Courses in Vermont

A summer at the Language Schools is an intensive one by design. In first- and second-level intensive courses, students can expect to spend four to five hours per day in class and drill, in addition to laboratory and other homework. The demanding pace of the program is sustained through the low student-teacher ratio.

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Graduate Degrees

A normal load for graduate students is three courses per summer, to be selected in consultation with the director and the associate director. First-year graduate students are placed in the courses most appropriate to their linguistic proficiency as determined by the results of placement tests taken prior to registration. Some students may be required to take one or more courses at a lower level without graduate credit before beginning a full load of graduate work.

Master of Arts:

Candidates for the degree of Master of Arts must hold a baccalaureate degree or equivalent from an accredited institution of higher education. The Graduate Record Examination is not required.

The M.A. degree in Italian consists of four streams or areas of concentration. Students must select one stream as a major. The M.A. degree is comprised of twelve courses to be taken over a series of summers on the Vermont campus or in a combination of a summer in Vermont and an academic year in Florence. Students who complete degree requirements in Florence must present an independent research project worth two units of credit.

Students must successfully complete a preliminary summer of study (summer of application) on the Vermont campus before being officially accepted to degree candidacy. During this summer, students take three courses, one of which must be a literature course at the 600 level or above, and one of which must be a civilization course.

Admission to the School in Italy is based on performance in the summer courses and on faculty recommendations.

A highly qualified undergraduate student may accumulate a maximum of six graduate units toward a Middlebury M.A. degree before receipt of the B.A. degree or equivalent, but these units may not count toward both degrees.

Students must fulfill the following minimum distribution requirements for the M.A. degree:

General Studies in Italian*
1 language course (unit) at the 500-level, 1 language or linguistics course (unit) at the 600-level, 2 units in civilization, 3 in literature. Students who plan to teach and who are completing the M.A. on the Middlebury campus must also include one unit in methodology or professional preparation.

* This stream is meant for students who prefer to not "specialize" in any specific area. The courses required for this stream are culled from the other streams.

Literary Studies
1 language or stylistics course (unit); 1 course on Methods of Critical and Applied Analysis (or 1 course equivalent at the 600 level or above approved by the director); 5 units in literature; 3 units to be chosen from culture/communication and/or linguistics courses.

Language and Linguistics
1 language or stylistics course (unit); 1 course on Methods of Critical and Applied Analysis (or 1 course equivalent at the 600 level or above approved by the director); 5 units in linguistics; 3 units to be chosen from literature and/or culture/communication courses.

Culture and Communication
1 language or stylistics course (unit); 1 course on Methods of Critical and Applied Analysis (or 1 course equivalent at the 600 level or above approved by the director); 5 units in culture and communication; 3 units to be chosen from literature and/or linguistics courses.

Doctor of Modern Languages:

The D.M.L. degree differs from the traditional Ph.D. in its emphasis on a combination of scholarly and practical training. A masters degree in Italian is a prerequisite for admission to the program. Degree requirements include: a qualifying paper; eight upper-level graduate courses in Italian; three graduate courses in a second language (French, German, Russian, or Spanish); comprehensive examinations in the first language; residency abroad; proof of successful teaching experience; a dissertation and its oral defense.

All new students are required to complete a summer of application on the Vermont campus during which they enroll for credit in two advanced graduate courses in Italian and write a qualifying paper.

Inquiries should be addressed to:
Office of the Dean of Language Schools and Schools Abroad
Sunderland Language Center
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT 05753
(802) 443-5508. 

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Graduate Level Courses - Summer 2008

Please see the School in Italy for further information about the graduate program of studies in Florence.

Schedules, texts, and staffing are subject to change.

6502 | 6561 | 6571 | 6572 | 6576 | 6580 | 6601 | 6611 | 6623 | 6664 | 6677 | 6681 | 6712 |

Three-Week Graduate Courses

Summer Lecture Series
 
SIX-WEEK GRADUATE COURSES

6502 Advanced Italian: Studies in Language
Iuele-Colilli, Santeramo

Designed to develop oral and written proficiency at the advanced level, this course meets daily for two hours: one hour dedicated to the study of morphological and syntactic patterns and structures, and one hour to oral expression. Students will be required to write tests, submit essays, give oral presentations, and participate in class discussions.

Note: This course is obligatory for all first-time graduate students except those exempted on the basis of a placement examination. Students scoring low on the placement test may be required to take 3301 without graduate credit before attempting 6502. (1 Unit)

Required Texts: R. Uslenghi Maiguashca, M. Sassu Frescura, L. Polesini Karumanchiri, and J. Vizmuller-Zocco, Schede di lavoro. Vols.1-2. 2nd Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (1994); L. Polesini Karumanchiri, L'italiano d'oggi. Note di grammatica per corsi universitari. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (1988).

Recommended Texts: N. Zingarelli, Vocabolario della lingua italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli (latest edition); HarperCollins Sansoni Italian Dictionary. Inglese-Italiano, Italiano-Inglese. Firenze: Sansoni (latest edition).

Additional reading materials will be provided by the instructor.

6563 Italian Political Theater from Dario Fo and Franca Rame to the Present
Bernard

Dario Fo’s political theater is part of an Italian theatrical tradition that utilizes “lightness” as a tool for political and social criticism. From the times of the Commedia dell'Arte laughter has been used as a tool to vent popular resentment and frustration against the government and the ruling classes. In this course the theme of a false lightness that is characteristic of many Italian comedies will be examined as a dramaturgic trait of Italian theatrical representation. The last part of the course analyzes Italian contemporary political theater, and examines Paolini’s Vajont that will be compared to Bernard’s Teatro S-naturalista. This manifesto, which begins with the political concept of theater, addresses the challenge launched by Calvino in the narrative sector regarding the need for lightness as a way of communicating a work’s “message.”

Texts required: Vajont (Paolini) Manifesto del Teatro S-naturalista (Bernard) Dario Fo: MORTE ACCIDENTALE DI UN ANARCHICO e LA SIGNORA E' DA BUTTARE, in Commedie di Dario Fo, Einaudi, Gli Struzzi (vol. 330) Dario Fo: MISTERO BUFFO, Nuova edizione integrale, Einaudi Tascabili. Marco Paolini, IL RACCONTO DEL VAJONT, Garzanti e/o Einaudi (con DvD) SUPPORTI: DvD Eduardo de Filippo: NAPOLI MILIONARIA Paolo Rossi, IL SIGNOR ROSSI CONTRO L'IMPERO DEL MALE Dario Fo, IO NON SONO UN MODERATO, Film intervista di Andrea Nobile Marco Paolini, VAJONT Fabio Massimo Franceschelli, APPUNTI PER UN TEATRO POLITICO Play to be represented by students: Mistero buffo di Dario Fo (Reduced and adapted by Enrico Bernard)

6565 Introduction to Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture
Dainotto

This course will cover Italian literature from the beginning of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. Major authors will be read against the background of Italian political and cultural history. Beginning with an overview of eighteenth-century cosmopolitan writers and a selection from the works of Baretti, Goldoni, Alfieri, Parini, the course will then focus on Italian Romanticism with particular reference to Foscolo and Leopardi. The development of the novel will be considered from Manzoni to Nievo to the authors of the end of the century (Verga, D'Annunzio, De Roberto), and the representative writers of the twentieth century (Svevo, Pirandello, Pavese, Vittorini, Calvino). Changing attitudes in poetry will be illustrated by a selection of readings ranging from the Decadence (Pascoli, Gozzano, the crepuscolari poets) to "Avanguardia" (Marinetti and Futurism), Dino Campana, the "Ermetici" (Ungaretti, Montale), the "Transavanguardia" and some of the poets and novelists of the new generation. (1 Unit)

Required Text: Mario Pazzaglia. Scrittori e critici della letteratura italiana. Ottocento e Novecento. Antologia con pagine critiche e un profilo di storia letteraria. Vol. 3 (vol. unico). Terza Ed. Bologna: Zanichelli (1996). Additional reading materials will be provided by the instructor.

6573 Introduction to Early Modern Italian Literature
Ferrarese

This course focuses on the historical development of mid- to late- sixteenth-, seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Italian literature. We will read the works of major Italian authors in relation to their impact on both Italian and European culture, from the last days of the Renaissance to the onset of Arcadia. While discussing the representative literary and philosophical works of these two centuries, we will examine the evolution/involution of the intellectual class, the hegemony of religious and political power over science and the arts and how literature emerges from the society which it attempts to change or describe. (1 Unit) Required texts: C Salinari

6577 Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature and World
Colilli

This course examines the emergence of Italian literary culture from its earliest manifestations in the thirteenth century to Renaissance Humanism of the fifteenth century. Selected readings from major works of representative authors will illustrate the dominant intellectual trends and the development of literary forms. We will explore topics such as the interrelationship between literature, the history of ideas and the other arts, as well as the connection between literature and social forces. (1 Unit)

Required Text: M. Pazzaglia, Letteratura italiana. Testi e critica con lineamenti di storia letteraria. Vol. 1. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1992-1993.

6579 Modernity in Italy (1860-1990)
Sala

The aim of this course is to study the artistic evolution of modernism in Italy beginning with the Macchiaioli and the impressionists. The course will then consider three subsequent stages: Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Carr, G. Morandi (metaphysical painting, oneirism and Surrealism); the two phases of Futurism (Balla, Boccioni, Severini, Fillia, Depero, Prampolini); and finally the post-WWII stages, including the birth of Design in Italy, Bauhaus, the crisis of the 1970s, the anti-design of Memphis Milano. (1 Unit)

Materials for this course will be provided by the instructor.

6584 Understanding The Southern Identity
Nicaso, Vitti

This course examines “L’ identita' meridionale” (Southern Identity) and the Southern Question from the Neapolitan Revolution and short lived Republic to the present, investigating the interrelations among cultural representation, geography, and power. The study will focuses on four novels and on ten films that produced major representations and theorizations of the Southern Identity in different cultural forms.
Fictional works: Giovanni Verga, Leonardo Sciascia, Luigi Pirandello,  Elio Vittorini- the theoretical writings of Antonio Gramsci; and films of Luchino Visconti, Giuseppe De Santis, R. Rossellini, P.  Germi, F. Rosi, P. P. Pasolini, Antonio Capuano, Pappi Corsicato, Florestano Vancini, Marco Risi, Amelio, Calopresti, will be studied

6601 Stylistics: Techniques of Composition and Interpretation
Ferrarese, Tellini

The aim of this course is to help the students to find their own Italian voice while speaking and writing in Italian. This endeavor requires daily practice and a particular attention to problems of stylistics. Through the analysis of different language sectors (i.e. journalism, business, sports, contemporary jargon) in class, the students will gain better understanding of the Italian language in its various uses. Assignments will include translations, linguistic exercises, descriptions, narrations, summaries, essay writing, book reviews and oral presentations.

Required Text: L. Craici, Parlare e Scrivere, Vallardi 2007, M. Sassu Frescura, Interferenze lessicali italiano-inglese. Toronto: University of Toronto Press (1984).

Recommended Texts: N. Zingarelli, Vocabolario della lingua italiana. Bologna: Zanichelli (latest edition); HarperCollins Sansoni Italian Dictionary. Inglese-Italiano, Italiano-Inglese. Firenze: Sansoni (latest edition).

Additional reading materials will be provided by the instructor.

6611 Modes of Critical Theory
Santeramo

This course focuses on a selection of modes and vocabularies of critical theory within the context of the twentieth century, but applied to the field of Italian studies. We will study aspects of structuralism, semiotics, deconstruction, hermeneutics, marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and cultural studies. (1 Unit)

Required text: Francesco Muzzioli, Le teorie della critica letteraria. Nuova edizione. Roma: Carocci editore, 2005.

6662 Introduction to Italian Colonial and Post-colonial Literature
Domenichelli

On the background of the hundred years of the Italian colonial and postcolonial experience in Africa, the course will focus on the period between 1935 (the year of the Italian war in Ethiopia) and the periods of the “Amministrazione fiduciaria” and of the Italian Cooperation in Somalia, through the analysis of the colonial and postcolonial novels of Bacchelli, Flaiano, Tobino, Emanuelli, dell’Oro, Domenichelli.

Required Text: Riccardo Bacchelli, Mal d’Africa (1934), Milano, Mondadori; Milano, Rizzoli (“BUR”). Ennio Flaiano, Tempo di uccidere (1947), Milano, Rizzoli (“BUR”). Mario Tobino, Il deserto della Libia (1952), Torino, Einaudi; Milano, Mondadori. Enrico Emanuelli, Settimana nera (1966), Ancona, Pequod, 2007. Erminia dell’Oro, Asmara Addio, Roma, Baldini e Castodi (“I Nani”), 1988. Mario Domenichelli, Lugemalé, Firenze, Pagliai, 2005.

Students will be required to read Flaiano’s Tempo di uccidere and two more novels of their choice from the reading list.

Critical Bibliography:Giovanna Tomasello, L’Africa tra mito e realtà, Sellerio, Palermo, 2004.

6665 The Mediterranean Signature of Dante’s Divina Commedia
Colilli

The course will explore Dante’s Divina Commedia with special reference to the Medieval Mediterranean cultural context from which it emerged. We will be reading selected cantos, as well as some of Dante’s other works, in relation to the network of intellectual traditions (Islamic, Jewish, Christian) that dominated Dante’s age.

Required Text:Dante Alighieri, Tutte le opere (Divina Commedia, Vita Nuova, Rime, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, Monarchia, Egloghe, Epistole, Quaestio de aqua et de terra). Introduzione di Italo Borzi. Commenti a cura di Giovanni Fallani, Nicola Maggi e Silvio Zennaro. (Roma: Newton Compton editori, 1993).

6671 Power and Success in the Renaissance
Lettieri

The objective of the course is to examine the concepts of power and the strategies for success in Machiavelli's Principe and Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano. As well, we will investigate how politics, art and the pen constitute instruments of distinction in Aretino, Lorenzo de' Medici and Michelangelo. (1 Unit)

Required Text: Niccolò Machiavelli, Il Principe. Con un saggio di Raymond Aron. Milano: BUR, 2005 (ventitreesima edizione).

Additional reading materials will be provided by the instructor.

6705 The Shoah in Italy: A Lexicon for Auschwitz: Primo Levi and Natalia Ginzburg
Scarpa

In Italy, Primo Levi’s fictional work is recognized as the most authoritative, profound and multifaceted account of the tragic human experience in the Nazi Lagers. Through four of his main works, this course will study how Levi described that human tragedy often perceived as impossible to recount, even by those who survived it. The course will focus on how Levi, without hate or self pity, in an appeal for historical memory, expressed the demolition of humanity in the brutal and systematic lager system, an experience that he defined as an offense against human dignity. The last part of the course will study Ginzburg’s Lessico familiare in order to focus on how a detailed account of private events in an Italian Jewish family demonstrate the moral and civil degradation of a nation.

Required texts: Se questo è un uomo, 1947, La tregua, 1963, Il sistema periodico, 1975, I sommersi e i salvati, 1986, Lessico familiare, 1963, Natalia Ginzburg

Critical work: Robert S.C. Gordon, Primo Levi: Le virtù dell’uomo morale

6772 Italo Calvino’s fiction: from Neorealism to Postmodernism
Papini

The course is meant to trace the evolution of Calvino’s writing and theoretical and critical thought through the analysis of four among his main novels considered on the background of the literary and cultural Italian landscape in the second half of the Twentieth century.

Required Texts: Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (1947), Milano, Mondadori, 2007; La nuvola di smog (1958), Milano, Mondadori (“Oscar”), 2004. Il cavaliere inesistente (1959) in I nostri antenati, Milano, Mondadori (“Oscar”), 2004. Il castello dei destini incrociati (1973), Milano, Mondadori, 2002.

Critical Bibliography: Giorgio Bertone, Italo Calvino. Il castello della scrittura, Torino, Einaudi, 1994.

6674 Industrial Literature: Bernari, Volponi, Ottieri, Parise
Papini

Italy’s economic and industrial growth in the nineteen-sixties also originated an important theoretical and critical debate on the mutual links between literature and society, and literature and economy. The debate also involved the role and the independence and freedom of writers. Such debate is clearly in the background of the works of writers such as Bernari, Volponi, Ottieri, Parise who face, each in his own way and language, the problems of industrial society. The most representative novels of these four writers will be read and discussed during the course.

Required Texts: Carlo Bernari, Tre operai (1934), Firenze, la Nuova Italia, 1970. Ottiero Ottieni, Donnaruma all’assalto (1959), Milano, Garzanti, 2004. Paolo Volponi, Memoriale (1962),Torino, Einaudi, 2007.Goffredo Parise, Il padrone (1965), Torino, UTET, 2007.
Critical bibliography: Letteratura e industria, a cura di Roberto Tessari, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1976

6678 The Cinematic World of Roberto Rossellini
Bondì

This course will study the life and works of Roberto Rossellini, considered by many the forerunner of modern cinema. His films will be analyzed according to the various phases of his long cinematic career and within the social, cultural and artistic realities and inventions of the twentieth century, including neo-realism, modernism and television. Special emphasis is on Rossellini’s relation with the Mediterranean, his treatment of the third world, of women and cinema as an art form for experimentation and self fulfillment. Students who enroll in this course will benefit from the first hand experience that the instructor had as Rossellini’s assistant, as a filmmaker and as a scholar and teacher of the great “Maestro.”

6683 The Italian Diaspora
Iuele-Colilli

This course will examine the phenomenon of the Italian diaspora, that is, the fact that approximately twelve million people emigrated from Italy between circa 1850 and 1970. After considering the reasons for this mass emigration, we will focus on the social, cultural and linguistic impact that Italian immigrants and their descendants had on the countries to which they immigrated, in particular, the USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia.

Text: The readings for the classes will be supplied by the professor.

6785 Chivalric and Epic Poetry in XVI century Italy: Ariosto and Tasso
Domenichelli

Through a selection of passages the course will focus on the two great literary monuments of the Italian Cinquecento, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (from Cantos I, VI, VIII, X, XII, XVIII, XIX, XXIII, XXIV, XXXIV, XLVI) and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (from Cantos I, II, III, VI, VII, XII, XVI, XVIII, XIX, XX). Both poems will be seen in the context of the Cinquecento Italian court culture also differently witnessed by the international success of great prose writers such as Machiavelli (Il Principe) and Castiglione (Il Cortegiano), and satirists such as Aretino. A selection of passages from Il Principe and Il Cortegiano and from l’Orlandino, Aretino’s parody of the chivalric poems, will also be read and discussed during the course.

Required Texts and critical Bibliography: Romano Luperini, Pietro Cataldi, Lidia Marchiani, La scrittura e l’interpretazione. Storia e antologia della letteratura italiana nel quadro della civiltà europea, vol. 2 (La letteratura umanistico-rinascimentale, 1383-1545), Palumbo, Palermo.

800 Independent Study
Vitti

By permission only. (1 Unit)

DML 902 Research Paper
Vitti

THREE-WEEK GRADUATE COURSES

Students enrolled in the six-week graduate program are eligible to take one or more three-week graduate courses as part of their normal course load of three units (nine semester hours) of credit for the summer.

6693 Teaching Italian: Methods, Approaches, Practice (for DML candidates)
Danesi

This course describes and discusses the main methods, approaches, and techniques that can be used to teach a second language (SL) today, including a strong practical component with practicum sessions on the Middlebury campus. The course will consist of three components. First, there is a lecture-seminar component, where various concepts in Italian SL teaching will be discussed, exemplified, and practiced. Textbook analysis, communicative practice, conceptual fluency, error analysis, the role of grammar, testing, and so on will be covered within this component. Second, there will be a practicum component, whereby each DML candidate will be hosted by a regular instructor to teach at two levels (a beginner level and an intermediate or advanced level). The performance will be evaluated and discussed both by the regular instructor and the course instructor together with the student-teacher. Finally, there will be three weekend seminars, during which the class and others in the program (including language students) will make presentations of methodology and practice in a public forum.

Recommended Course Materials: M. Danesi, Tecniche per la didattica delle lingue moderne. Roma: Armando, 1988. M. Danesi, Il cervello in aula! Seconda edizione, Perugia: Guerra, 2007. Plus: A selection of currently-used texts, ancillaries, and readers.

6530 Introduction to Romance Philology
Lettieri

This course explores the linguistic features and characteristics of major Romance languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian. Attention will be given to the phonological, morphological and syntactic components of the languages to be studied, with emphasis on both similarities and differences. (1 Unit)

Materials for this course will be provided by the instructor.

Session II: July 27-August 15

6566 Seminal Events in Italian History and Culture from Unification to the Present
Zucconi

This course will examine seminal events from the Unification of Italy (1861) to the present--events that marked and shaped ‘Italian identity” as it is known today in its uniqueness and ambiguity. The annexation of the South, the conquest of Rome with the still unresolved “Catholic Question” regarding the role of the Vatican in Italian public and political life, will be illustrated and studied along with the debacle of WWI, Fascism, the Armistice, the Resistance, the effect of the Cold War on the new postwar Democracy and the rapid economic growth that in ten years transformed a “patriarchal familistic” society, uprooting rural culture and freeing women from their traditional role.

6506 Creative Writing: the Tools of the Profession, or First Read and then Write
Scarpa

To write well it is necessary to learn how to read well. In this course students will explore how writers teach the art of writing well, by recounting who they are, how writing techniques are used, and by revealing how certain books were written. The two authors that will serve as models and guides are Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, better known as F. & L. who for half a century have experimented with all genres and explored the best writing techniques necessary to anyone who wants to improve their skills and have fun at the same time.

Required texts: Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, I ferri del mestiere. Manuale involontario di scrittura con esercizi svolti. A cura di Domenico Scarpa. Tascabili Einaudi. YEAR

Additional materials will be distributed by the instructor