Elective for students without previous training in Italian. No credit for first semester alone. Fundamentals of Italian grammar and development of skills in speaking, comprehension, and writing. Overview of contemporary Italian society. Four meetings per week, audio and video work, two Italian films. Note: This is a year course.

Review of the fundamentals of grammar, with emphasis on speaking and writing. Reading of representative short stories. Weekly compositions, presentations, and a paper. Three Italian films. Prerequisite: ITAL 0100-0200, or ITAL 0110, or placement by examination. Requirement for enrollment in the Bologna Program.

The purpose of this advanced course is to improve speaking and writing skills by offering extensive practice in a variety of styles and forms. Students will discuss various aspects of contemporary Italian culture. Reading, analysis and class discussion of texts (articles, songs, pictures, short stories, movies and television), oral presentations, based on research, and a writing portfolio (compositions, essays, blog and a journal). Prerequisites: ITAL 0400, or placement by examination.

How do we visualize the past? How has cinema influenced our understanding of contemporary history? The course will focus on how key moments of 20th-century History (Fascism, WWII, the Mafia and Terrorism) have been described or fictionalized by major Italian film-makers (including Benigni, Bertolucci, Cavani, Fellini and Pasolini). Subtitled films, readings and discussion groups. Reserved for First Year students. Enrollment limited to: 19.

We are what we eat. This course focuses on Italian traditions and its daily culinary practices to understand how food shaped and continues to shape Italian culture and identity. We will explore the historical, economic and social factors that have influenced the development of a national cuisine. How does food connect memory and identity? Sources considered are family memoirs and cookbooks; political programs of Futurism and Fascism and their relationship to Italian foodways; food representations in literature and cinema. Course will look at Italian - American cuisine and its key role in shaping identities in the new world.

This course examines the process of the construction of Italian identity from National Unification until today. Through a close reading of Manzoni, De Amicis, Verga and Lampedusa’s works, we investigate the formation of Italian identity through language, literature, food, and opera. We will also examine the problems of Post-Unification Italy: the economic and cultural gap between North and South and the Southern Issue. Finally, we will examine documentaries and readings that assess Italy today to analyze the feeling of not-belonging and estrangement, and the problematic search for a cohesive identity in a multicultural Italy within the European Union. Taught in Italian.

Primarily for students with no knowledge of Italian. Given in English. Concentrators in Italian should enroll in ITAL 1610; they are expected to read the material in the original. Close study and discussion of Dante's deployment of systems of retribution in the Inferno and rehabilitation in the Purgatorio with a view to imagining a society based on love and resistant to the effects of nascent capitalism and the money economy. Dante's work summarizes and transforms the entire ancient and medieval tradition of literature, philosophy, and science.

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.

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.

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.

In questo seminario, leggeremo e discuteremo alcune delle più significative opere di narrativa e poesia novecentesca, da Svevo a Calvino e da Montale a Zanzotto, sullo sfondo delle grandi transformazioni della società e della cultura italiana, dal fascismo alla seconda Guerra mondiale e alla prima repubblica, alla luce delle teorie critiche più influenti, dal futurismo all'ermetismo e dal neo-realismo al post-modernismo. Taught in Italian.

Examines the new light shed by recent research on Italian Fascism, placing Italy's Fascist ventennio (1922-45) in a larger European context. Among the questions to be addressed: What explains Mussolini's rise to power and his ability to stay in power? To what extent did Italians become Fascist? What role did force play in ensuring popular allegiance to the regime? What role did the Church play? Did Fascism remake concepts of gender? Attention will be paid to the role of the media, writers, intellectuals, and the arts. Comparison with Nazi Germany and other regimes labeled “Fascist” will be explored.

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.

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.

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.

For graduate students who have met the tuition requirement and are paying the registration fee to continue active enrollment while preparing a thesis.