explore how major works of literature for children, from Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, to the poetry of Gianni Rodari, reflect changing views of childhood and parenting in the boot-shaped nation. In addition, we will look at how new technologies, such as film and television in the twentieth century, changed the nature of story-telling for younger audiences in Italy. Conducted in Italian.

The Second World War marks a major turning point in twentieth-century Italy. It was this pivotal event that led to the writing of Italy’s constitution and the formation of its current form of government. The war also forever altered Italy’s relationship with the United States, as well as the rest of Europe. This course will examine how literature and film has presented this topic. Readings from Berto, Calvino, Morante, and Moravia.

This survey course investigates historical periods in Italy traditionally considered stagnant from a literary point of view. Recently, however, both the Sei- and Settecento are being re-evaluated for the significant ways in which they transformed early modern culture and helped produce modern literary forms, ideas and currents.

The major writers of 17th and 18th-century Italy will be studied (Marino, Galileo, Campanella, Beccaria, the Verri brothers, Goldoni, Alfieri, Parini) along with their lesser-known contemporaries. Among the most significant issues and cultural phenomena of the time: new science, the Baroque, the Arcadian movement, notions of reason and progress, role and function of women in society, nature of criminal/justice systems, advances in theater, opera, the popular novel, autobiography and consumer journalism. In Italian.

This course explores a prolific artistic period in Italian literature. We’ll read texts by Marinetti, Palazzeschi, Bontempelli and other writers who contributed to ‘revolutionize’ the Italian literary scene in the first four decades of the 20th century.

Watch, read, and laugh at performances by Italy’s most famous comic stars. Plays, films, and one-man shows form the texts, which include not only modern productions by contemporary masters Roberto Benigni and Dario Fo, but also the comedies of the originator of middle-class Italian humor, Carlo Goldoni. Works of these writers/actors/producers introduce important aspects of Italian literary, performative, and cultural traditions. Taught in English.

NO PREREQUISITES
Satisfies Humanities requirement
Fulfills Italian Studies major and minor requirements
Possibly applicable to English, Drama, Media Studies major