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Intensive Elementary Italian
Covers the same material presented in Italian 100-200. One semester equivalent to the standard two-semester sequence. Daily meetings plus audio and video assignments.
- Primary Instructor
- Fantarella
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Elementary Italian
See Elementary Italian (ITAL 0100) for course description.
- Primary Instructor
- Abbona-Sneider
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Intermediate Italian II
Review of specific grammar problems. Reading of one novel and newspaper articles. Compositions and oral presentations. Three Italian films. Prerequisite: ITAL 0300, or placement by examination.
- Primary Instructor
- Abbona-Sneider
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Advanced Italian II
A sixth semester course with intensive practice in speaking and writing. Short stories, poems, music, and movies will be used to discuss Italian Society from the Second World War through the present. We will explore some important themes--family, religion, gender, and politics. Class discussion, compositions, oral presentations, and a final paper. Prerequisite: ITAL 0500, placement by examination.
- Primary Instructor
- Abbona-Sneider
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Simulating Reality: The (Curious) History and Science of Immersive Experiences.
Can an experimental approach enhance our critical-historical understanding of immersive experiences? We will look at the history of 3D vision from an interdisciplinary perspective combining the science of perception and the cultural history of technology. Through a series of collaborative activities and team experiments, we will learn how popular, pre-digital optical devices (such as camerae obscurae, magic lanterns, panoramas or stereoscopes) foreshadow contemporary VR, AR, or XR experiences designed for education and entertainment. Among the themes explored: virtual travel, social voyeurism and surveillance, utopian and dystopian imagination.
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Boccaccio's Decameron
Close study and discussion of Boccaccio's collection of 100 tales told by ten young Florentines over a period of two weeks, while in flight from the devastating plague of 1348. The Decameron defined the standard of Italian prose narrative for four centuries and deeply influenced Renaissance drama. We will also pay particular attention to visualizations and adaptations of the Decameron into a variety of media, from manuscript illumination to painting, theatre and film. Students will contribute to the Decameron Web, the award-winning Boccaccio web site administered by the department of Italian Studies. Sections in English and Italian. Enrollment limited to 40.
- Primary Instructor
- Martinez
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Arts of Memory in Ancient Rome (HIAA 1308)
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Criticality and Modern Art (HIAA 1880)
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Women, Gender, and Feminism in Early Modern Italy
This course explores the variety of Italian women’s histories, issues of gender and sexuality, and ingenious responses to circumvent the social, economic, religious, and political limitations placed upon them during the early modern period (1400-1800). Italian women produced some of the foundational texts of historical feminism, the intellectual and cultural movement that advanced the idea of equality across genders and the necessity of equal access to opportunity and education. This course surveys the alternatives proposed to the gender hierarchies of Italian society and will include selections from archival documents, letters, literature, treatises, and the visual arts. Course is taught in English.
- Primary Instructor
- Castiglione
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Modern Italy
A look at the dramatic events that transformed Italy over the past two centuries and the ways that this history has been represented in film. For the nineteenth century, the focus is on the violent birth of the modern Italian nation-state. For the twentieth century, the course focuses on the drama of Benito Mussolini and the birth, life, and death of Italian Fascism. In addition to examining the transformation of Italian history, the course investigates the many issues involved in turning a book of history into a commercial film.
- Primary Instructor
- Kertzer
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L’aperto e Le Sue Chiusure / The Open and its Closures
Echoing the confinement due to the Covid pandemic, this course will explore the idea of the “open” and its structural opposite, “closure,” as they are expressed in Italian culture, between theory, literature, and cinema. From confinement (Boccaccio’s Decameron) to prison (Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks), from the sanatorium (Bufalino’s Diceria dell’untore) to the psychiatric hospital (Basaglia), from the brothel (with the Merlin Law) to the border crossed by migrants, we will interrogate various figures of the open and its closures. The philosophical reflections of Agamben (The Open) and Esposito (on community and its immune closure) will accompany our path. Course is taught in Italian.
Course is taught in Italian.
- Primary Instructor
- Odello
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The Divina Commedia: Inferno and Purgatorio
A close reading of the first two canticles of Dante's poem in the light of contemporary European and American critical interpretations. In Italian. Enrollment limited to 40.
- Primary Instructor
- Martinez
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Independent Study Project (Undergraduate)
Undergraduate Independent Study supervised by a member of the Italian Studies Faculty. Students may pursue independent research in order to prepare for their honors thesis or honors multimedia project, or they may enroll in the course in order to work individually with a faculty member on a specific area of Italian Studies not covered in the current course offerings. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Castiglione
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Martinez
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Riva
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Fantarella
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Senior Conference
Special work or preparation of an honors thesis under the direction of a member of the staff. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Castiglione
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Martinez
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Riva
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Abbona-Sneider
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Gender Matters
This course examines the impact of gender as a category of analysis, focusing upon its varied repercussions on the study of history, with Italian history serving as one field of focus. Participants interested in other geographical, chronological, and disciplinary areas will have ample time to purse their interests. The study of gender has profoundly shaped the practice of history in the last half century, and the course outlines its impact and its transformations. The course places in conversation diverse but overlapping historical developments: the impact of the study of gender on history; influences from beyond history that have shared or shaped historians’ approach to gender and sexuality; the particular inflections of the study of gender in the case of Italy (1400-1800); the impact of the turn to the study of sexuality and queer studies. The course explores and critiques the limits of our gender constructs (theoretical, methodological, and modern) for explaining the culture of people in the premodern world and beyond the western hemisphere, fields of scholarship where the universality of contemporary notions of gender have been challenged. In English.
- Primary Instructor
- Castiglione
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Italian Studies Colloquium
The Italian Studies Colloquium is a forum for an exchange of ideas and work of the community of Italian scholars at Brown and invited outside scholars. Graduate students present their work in progress, and engage the work of faculty and visitors. They are expected to come prepared with informed questions on the topic presented. Presentations in both Italian and English. Instructor permission required.
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Preliminary Examination Preparation
For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing for a preliminary examination.
- Schedule Code
- E: Graduate Thesis Prep
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Reading and Research
Courses on special subjects individually planned and supervised. Section numbers vary by instructor. Please check Banner for the correct section number and CRN to use when registering for this course.
- Primary Instructor
- Castiglione
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Martinez
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Stewart-Steinberg
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Primary Instructor
- Riva
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
- Schedule Code
- I: Independent Study/Research
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Thesis Preparation
For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.
- Schedule Code
- E: Graduate Thesis Prep