Department of Italian Studies Curriculum

ITAS 101-102 Elementary Italian

Laviosa, Pausini, Ward

These courses focus on the development of basic language skills: grammar, reading and writing, speaking and listening. Viewing of language video programs, TV programs and films, listening to traditional and modern songs, and reading of passages and short stories offer an introduction to Italy and its culture. Three periods. Each semester earns one unit of credit. However, both semesters must be completed satisfactorily to receive credit for either course.

Prerequisite: None

Distribution: None

Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 101 section 1 (Fall 2003)

Syllabus for 101 section 2 (Fall 2003)

Syllabus for 101 section 3 (Fall 2003)

Syllabus for 102 section 3 (Spring 2004)

ITAS 201-202 Intermediate Italian

Laviosa, Pausini, Ward

The aim of these courses is to develop students’ fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture as well as the writing of compositions are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films, cultural videos, or TV programs. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions. Three periods. Each semester earns one unit of credit. However, both semesters must be completed satisfactorily to receive credit for either course.

Prerequisite: 101-102 (201 for 202) or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 201 section 1 (Fall 2003)

Syllabus for 201 section 2 (Fall 2003)

ITAS 202 Intermediate Italian in Rome

Staff

Held over Wintersession in Rome, the aim of this intensive course is to develop students’ fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions. Students must have received credit for ITAS 201 in order to receive credit for ITAS 202. Not offered every year. Subject to Dean’s Office approval.

Prerequisite: 101, 102, 201 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Wintersession Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 202 section 1 (Spring 2004)

ITAS 203 Italian Women Writers

Ward

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. Aimed at intermediate level students as well as those interested in the role of women in Italian society and culture, the course examines writings and films by and about Italian women. The course will study the role of women in the three key moments of modern Italian history: namely, the Risorgimento, fascism, and the resistance. Attention will also be paid to women’s cultural and political role in Italy in the second half of the twentieth century. Authors to be studied include Sibilla Aleramo, Natalia Ginzburg, Alba De Cespedes, Luisa Passerini, Giuseppe Berti, and Anna Banti; film directors will include Lina Wertmuller and Ettore Scola.

Prerequisite: 201

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 211 Introduction to Italian Cultural Studies

Laviosa

Topic for 2003-04: Women in Italy. This course explores the works of women writers, philosophers, sociologists, educators, political activists, legislators, film directors and singers from the 1920s up to today. Feminist issues are discussed through selected literary texts, historical readings, essays on Italian legislation, film/documentary, lullabies, feminist, rock and pop songs. Women's art and roles, rights and work, health and reproduction, prostitution and crime, fashion and beauty myths, careerism and (fe)maleism, nomadism and migration are presented through various media in a broad socio-political-historical context as well as in a cross-disciplinary cultural studies approach.

Prerequisite: 201 as a prerequisite and 202 as a corequisite or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 211

ITAS 212 Italian Women Directors: The Female Authorial Voice in Italian Cinema (in English)

Laviosa

This course examines the films of five major Italian women directors across three artistic generations: Elvira Notari in the silent film era; Liliana Cavani and Lina Wertmüller from the 1960s to the 1990s; Francesca Archibugi and Roberta Torre in the 1990s. Neither fascist cinema nor neorealism fostered female talents, so it was only with the emergence of feminism and the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s that a space for female voices in Italian cinema was created. The course will explore how women directors give form to their directorial signatures in film, focusing on their films’ formal features and narrative themes in the light of their socio-historical context.

Prerequisite: None

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video

Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 212 (Fall 2003)

ITAS 261 Italian Cinema (in English)

Viano

The first half of this course aims to survey Italian cinema through an examination of films (e.g. Bicycle Thief) and directors (e.g. Fellini) unanimously regarded as landmarks of the history of motion pictures. The second half will focus on the evolution and socio-cultural ramifications of a specific genre. We will study La Commedia all’Italiana (Comedy Italian style), one of the genres that made Italian cinema marketable abroad. In addition to regular class meetings, students are required to attend a three-hour weekly film showing.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor required.

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theatre, Film, Video or Language and Literature

Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0

ITAS 262 Religion and Spirituality in Italian Cinema (in English)

Viano

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. Religious imagery, spiritual concerns, and depictions of the church are common elements in many Italian films. Making use of the most well-known and thought-provoking among them, the course will chart the presence of religion and spirituality in Italian culture, as well as explore the sacred as a cinematic genre. We will watch films by directors such as Rossellini, Fellini, Bertolucci, and Cavani. The several films depicting the figure of St. Francis, spanning the period 1917-89, will give us the opportunity to examine different periods of film history, from silent to contemporary independent cinema. In addition to regular class meetings, students are required to attend a three-hour weekly film showing.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor required.

Distribution: Arts, Music, Theater, Film, Video or Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 263 Dante (in English)

Jacoff

The course offers students an introduction to Dante and his culture. The centrality and encyclopedic nature of Dante’s Divine Comedy make it a paradigmatic work for students of the Middle Ages. Since Dante has profoundly influenced several writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, knowledge of the Comedy illuminates modern literature as well. This course presumes no special background and attempts to create a context in which Dante’s poetry can be carefully explored.

Prerequisite: None

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 263 (Fall 2000)

ITAS 271 The Construction of Italy as a Nation

Ward

The course aims, first, to give students who wish to continue their study of Italian the chance to practice and refine their skills; and second, to introduce students to one of the major themes of Italian culture: namely, the role played by Italian intellectuals in the construction of Italy as a nation. We will read how Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli imagined Italy as a nation before it came into existence in 1860; how the nation came to be unified; and how the experience of unification has come to represent a controversial point of reference for twentieth-century Italy. Other figures to be studied will include Bembo, Castiglione, Foscolo, Gramsci, Tomasi di Lampedusa, D’Annunzio, Visconti, Levi, Blasetti, and Rossellini.

Prerequisite: 202, 203, 211 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 271 (Fall 2003)

ITAS 272 Small Books, Big Ideas. A Journey through Italian Identities

Parussa

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. Unlike other European literatures, contemporary Italian literature lacks a major work of fiction representing the nation’s cultural identity. Rather, Italian literature’s boast is the small book, brief unclassifiable narratives that express the variety and complexity of Italian culture. Realistic novels or philosophical short stories, memoirs or literary essays, these works are a fine balance between a number of literary genres and, as such, are a good entranceway into the multifaceted and contradictory identity of Italy as a nation. The course will combine a survey of contemporary Italian literature with a theoretical analysis of how Italian identity has been represented in works by Moravia, Calvino, Ortese, and others.

Prerequisite: 201 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 309 Italian-Jewish Identity

Parussa

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. In the light of events like the high-profile trial of a Nazi war criminal and the Pope’s encyclical letter on the responsibilities of Christians in the Holocaust, this course aims to discuss the question of Jewish identity in contemporary Italian culture. Students will read prose and poetry, essays and articles, as well as watch films that address issues such as religious and national identity in a culturally, racially, and linguistically homogeneous country like Italy. The course will also give students an overview of the formation and transformation of the Jewish community in Italian society. In addition to well-known Jewish Italian writers like Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani, students will read pertinent works by non-Jewish writers like Rosetta Loy.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 310 Fascism and Resistance in Italy

Ward

This course examines the two fundamental political and cultural experiences of twentieth-century Italy: the twenty-year fascist regime and the resistance to it. We will study the origins of fascism in Italy’s participation in World War I and its colonial ambitions; we will follow the development of fascism over the two decades of its existence and ask to what extent it received the consensus of the Italian people. We will go on to examine the various ways in which Italians resisted fascism and the role the ideals that animated antifascist thinking had in the post-war period. Authors to be studied include: Marinetti, D’Annunzio, Pascoli, Croce, Gobetti, Rosselli, Bassani, Ginzburg, Levi, and Silone.

Prerequisite: 211 or 271 or 272 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Spring Unit: 1.0

ITAS 311 Theatre, Politics, and the Arts in Renaissance Italy

Parussa

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. The flourishing Italian theatre in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is an extraordinary and unmatched phenomenon in the history of Italian culture. In Italian courts and city squares, theatre became the center of a dynamic relationship between power and culture. Under the aegis of princes and popes, artists of all kinds worked for the stage to celebrate and criticize the same power that both fostered and limited their intellectual freedom. The stage became a mirror in which Renaissance Italy, while attempting to admire its beauty, came face to face with its distorted image. The course will include readings of major plays by Bibiena, Machiavelli, and Ariosto. Attention will also be given to the paintings, drawings, and sketches used in the staging of these plays.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 312 Seminar. Rinascimento e Rinascimenti: Cultural Identities in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Italy

Parussa

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. The Renaissance witnessed deep cultural transformations that have influenced contemporary ways of thinking. Cultural notions of class, gender, and religion find their roots in the cultural debate that animated Italian courts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Exploring how these notions have been both shaped and challenged, the course will suggest that it is more appropriate to think of the Renaissance as a plural rather than a single entity. In particular, attention will be given to themes such as the donna angelicata and the poet, the cortegiano and the peasant, the principe and the artist. The course will give students a solid introduction to the literature of the period and provide them with a theoretical framework for a thorough discussion of the material at hand.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 313 The Image of Woman in Renaissance Italian Literature

Lansing (Brandeis)

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. This course will examine the image of woman in Renaissance literature, chiefly in relation to the theme of love, focusing on examples of female emancipation from traditional medieval roles of inferiority and submissiveness as well as projections of idealized woman. Readings will concentrate on Boccaccio’s Decameron, a work explicitly dedicated to women in love, and explore, in succession, Petrarch’s idealized conception of feminine beauty in the Canzoniere, Castiglione’s image of courtly perfection in the Libro del Cortegiano, and Ariosto’s multivalent treatment of heroic and comic figures in the Orlando Furioso.

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O Unit: 1.0

ITAS 314 The Other Half: History and Culture of the Italian South

Ward

This course aims to introduce advanced level students to the rich and varied cultural and historical landscape of the Italian South, the mezzogiorno. Taking as its starting point the medieval court of Frederick II and the deep-seated repercussions its influence had on Italian cultural life, the course goes on to examine the works of southern thinkers and writers like Giordano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella, and Giambattista Vico, as well as the Neapolitan Enlightenment and the Southern question. In addition, we will examine twentieth century writers like Carlo Levi, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Giuseppe Verga, Leonardo Sciascia and Vincenzo Consolo who either come from southern Italy or have written about it.

Prerequisite: 211 or 271 or 272 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: Fall Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 314 (Fall 2003)

ITAS 349 Seminar. The Function of Narrative

Ward

NOT OFFERED IN 2003-04. OFFERED IN 2004-05. Beginning with Boccaccio and going on to Manzoni and Verga, the course introduces students to the major figures of the Italian narrative tradition. We then go on to study twentieth-century narrative texts, all the time seeking answers to the question of why narrative is such a fundamental human need. Why, for example, do we narrate our experience of life and the sense we have of ourselves, even in the form of diaries? Do the stories we tell faithfully reflect reality or do they create it? The course concludes with a reflection on narrative technique in cinema illustrated by films of Michelangelo Antonioni. Other authors to be studied may include: Fra Gonzaga, Calvino, Ceresa, Rasy, Pasolini, Celati, and Benni.

Prerequisite: 211 or 271 or 272 or permission of instructor.

Distribution: Language and Literature

Semester: N/O. Offered in 2004-05. Unit: 1.0

Syllabus for 349 (Fall 2002)

ITAS 350 Research or Individual Study

Prerequisite: Open by permission to students who have completed two units in literature in the department.

Distribution: None

Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0

ITAS 360 Senior Thesis Research

Prerequisite: By permission of department. See Academic Distinctions.

Distribution: None

Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0

ITAS 370 Senior Thesis

Prerequisite: 360

Distribution: None

Semester: Fall, Spring Unit: 1.0

Directions for election of major or minor