Courses for Spring 2021

  • 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.
    ITAL 0110 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Fantarella

  • Elementary Italian

    See Elementary Italian (ITAL 0100) for course description.
    ITAL 0200 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Abbona-Sneider

  • 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.
    ITAL 0400 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Abbona-Sneider

  • 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.
    ITAL 0600 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Abbona-Sneider

  • 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.
    ITAL 0701 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Riva

  • 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.
    ITAL 1020 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Martinez

  • Arts of Memory in Ancient Rome (HIAA 1308)

    ITAL 1215A S01

  • Criticality and Modern Art (HIAA 1880)

    ITAL 1215B S01

  • 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.
    ITAL 1262 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Castiglione

  • 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.
    ITAL 1390 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Kertzer

  • 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.
    ITAL 1400U S01
    Course is taught in Italian.
    Primary Instructor
    Odello

  • 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.
    ITAL 1610 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Martinez

  • 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.
    ITAL 1920 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Castiglione
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1920 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Martinez
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1920 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Stewart-Steinberg
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1920 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Riva
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1920 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Fantarella
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research

  • 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.
    ITAL 1990 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Castiglione
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1990 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Martinez
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1990 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Stewart-Steinberg
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1990 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Riva
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 1990 S05
    Primary Instructor
    Abbona-Sneider
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research

  • 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.
    ITAL 2550 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Castiglione

  • 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.
    ITAL 2820 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Riva

  • 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.
    ITAL 2970 S01
    Schedule Code
    E: Graduate Thesis Prep

  • 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.
    ITAL 2980 S01
    Primary Instructor
    Castiglione
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 2980 S02
    Primary Instructor
    Martinez
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 2980 S03
    Primary Instructor
    Stewart-Steinberg
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 2980 S04
    Primary Instructor
    Riva
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research
    ITAL 2980 S05
    Schedule Code
    I: Independent Study/Research

  • Thesis Preparation

    For graduate students who have met the residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.
    ITAL 2990 S01
    Schedule Code
    E: Graduate Thesis Prep