Italian courses in Winter 2008 (In addition to language courses, Italian 1-6) Italian 20X, Italian 101, Italian 112, Italian 121, Italian 179X GE courses: Italian 20X, Italian 179X: Courses taught in English Italian 101, Italian 112, Italian 121: Courses taught in Italian
	Italian 20X. Introduction to Italian Culture and Society. Professor Matteucci "Fashion, soccer, politics and scandal in contemporary Italy" This course is designed to give first-hand knowledge of contemporary Italian culture, and it is organized around the themes of fashion, soccer, and politics. With the purpose of exploring the reasons for which the notion of scandal has played (and plays) a crucial role in the shaping of Italian culture, we will consider a number of scholarly and literary texts as well as series of architectural, cinematographic, and visual works produced inside and outside Italy in the twentieth century. This course is taught entirely in English and satisfies area E of the General Education Program
	Italian 101. Advanced Reading and Composition Professor Matteucci "Italian Literature and Transformation" This course is designed to: (1) help students cultivating their reading and writing skills in Italian and (2) to introduce students to modern Italian literature and culture. We will dedicate particular attention to the theme of literary, bodily, social and political transformation. We will work on a selection of literary texts, produced by several major Italian writers of variable length This course is taught entirely in Italian, and satisfies area A of the Italian major.
	Italian 112, "Narrative fiction in Italian" Professor Lucia Re In-depth study of 4 masterpieces of the Italian short novel genre: Cosima by Grazia Deledda, Tra donne sole by Cesare Pavese, La giornata di uno scrutatore by Italo Calvino, Caro Michele by Natalia Ginzburg. The course will focus on the ways in which texts by these authors address in particular questions of desire, the body, gender roles, social conflict, and ethnic and racial difference. In conjunction with these thematic concerns, the course will also discuss relevant aspects of form and style such as narrative voice, diction, point of view, plot development, characterization, time and space, irony, ellipsis, compression and concision, atmosphere, symbolism and ambiguity. This course is taught entirely in Italian and satisfies area B of the Italian major.
	Italian 121, "From Page to Stage" Professor Luisella Bovio Arnold Exploration of the rich Italian theatrical tradition from cultural and popular viewpoints, through an actual practice of theater.. A special emphasis is placed on the staging and the representation of a short play, in the original language, by a well-known Italian author. Students are required to participate in all the aspects of the staging and performing and to use Italian all the time. The students read and interpret the text in the original language so as to acquire competence and self-confidence while speaking and acting in Italian. Moreover they become aware of the richness and flexibility of the Italian language and of the many nuances of the Italian cultural world. At the end of the quarter the class will put on stage their production and perform in front of a public. The class is open to all the students, who have medium to advanced ability to understand and speak Italian. No previous experience in Drama is required. Click here for the pictures of last year's performance.
	Italian 179X, "The Historic(al) in Italian Film and Literature" Professor Claudio Fogu Since Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the first historical epic in the history of film scripted by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the relationship between history, literature, and Italian cinema has been both fertile and reciprocal. As Italian writers, from Alessandro Manzoni to Umberto Eco, have been celebrated as masters of the historical novel, and nourished the historical imagination of Italians by merging in their novels representations of particular historical worlds with general philosophies of history, so filmmakers as different as Roberto Rossellini and Roberto Benigni have sought to make cinema the medium of historical consciousness in the 20th century. The production of historical pictures, from costume melodramas, to biopics and epics, has been one of the principal genre in Italian cinema from the silent era, through fascism, all the way to the postwar period. Alternating lectures, projection of films and discussions, this course will introduce students to some of the Italian masterpieces in the genre of the historical feature, while at the same time focusing specifically on the representation of the fascist period in film and literature. This course is taught entirely in English and satisfies areas F or G of the General Education Progran.
CN, 11/16/2007