Spring 2022 Tentative Course Offerings
ITAL 011: Italian Lang. & Cult. Beginner
This intensive course meets 4 days a week with asynchronous learning on Fridays and provides a first approach to the Italian language for absolute beginners. Attention is devoted to the four skills of speaking, understanding, reading, and writing with a progression from greater emphasis on listening and speaking to a balance of all skills as the semester progresses.
ITAL 032: Italian Lang. & Cult. Intermediate
This intensive course meets 4 days a week with asynchronous learning on Fridays and is designed to further develop language ability and knowledge of the Italian culture for students who have completed ITAL 011 or have already had some exposure to the language. As in the case of ITAL 011, the four skills of speaking, understanding, reading and writing are developed in a balanced way.
ITAL 010: Adv. ITAL for Spanish Speakers
This is a second semester intensive course that continues and builds on the work done during the Italian for Spanish Speakers course (ITAL 009). It provides a review of Italian grammar already learned in the previous semester, along with the opportunities to further develop the four skills of speaking, understanding, reading, and writing at an advanced level. This course will also put a special emphasis on intercultural reflection on and exchange between the Italian, the Latin/Iberian America, and the USA culture and lifestyle.
ITAL 111: ADV. 1 – ITAL. CONTEMP. CULT. & SOC.
ITAL 111 continues and builds on the work done in ITAL 011 and ITAL 032, providing a thorough grounding in the essentials of Italian grammar. The course develops the four skills of speaking, understanding, reading, and writing but increases attention to grammatical correctness and the development of literacy with respect to Basic and Intermediate.
ITAL 112: ADV. 2 – ITAL. Traditions, History, & ART
ITAL 112 continues and builds on the work done in ITAL 011, ITAL 032 and ITAL 111 providing a review of Italian grammar learned in the previous years and opportunities to develop the four skills of speaking, understanding, reading, and writing at an advanced level.
ITAL 120: Italian soc. & Pop culture
Italian society and pop-culture is a 1-credit course designed mostly for freshmen students. Topics will include Italian lifestyle, news & tabloids, Italian customs and traditions, the role of cuisine, fashion and sports, and cultural items linked to social phenomenon. The course is asynchronous and taught in English.
ITAL 233: Writing & Culture
This course is designed to help students of Italian who have reached an advanced level of competence in the language, practice and refine their writing skills through intensive work on a variety of texts that deal with culturally salient topics in modern Italy. Such topics range from the representation of value systems and cultural attitudes typical of the Italian people to reflections on the history and development of their language.
ITAL 237: Business Italian
Have you ever dreamed of working for Ferrari, Prada, a Società Italiana Multinazionale, or as an international lawyer? Would you like to wake up in the morning and read the business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore along with your cappuccino? Italy, known for its rich artistic patrimony, is also an industrial power with a thriving economy. This course will introduce students to the Italian business culture, its entrepreneurship, the success of the “made in Italy” brands, and the language of business, finance, and commerce.
ITAL 337: Italian Cinema – Adv. Journey
This course analyzes Italian cinema as both a reflection and a facet of Italian culture, society and politics, while providing a historical overview of its major periods and trends, from the Silent Era to the present.
ITAL 355: Bella Ciao! Women in Italian Culture
This course focuses on the shifting role of women in Italian culture, from the Middle Ages to the present, and on their contributions to the Italian unification and the Resistance. We will pay particular attention to women’s agency in literature and the arts, in terms of authorship and self-representation. Finally, we will analyze major changes in Italian society and law, such as Fascist demographic policies and the legislation regarding divorce and abortion, and their impact on women’s lives.
ITAL 383: Dante’s Afterlife – Pop Culture
This course has a twofold goal: reading selected cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy and exploring its rewritings and adaptations in popular culture including literature, comics, cinema, rock/pop songs, television and the visual arts.
ITAL 386: Made in Italy – Fashion and Food
For the last decades, the “Made in Italy” brand has connoted the uniqueness of the Italian merchandise in the domains of fashion, food, furniture, and industrial design. The meeting point of centuries-long artisanal tradition and innovative production techniques, Italian goods are recognized worldwide as the embodiment of creativity, elegance, and high quality. This course delves into two of the most influential areas of the “Made in Italy,” namely, Fashion and Food, offering a cultural history of their respective productions and their affirmation on international markets.
ITAL 444: Discourse Identity & Narrative
The study of identity is at the core of many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, however there is a special link that connects language and discourse to identities. Not only does the way people speak reveal a lot about who they are, but it also predomi-nantly through discourse and communication that individuals and communities convey and negotiate their sense of self. Among dis-course genres, narrative has a privileged role in constructing and conveying identities and constitutes one of the main arenas in which such processes are negotiated. This course aims at reflecting on and learning about these connections between discourse and identity, with a particular focus on narrative and storytelling. Topics that will be covered include the various kinds and levels of identities that have been the object of study of discourse, the different approaches that have emerged in discourse studies with regards to the analysis of identities, the particular tools that have been developed to this end in narrative studies and some of the debates that have taken place around these themes.