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.

What does it mean to resist? This course explores the concept of resistance in its multiple cultural representations. Starting from the partisan Resistance against the Nazi-Fascist regime (1943-45), we will touch upon several historical uprisings: civil rights movements, feminist movements, the so-called Years of Lead, anti-mafia activism, anti-globalization movements, antiracist activism. From literature to film/tv series, from photography to visual art to poetry, artists have politically engaged, challenged and modified the idea of resistance embedded within the identity of contemporary Italians. We look at artistic expressions of resistance performed against different forms of power (nationalism, the colonial state, the patriarchal family, the Mafia, the Church, police violence). We interrogate how the idea of resistance comes to structure Italian culture today and how it reverberates in mainstream narratives of what it means to be Italian.

The Intensive Language and Culture Proseminar is a mandatory course designed to prepare students enrolled in the Brown-in-Bologna program to function well within the academic and social context of Bologna and to deepen their knowledge of the political, cultural and social environment in which they will be living for the duration of the semester. The Proseminar includes three components: (1) Intensive Language and Culture; (2) Bologna hidden town; (3) a number of activities organized by the program throughout the semester and a number of individual mandatory activities. At the end of the Proseminar course students will attain an in-depth and experiential knowledge of the Italian society.

How do histories of empire and extraction bear on the contemporary Mediterranean? How have scholars, writers, and artists documented and responded to these dynamics? In this course, we will examine the relationship between (post)coloniality, race, and mobility, focusing in particular on the expanding body of scholarly, literary, and artistic work on the Black Mediterranean. Looking both within and beyond Italy, we will consider how shifting notions of belonging shape Italian society and Europe more broadly, and how a Black Mediterranean framework can inform understandings of borders, migration, citizenship, and questions of racial and social justice.

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.

Grappling with migration, class struggle, ethnic, gender and generational conflicts, environmental upheavals, counter-cultural movements and a profound ideological polarization, Italy in the 1960s provides a striking historical laboratory for our contemporary predicaments. We will watch a selection of films from the golden decade of Italian cinema, focusing in particular on how modernist masters such as Antonioni, Fellini and Pasolini, and young auteurs such as Bellocchio, Bertolucci and Cavani, forged original styles and expressive techniques in order to capture and denounce the contradictions of a neo-capitalist society. Taught in English (an Italian discussion session will be activated if enough students enroll).

With the invention of photography, writing too, whether philosophical or literary, inaugurates a new way of freezing time, looking at the world, and confronting memory. From Italo Calvino to Giorgio Agamben, from Leonardo Sciascia to Mario Praz, from Lalla Romano to Antonio Tabucchi or more recent authors (Helena Janeczek or Paolo Maurensig), writing negotiates with photographic images, thematizing them or incorporating them into its textual body. This course will seek to interrogate how enduring images of things are imprinted in writing or, conversely, how writing invents its own photographic gaze. This course will be taught in Italian. Prerequisite: Italian 0600, Brown in Bologna Program or placement. Contact the instructor to verify your proficiency if you have not taken Italian at Brown. WRIT. DIAP.

The variety of Italian women’s histories, issues of genders and sexualities, and women’s ingenious responses to circumvent the limitations placed upon them are the focus of this course. During a Renaissance of flourishing debate on women ranging from the theater of Machiavelli to the dialogue of Castiglione, women themselves transformed historical feminism, the intellectual and cultural movement that advanced the idea of equality and equal opportunity across genders. Materials include archival documents, treatises, letters, literature and the visual arts. This course is the same as HIST 1931L. (P) Taught in English.

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.

This seminar, a requirement for graduate students in Italian Studies, has three objectives: 1) to provide a panoramic view of the current research in the interdisciplinary field of Italian studies (literature, history, arts and media); 2) to provide a picture of the professional state of the field, within the framework of more global developments in academia and the job markets; 3) to provide useful information about the resources and the new tools and techniques for research available to students at Brown and elsewhere (special collections in the Brown libraries, digital resources such as data bases, electronic journals, web projects, etc.).

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 residency requirement and are continuing research on a full time basis.