Students are required to register for two credit units (either for a two-credit unit course or for two one-credit unit courses). The following are tentative courses for 2010 and are subject to change depending on student interest.
• Italian S I 001-002
Intensive Elementary Italian (2 credit units)
For beginners who wish to complete the equivalent of one year of elementary Italian (Staff)
• Italian S 101-102
Intensive Intermediate Italian (2 credit units)
For students with one year of Italian who wish to complete the equivalent of second year of Italian (will count to fulfill language requirement at Bryn Mawr) (Staff)
• Italian S 225
Italy at War: 20th Century Italian Literature and Cinema (1 credit unit; taught in English)
This course examines the flowering of Italian cinema after World War II and its transformation in the 1960s by focusing on the best work of leading directors. We will explore the historical, social, and theoretical roots of Neorealism evidenced by Italian films throughout the 1900s and the different ways each of the directors participated in this movement and was in turn influenced by it. The course is structured upon the idea that literature and films can be used as an approach to studying a society’s history and culture, including such things as customs, ideologies, discourses, gender roles and social problems. We will study, through close textual analysis, such issues as Fascism, ideas of nationhood, gender, sexuality, politics, regionalism, death, and family in the Italian context. As the course progresses, we will attempt to discuss later movies in relation to some of the ideas and conventions that appear in early modern Italian cinema. Students first will become acquainted with the literary source through a careful reading; on viewing the corresponding film, students will consider how narrative and descriptive textual elements are transposed into cinematic audio/visual elements. Our main objective will be, rather than comparing, to explore the more complex relation between literature and cinema: how text is put into film, how cultural references operate with respect to issues of style, technique, and perspective. We will discuss how cinema conditions literary imagination, and how literature leaves its imprint on cinema. We will "read" films as "literary images" and "see" novels as "visual stories". (Roberta Ricci)
• History of Art S 251
The Art of Pisa and Tuscany (1 credit unit; taught in English)
This course focuses on the visual culture of the Tuscan city of Pisa from approximately 1250 to 1500. Students will study buildings, images and objects first-hand while considering the various roles played by art and architecture in the life of the Medieval and Renaissance city. We will discuss how art and design conveyed religious, political, and social meaning to the citizens of this city in the spaces they might encounter on a daily basis. Particular attention will be given to the large-scale decoration of public spaces in the churches, civic buildings, and public squares (piazze) that were vital to urban life. We will look at how Pisans responded to plague and war, and how they constructed images of civic pride and defined themselves in relation to neighboring urban centers. Fieldtrips will be made to both Siena and Florence in order to compare how art and design functioned in the rituals of daily life in these other Tuscan cities which rivaled Pisa for importance in the historical period under consideration. (Jennifer Bird)
• ITAL S 303
Petrarca and Boccaccio (1 credit unit)
The focus of the course is on The Decameron, one of the most entertaining, beloved and imitated prose works ever written. Like Dante's divine comedy, this human comedy was written not only to delight, but also to instruct by exploring both our spiritual and our natural environment. Class discussions will focus on a close reading of the Decameron. Special class presentations will treat questions of Boccaccio's belief system as manifested in the Decameron, his sources and his imitators, and the socio-cultural milieu in which he wrote. The Decameron will be read in its entirety in Italian. Attention will also be paid to Petrarca’s Canzoniere, of which a small selection will be read in Italian. Topics explored will include how each author treated the courtly love tradition and how each represented women in the context of 14th Century Italy. Prerequisite: two years of Italian and at least a 200 level course . Taught in Italian. (Roberta Ricci)
Twentieth-Century European avant-garde (literature, music and art). Her academic interests are Medieval prose and poetry, Renaissance Studies, Women's Studies, Modern Italian Fiction, Critical Theory, and Paratexts. She has published articles on the Latin elegy, Boccaccio, Tasso, Ariosto, Female Renaissance Epistolography, and on 20th century Italian authors, such as Alberto Savinio, Italo Svevo, and Carlo Emilio Gadda, among others. 