Italian

Introduction to bibliographic resources and their organization in both printed and electronic formats that are fundamental to advanced research.

Developments and trends from the Duecento to our time; in-depth textual analysis of representative texts.

Developments and trends from the Duecento to our time; in-depth textual analysis of representative texts.

The external history and internal development of the Italian language from its origins to the present.

The seminar offers an interdisciplinary analysis of several travellogues to the Middle East and beyond, written in Italian between the 13th and the 17th century. Using this approach, perspective, and secondary readings from the field of literary criticism and textual bibliography - and with the addition of many interdisciplianry readings - we will discuss the role of Italy and the Italian language in the making of a transnational literary genre.

The main focus of this seminar is the analysis and the discussion of a specific Renaissance literary genre. The turcica were texts on the Turks and the Ottoman Empire written approximately between the Conquest of Constantinople (1453) and the battle of Vienna (1683). The genre includes military reports, histories, and genealogies of the Ottoman empire, ethnographic accounts and polemical pamphlets. Through an in-depth analysis of primary source, we will discuss the role of the Ottoman Empire in the self-definition of European identity, with a particular interest in the Italian historians and orientalists. PDFs or photocopies of the texts will be distributed one week before each class meeting so that students may prepare them for discussion.

Between 1960 and 1980 Leonardo Sciascia and Italian micro historians reflected extensively on the relation between history and fiction. How did they relate with 19th-century historical fiction? How did they use fiction and non-fiction as hermeneutical tools to understand Italian past, and especially Early Modern Italy? How did Carlo Ginzburg and Leonardo Sciascia read Stendhal? And what did Sciascia find in Natalie Zemon Davis' books? Why should we return to these texts while leading historians are going against micro history? Are micro history and global history compatible? We will probe these questions of large import for both literary historians and historians through an examination of historical non-fictions (many Sciascia's inchieste), and the masterpieces of Italian and American micro history. Topics include popular culture, the Inquisition, the role of justice in Italian culture, popular culture and philology, and the relation between 16th-century Italy and the global world.

Tasso as a poet and literary theorist through an analysis of Rinaldo, Aminta and Gerusalemme Liberata and discussion of Dialoghi. Emphasis on epic and pastoral precedents, contemporary philosophical currents, the moral and political influence of the Counter Reformation.

The evolution of the allegorical literary tradition from the classical and medieval periods to its development in Italian Renaissance fiction. Allegorical commentaries of the Aenid, the Roman de la Rose, Petrarch’s Trionfi, Boccaccio's Amorosa visione, Poliziano’s Stanze, selections of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Machiavelli’s Asino d’oro.

This course maps the origins of the Italian lyric, starting in Sicily and following its development in Tuscany, in the poets of the dolce stil nuovo and ultimately, Dante. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.

Moves from political and historical to literary text;  examines each author’s perspective on the sociopolitical issues that dominated Italian Renaissance culture.  Major authors (e.g., L. B. Alberti, Guicciardini, Ariosto) and lesser-known ones.

From D’Annunzio and Pirandello to the poets and novelists of our  day.

From D’Annunzio and Pirandello to the poets and novelists of our  day.

The different aspects of Italian Romanticism, and its complex relations with the German and English movements.

A close reading of a selection of short stories (novelle) by two authors, with reference to the social and historical environment of southern Italy.

Moral philosophy, art and literary theory, history, and educational methods in the writings of Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Matteo Palmieri, L.B. Alberti, Guarino Veronese and his son Battista, and Lorenzo Valla.

Focus on the two authors in the context of European Romanticism (German and English).  Attention to the legacy of classical antiquity in Foscolo’s formation, evidenced in his poetical, critical and philological works.

This course will explore encounters with the lands and peoples of Asia and Africa in a selection of Italian fictional works from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with attention to the historical and literary context. Classes will be in English, but many of the works are available in Italian only.

One of the most significant prose writers of the 19th century, Manzoni is an emblematic representative of the Catholic tradition.  His major works read in the context of European debates on Romanticism.  Manzoni’s European dimension is assessed at the levels of the genesis of individual works and their critical reception.

Montale’s work, against the background of Italian and European  poetry.

While focusing on the Decameron, this course follows the arc of Boccaccio's career from the Ninfale Fiesolano, through the Decameron, and concluding with the Corbaccio, using the treatment of women as the connective thread. The Decameron is read in the light of its cultural density and contextualized in terms of its antecedents, both classical and vernacular, and of its intertexts, especially Dante's Commedia, with particular attention to Boccaccio's masterful exploitation of narrative as a means for undercutting all absolute certainty. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.

Focus on Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier as educational treatise, philosophical meditation, sociopolitical document, and book of courtly manners; other courtly writings of the period, from Della Casa’s Galateo to Ariosto’s Satires to Bembo’s Asolani. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.

A reading of the Canzoniere that explicates Petrarch not only as he fashions himself authorially in contrast to Dante, but brings to bear ideas on time and narrative from authors such as Augustine and Ricoeur in order to reconstruct the metaphysical significance of collecting fragments in what was effectively a new genre. We will consider this new genre-the lyric sequence-as well as read Petrarch's Secretum and Trionfi. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.

Kindred spirit to Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Hölderlin, Leopardi’s 19th-century Romantic sensibility is deeply intertwined with classicism; the Hellenic ideal reworked into a personal philosophy on a par with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.  His poetic achievement and clarity of vision a crucial term of comparison in the foundations of modernity.

Focus on the principal works of Machiavelli in an effort to understand the various facets of his complex and at times seemingly contradictory literary personality.  His role as political scientist, historian, comic playwright, and short story writer. In English.

Focus on Machiavelli’s Prince and Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier as philosphical, sociopolitical, historical, and literary documents: points of comparison between the two works.

An in-depth study of Italy's two major romance epics, Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in their literary and historical contexts. Topics include creative imitation, genre, allegory, ideology, and politics. Attention will also be given to the place of these two texts in the global history of the epic.

In revisiting two major authors of the Italian modern novel, the course investigates the relation between fiction and the "conditions of modernity" (personal risk, anxiety and lack of control on reality, secularization, to name a few). Special attention will be paid to the response of the novelistic discourse to modernity, and to Italy's peculiarly peripheral position in the modern world. Primary texts will be read in Italian, while theoretical references will be in English.

This course will examine a selection of chivalric narratives, primarily episodes from Boiardo and Ariosto, as they pass from written word to theatrical performance in the form of Sicilian puppet theater and Tuscan-Emilian epic Maggi(folk opera). Classes will be in English, but the performances and some readings are in Italian without available translations.

Examines popular romances that were frequently printed during the 16th century but are not part of the current canon.  These lesser-known works not only provide an important context for the evolution of the romance-epic genre and the novel, they also help us understand the socio-historical and cultural climate of 16th-century Italy.  Class in English, but reading knowledge of Italian required since texts are not available in translation.

Against the backdrop of the heated critical debate on the boundaries and limitations of the autobiographical genre, this course addresses the modern and contemporary tradition of autobiographical writings, focusing in particular (but not exclusively) on exploring and positing the potential difference between male and female autobiographers. More specifically, we will question the adequacy of the traditional model of autobiographical selfhood based on the assumption of unified, universal, exemplary and transcendent self to arrive at an understanding of women's autobiography. Topics to be addressed include: the crisis of the subject, "je est un autre", the "man" with a movie camera, strategies of concealment and disclosures. Authors to be studied include: D'Annunzio, Pirandello, Svevo, Fellini, Moretti, Ortese, Ginzburg, Manzini, Cialente, Ramondino. In Italian

Literary representations of the Italian South from the late nineteenth century to the present. Special attention to the symbolic importance of the South in modern Italian culture. Short stories and novels by Verga, D'Annunzio, Pirandello, Alvaro, Levi, Lampedusa, and Sciascia.

The course examines the important Italian contribution to modern and contemporary narrative, especially in the genre of short narrative (short story, novella), with attention also to novels, combining narrative theory with close reading. Authors include A. De Céspedes, E. Morante, as well as S. Vassalli, D. Del Giudice, P. V. Tondelli, etc. Lectures in English, texts in Italian.

This seminar intends to examine migration from Italy with a particular attention to the United States, and migration and tourism to Italy from a global prospective. The establishment of varied enclaves of Italian emigrants abroad (especially in the USA), as well as the development of immigrants' identities in Italy today, will be analyzed. Traditional and historical ‘ethnic migration' and contemporary migrant practices will be studied and compared, while taking into consideration the noticeable range of transnational mobilities. The course will also study tourism as a well rooted industry in Italy, that plays an important role in the international tourism industry, and that keeps evolving and adapting to the challenging changes at a global level. Specific forms of tourism, such as cultural, agro-rural, and religious tourism, will be analyzed. How culture is represented and perceived in touristic spaces, how cultural traditions are reinvented to satisfy tourist expectations, and how and why ‘ethnic' stereotypes are constructed and manipulated for tourism will also be a focus in the seminar. In English.

What is Interpretation? How does it work? What are the major Theories of Criticism in Italy? What is the difference between aesthetics, poetics, critique and the work of art in itself? What is their relationship to other aspects of culture? These and other questions will be addressed in this course,We will begin with a sketch of the Italian tradition from Humanism to the late nineteenth century, then focus on Idealism and its pervasiveness in most realms of culture from the beginning of the twentieth century through the post-WWII period. Subsequently, discussions will be dedicated to a broad variety of critical methods and their relevance as and for interpretive strategies.

Verga's major works of fiction (I Malavoglia, Mastro-don Gesualdo, and two collections of rustic novelle) in relation to the key cultural trends and historical developments in postunification Italy (the emergence of verismo, the new dimensions of publishing and readership, the genesis of the Southern Question).  Also, selected novelle by Gabriele D’Annunzio and Luigi Pirandello to appreciate how the legacy of Verga and verismo was reelaborated in the new cultural climate of decadentismo.  Lectures in English; text in Italian, comparative literature students who use translation are welcome.

This course examines Italy's Southern Question from the nineteenth century to the present, investigating the interrelations among cultural representation, geography, and power by focusing on three writers/artists who produced major representations and theorizations of the Southern Question in three different cultural forms: the fiction of Giovanni Verga, the theoretical writings of Antonio Gramsci; the films of Luchino Visconti. Readings and discussion in English. Optional additional readings in Italian.

Addresses women writers working in Italy from the postwar period to the 1990s. Analyzes the historical novel, fantastic fiction, and autobiography. Against the backdrop of the critical debate on the literary canon, explores the specificity of women's writing and the way these articulated their difference by subverting and altering dominant literary codes. In English.

The political, social, and cultural issues affecting Italy in the crucial, dramatic years between 1943 and 1945. More specifically, the canonical literary and cinematic representations of the war, the "Resistenza" and the Holocaust and the aesthetic issues related to the encounter between history and fiction, reality and imagination. Further examination of how the war has affected women: such an inquiry will require the evaluation of lesser-known women's texts.Topics to be addressed include: war and gender, women as subjects of history, the intersection of the political and the private. Authors to be examined include: Calvino, Fenoglio,Pavese, Levi, Rossellini, Wertmuller, Rosi, Vigano', Milli, Zangrandi, D'Eramo.

Close analysis of Italian city-films that represent and map out Rome as a real and imagined space. The course attempts to establish a canon of city-films through which to articulate a counter-history of Italian cinema as it passes from neorealism to the present -- from Roma città aperta (1945) to La grande bellezza (2013)  --  and to embed these films within a larger cultural and urban history in which cinematic  Rome plays a crucial role in the Italian construction of a national urban consciousness.

The course will be focused on Leopardi’s Canti, with special reference to the concept of nature. The theme will be explored in connection with the main philosophical sources of Leopardi’s thought, as located within Nineteenth century European philosophy. The course so intends to provide a deep knowledge of Leopardi’s poetry, in which the theme of nature plays a crucial role, as well as a clear vision of its philosophical and literary background. Not only that, the aim of the course is also to familiarize students with problems concerning the relations of nature and human beings, as Leopardi saw them, and as we still see them.  To attend the course, no special competence is required, but for a good knowledge of Italian language. In Italian.

The course will examine the foundations of modern drama and stage representation by analysing Luigi Pirandello's plays and theoretical works in close comparison with the major authors and drama theorists of the XIX century, including Bertolt Brecht, August Strinberg, and Jean Genet.

A study of Ungaretti's work; its relationship to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Valéry, and Italian lyricists from Petrarch to Leopardi, D'Annunzio, and  the Twilight poets. Texts read in the original.

Research seminar in various areas of Dante studies, such as Dante’s relation to the classics or Dante’s lyric past.

An in-depth study of Italy's two major romance epics, Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in their literary and historical contexts. Topics include creative imitation, genre, allegory, ideology, and politics. Attention will also be given to the place of these two texts in the global history of the epic.

Explores the cultural history of Naples and the Neapolitans over the past two centuries in diverse areas including literature, film, theatre, and music. Works will include texts by Serao, Croce, Benjamin, Gramsci, De Filippo, and Ortese; films by Rossellini, Rosi, and Pasolini.

Same course as ITAL V1101-V1102.

Introduction to Italian grammar, with emphasis on reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.

Conversation courses may not be used to satisfy the language requirement or fulfill major or concentration requirements. Intensive practice in the spoken language, assigned topics for class discussions, and oral reports.

Conversation courses may not be used to satisfy the language requirement or fulfill major or concentration requirements. Practice in the spoken language through assigned topics on contemporary Italian culture.

A review of grammar, intensive reading, composition, and practice in conversation. Exploration of literary and cultural material. Lab: hours to be arranged.

A review of grammar, intensive reading, composition, and practice in conversation. Exploration of literary and cultural material. Lab: hours to be arranged. ITAL V1202 fulfils the basic foreign language requirement and prepares students for advanced study in Italian language and literature.

A review of grammar, intensive reading, composition, and practice in conversation. Exploration of literary and cultural material. Lab: hours to be arranged.

A review of grammar, intensive reading, composition, and practice in conversation. Exploration of literary and cultural material. Lab: hours to be arranged. ITAL V1202 fulfils the basic foreign language requirement and prepares students for advanced study in Italian language and literature.

An intensive course that covers two semesters of intermediate Italian in one, and prepares students for advanced language and literature study. Grammar, reading, writing, and conversation. Exploration of literary and cultural materials. This course may be used to fulfill the language requirement if preceded by both V1101 and V1102. Students who wish to use this course for the language requirement, and previously took Intensive Elementary, are also required to take at least one of the following: ITAL V3333, V3334, V3335, or V3336, for a total of three (3) semesters of Italian Language.

Written and oral self-expression in Italian; brief papers and oral reports on a variety of topics, including films and literature; grammar review.

Advanced reading, writing, speaking with emphasis on authentic cultural materials. Topic and semester theme varies.

Students will develop advanced language competence while analyzing and discussing Italian film comedies and their reflection of changing Italian culture and society. Films by Monicelli, Germi, Moretti, Wertmuller, Soldini and others.

"Italiana. Introduction to Italian Culture, the High, the Low, and the In-between" aims at expanding the students' knowledge of Italian culture and improving and refining their language skills, through writing, reading, speaking, and listening. This is a content based course in which the students familiarize with the most crucial moments of Italian history and are exposed to the issues that are currently debated in Italy, such as national identity, immigration, emigration, homoparental family, and the truthfulness or deceptiveness of the brand Made in Italy. Naturally, considerable attention is given to the distinctive geographical, economical, and cultural traits of Italian regions and their cities. The students apply their communicative skills in Italian by conversing with the Italian students currently registered at Columbia University and by conducting interviews within New York's Italian communities on the subjects studied and discussed in class.

Explores the representation of national identity in Italian cinema from the Facist era to the present. Examines how both geography and history are used to construct an image of Italy and the Italians. Special focus on the cinematic representation of travel and journeys between North and South. Films by major neo-realist directors (Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti) as well as by leading contemporaries (Moretti, Amelio).

A study of the Italian fairy tale from its oral folk origins to the first literary examples, viewed from a variety of critical approaches including the formalist, folkloric and psychoanalytic.

The institutions of marriage and the family, from the quattrocento through the seicento.  Economic and social factors, as well as intellectual and ideological perspectives.  The Italian peninsula, and emphasis on central and northern Italian states.

Same course as ITAL V1201-V1202.

Same course as ITAL V1201-V1202.

Primarily for graduate students and others who need to develop their reading knowledge of Italian. Grammar and vocabulary review; practice in reading and translating Italian from a variety of fields, including literature, art history, and political science, depending on the needs of the students. No previous knowledge of Italian is required. Note: this course may not be used to satisfy the language requirement or to fulfill major or concentration requirements.

What is a fantastic text and what renders it "scandalous" (R. Caillois)? How do nineteenth-century fantastic tropes and motifs survive in present-day narratives? What assumptions about "real" and "reality" do they reveal? How can fantastic representations of the inexplicable, supernatural and inhuman shape and enrich our understanding of the human mind and the world around us? And finally, why are we so fascinated by that which frightens us? In this course, we will address these and many other questions by looking at short stories, films, TV shows and comic books from the Italian and other traditions, from the 19th century to the present day. The course will be loosely chronological, but will be based mainly around thematic units. Through a comparative approach, we will explore the relationship between the fantastic mode and notions such as the uncanny, the repressed and the unconscious. We will look at our primary texts through an interdisciplinary lens spanning literary theory and genre studies to psychoanalysis and reader-response theory. Some primary texts are only available in Italian; however, accommodations can be made for non- Italian speakers.

Students read short texts, analyze the anatomy of an Italian essay, observe and practice sophisticated sentence structures, solidify their knowledge and usage of Italian grammar, and expand their vocabulary. After discussing and analyzing examples of contemporary prose, students will integrate the structures and vocabulary they have acquired into their own writing.

Development of advanced reading and conversational skills. Close reading and extensive practice writing in a variety of genres which will include: the letter, the diary, the essay, the critical review, and will focus especially on the composition of short stories and vignettes. In Italian.

Experiments and analyses of translations, especially from literary texts, from English into Italian and from Italian into English. Classroom discussion of aspects of the translation process, and of the general interpretation of the translated texts. Each student will keep a "Translation Notebook." In Italian

A study of several 16th-century Italian plays, focussing on comedy, but also exploring tragedy, favola, pastoral, and tragicommedia. Plays by Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Bruno, Aretino, Trissino, Tasso, and Guarini.

An examination of 15th- and 16th-century writings by women and about women. The education of women, women and the family, the notion of women and the woman writer, women at court, and querelle des femme, poet-courtesans, rape and pornography

The course offers an overview of the historiography of the Mediterranean from Braudel to the contemporary debate about Mediterraneism in Italian literature and philosophy. We will use Italian literary sources, such as Matteo Bandello, Carlo Levi, and Vincenzo Consolo to discuss historiography of the Mediterranean. PDFs or photocopies of the texts will be distributed one week before each class meeting so that students may prepare them for class discussion. In English with selected readings in Italian.

This seminar examines the many meanings of fashion, design, and style, especially in Italian culture and tradition; how values are preserved, reinvented and rethought through a lens that is internationally known as "Made in Italy"; how the symbolic meanings and ideological interpretations are connected to creation, production, and consumption of goods. Based on an anthropological perspective and framework, this interdisciplinary course will analyze ways in which we can understand the ‘Italian style' through the intersections of many different levels: political, economic, aesthetic, symbolic, religious, etc. The course will study how fashion can help us understand the ways in which tradition and innovation, creativity and technology, localism and globalization, identity and diversity, power and body, are elaborated and interpreted in contemporary Italian society, in relation to a globalized world. Short videos that can be watched on the computer and alternative readings for those fluent in Italian will be assigned. There are no pre‐requisites for this course. In English.

Discussion of texts by the major 15th-century humanist writers including Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Matteo Palmieri, L.B. Alberti, and Guarino da Verona. Students can read texts in Latin, Italian, and/or English.

A year-long course in which the "Commedia" is read over two consecutive semesters; students can register for the first, the second, or both semesters. This course offers a thorough grounding in the entire text and an introduction to the complexities of its exegetical history. Attention not only to historical and theological issues, but also to Dante's mimesis, his construction of an authorial voice that generations of readers have perceived as "true," and the critical problems that emerge when the virtual reality created in language has religious and theological pretensions. SECTION 001: Lectures in English, text in Italian; examinations require the ability to translate Italian. SECTION 002: Lectures in English, examinations in English; students who can follow lectures with the help of translations but who cannot manage the Italian should register for this section.

The course aims at providing students with a broad knowledge of the political and cultural issues affecting Italy in the crucial, dramatic years between 1922 and 1945. Against the backdrop of Mussolinï's politics, our investigation examines the complex, multifaceted ways the dictatorship has been portrayed in fiction and cinema. Our research will require the evaluation of written texts and films produced both during this period and after it. We will analyze some fundamentals of the fascist doctrine and the most prominent strategies through which Fascism succeeded in creating a popular consensus (i.e., social projects and sophisticated techniques of propaganda). Then we will proceed alternating the analysis of historical documents with literary and cinematic works authored by Moravia, Vittorini, and Fellini, among others.

Focus on a little-known genre of modern Italian literature. The works of several writers, both major and minor. Comparisons with the tradition of the mystery tale in other European literatures.

This seminar examines what can be considered a tremendous Italian diversity. Italy is a multicultural society, not only because of the flow of immigrants throughout the most recent decades, but also because of a too often neglected historical, cultural, linguistic and political ‘inner’ diversity. Linguistic minorities, religious groups, cultural enclaves, ‘nomadic’ cultures, immigrants & refugees, and border residents are the main focus of this course. The seminar will also analyze how these differences constructively cohabitate or how they can represent sources of conflict; it will provide examples of either peaceful pluralism or of conflictual social friction. Videos that can be watched on the computer and alternative readings for those fluent in Italian will be assigned. There are no pre-requisites for this course.

Explores the emergence of, and quest for, new literary ideas and programs in early-Ottocento Italian poetry and prose.  Emphasis on such central notions as Classicism, Romanticism, and Tradition, and on the strong connection between literary issues (genres, forms, and language) and historical/cultural ones (nation, political struggle, and civil engagement) in the works of the major authors of this period, Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, and Allesandro Manzoni.

Examines the writings of Antonio Gramsci and their influence on literary criticism, cultural studies, and filmmaking. Includes works by Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Pier Paolo Pasolini; criticism by Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Stuart Hall; films by Luchino Visconti, the Taviani Brothers, Pasolini.

The course examines some of the most important novels that belong to Italy's period of major social and economic transformations. Only after WWII Italy finally becomes a modern nation, i.e. a republic based on truly universal suffrage, and an industrialized country. Such accelerated progress, though,causes deep social instability and mobility which obviously results in heavy psychological pressures on the people: adaptation becomes crucial and inevitable. Fiction therefore resumes the task to represent such awkwardness of integration into a modern bourgeois society that, contrarily to its European and American counterpart, is extremely tentative and insecure per se, since it's political identity has extremely precarious grounds. Among other authors, primary readings include Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard and Italo Calvinos's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Primary Readings in Italian.

A critical assessment of some of the main features of the Italian character. Representations of Italianicity (dealing with such issues as Fascism, the Mafia, and Catholicism) analyzed on the basis of literary and cultural readings.

An interdisciplinary investigation into Italian culture and society in the years between World War I and the present. Drawing on historical analyses, literary texts, letters, film, cartoons, popular music, etc., the course examines some of the key problems and trends in the cultural and political history of the period. Lectures, discussion and required readings will be in English. Students with a knowledge of Italian are encouraged to read the primary literature in Italian.