Italian
- ITA 101: Beginner's Italian ITo develop the skills of speaking, understanding, reading and writing Italian. The main emphasis is on oral drill and conversation in the classroom. Aspects of Italian culture and civilization are integrated in the course. In the Fall 2021 the Italian Language Program will launch a new digital portfolio that will serve as students' textbook. Through this new medium, students will be exposed to a more dynamic mode of language acquisition.
- ITA 107: Advanced ItalianThis course analyzes Italian culture and cultural changes through products such as newspaper articles, essays, comic books, music, film, food, and visual artifacts in connection with Italian history and society. Italian 107 is intended to provide students with tools for communicating effectively in Italian in an informal and formal context, to move students along the proficiency spectrum toward a more advanced language level, and to promote a global awareness and cross-cultural understanding of contemporary Italian life and culture. Classes are conducted entirely in Italian.
- ITA 108: Advanced Italian - Contemporary Society and CultureThe main goal of this course is to improve fluency in Italian and prepare students for upper level courses in the Italian program. Through film clips, film screenings, and readings, students will increase their understanding of grammatical functions and vocabulary applications, and improve their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The course has been enhanced with a digital platform, which allows students to actively interact with texts, films and each other through exercises and activities.
- ITA 220: Italian Civilization Through the CenturiesThis course is designed to give an overview of pivotal moments in Italian culture, such as the relationship between Church and Empire in the Middle Ages, Machiavelli's political theory during the Renaissance, and the rise and fall of Fascism in the 20th century. Through the examination of the most relevant intellectual, historic, and artistic movements and their main geographical venues, students will be able to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the development of Italian history and civilization.
- ITA 303/MED 303: Dante's 'Inferno'Intensive study of the "Inferno", with major attention paid to poetic elements such as structure, allegory, narrative technique, and relation to earlier literature, principally the Latin classics. Course conducted in English in a highly-interactive seminar format.
- ITA 309/AFS 309: Topics in Contemporary Italian Civilization: Africa in Italian ImaginationThis course explores the colonial experience discussed by Italian writers who were in contact with Northern Africa between the 19th and the 20th centuries. This association between Italy and Africa has not been extensively developed neither within Italy or abroad, and it will be the primary focus of this course. The newly unified Italy (1861) looked at Africa as a colonial opportunity to expand its might and wealth. Writers soon embarked to places such as Alexandria and shared a unique perspective on Africa: they understood the continent not as a space to conquer and colonize, but rather as a surprisingly tolerant society in which to live.
- ITA 314/COM 387: Risorgimento, Opera, FilmThis course will explore the ways in which national identity was imagined and implemented within Italian literature, culture, and cinema before, during, and after the period of Italian unification in the mid-XIX century. Examples are drawn from a wide range of literary, artistic and cultural media.