Graduate Level Courses - Summer 2007
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.
6573 Neorealism in Cinema and Novels
Antonio Vitti
The objective of this course is to gain a better understanding of Neorealism, and the civic and cultural development that have shaped the Italian Republic since the end of Fascism. Through films and novels this course will explore the cultural transformation and moments of crisis in Italian postwar society. Six films and short stories and novels will be studied. Students will also learn how to prepare a film analysis, will write a final essay, and will lead group and class discussions. (1 Unit)
A course pack will be available at the bookstore
6574 Directing and Scriptwriting Practicum
Valerii
Students will learn how to read, direct a film, write a script and how to adapt a short story or short novels into a film. With the help of the instructor, students will also write a short script and shoot it. The final project will be screened at the end of the summer session. The course will also include evening screenings of various film genres that will be discussed and presented by director Tonino Valerii. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Tonino Guerra, Fare l’aiuto regista nel cinema e nella tv. Roma: Gremese Editore, 1998.
6582 The History of Opera in Italy, 1600-1900
Kairoff
A survey of operatic masterpieces in Italian, from Monteverdi through Puccini, with particular attention paid to the relationship of the music to the texts. No previous knowledge of music required. Works to be studied include "Orfeo" by Monteverdi, "Giulio Cesare" by Handel, "La Serva Padrona" by Pergolesi, "Don Giovanni" by Mozart, "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" by Rossini, "La Traviata" by Verdi, "La Boheme" by Puccini. Librettos of the operas will be read in the original Italian, and the musical scores will be analyzed for such elements as form, harmony and rhythm to discover the ways in which it enhances the dramatic action on stage. (1 Unit)
Texts include: Complete librettos of the six operas listed above, plus supplementary biographies of the composers. Students will be required to listen extensively to recordings. Course requirements: three exams, including listening portions, and an oral presentation of 15 minutes duration based on independent research.
6525 Italian Lexicography: Italian dictionaries as educational tools
Piemontese
The aim of the course is to give information on the current situation of Italian lexicography, which after its revival in the eighties, has now reached new and important goals. Thanks to socio-economic and cultural factors the Italian language has become more used among the masses, a change that has brought about many innovative effects on the language with the new changes now registered and codified in dictionaries. As a result, traditional Italian language which in the past was mostly reserved for high level written usage is now spoken with a large variety of usages which require new approaches in the teaching of the language and, in a more general sense, in the field of linguistic education. The course will also lead the students to reflect on the usage of dictionaries as didactic instruments taking into consideration the problems that students face in consulting them. (1 Unit)
Required texts: T. De Mauro, Guida all’uso delle parole, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 2003, XII edizione; A. Corda, C. Marello, Lessico. Insegnarlo e impararlo, Perugia, Guerra Edizioni Guru, 2004.
Other readings will be suggested during the course.
6592 Watching Italy Watching TV
Lombardi
This course will focus on the complex history of Italian TV broadcasting, analyzing the changing patterns in TV spectatorship over the past 50 years. Through a cultural studies approach, we will discuss the many facets of public and private broadcasting, in synchronic and diachronic fashion. During the course, students will also be able to watch some of the most representative programs in the history of Italian television. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Roberto Grandi, I MASS MEDIA FRA TESTO E CONTESTO, Lupetti, 1992.
Enrico Menduni TELEVISIONE E SOCIETA' ITALIANA Bompiani, 2004.
Gian Paolo Caprettini LA SCATOLA PARLANTE Editori Riuniti, 2002.
Francesco Casetti e Federico Di Chio ANALISI DELLA TELEVISIONE Bompiani, 1998
6542 The Fictions of Terrorism
Lombardi
This course will analyze fictional representations of Italian terrorism in cinema, literature, and memoirs. A discourse on terrorism, its roots, its reason of being, its events, its demise, and its aftermath is thus investigated through a critical reading of those cultural products which have tried to make sense out of a most obscure and difficult period in recent Italian history. In particular, we will analyze the construction of the figure of the terrorist in films, novels, and autobiographical narratives produced in the past two decades, questioning the perlocutionary effect that such construction often incorporates. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Sergio Zavoli, LA NOTTE DELLA REPUBBLICA. Milano: Mondadori, 1995
Carlo Castellaneta, CERCHI NELL'ACQUA. Milano: Mondadori, 1995
Anna Laura Braghetti e Paola Tavella, IL PRIGIONIERO. Milano: Mondadori, 2002
Sergio Flamigni, LA TELA DEL RAGNO Kaos, 2003.
6642 Utopia and Science in the Seventeenth century
Ferrarese
In this course we will shed some light on the concepts of Utopia and Science, two of the central themes of the Seventeenth century. These concepts are both oppositional and complimentary: if Utopia represents a place of happiness or a nowhere (either a flight to the future or a nostalgic glance toward the past), the scientific method and the discoveries related to it, even while marking the refusal of any escape from reality, have had a great impact on how the great utopias were conceived and represented. Through readings of several works of that time, we will also examine how the concepts of Utopia and Science were employed in opposition to the oppressive nature of Counter-Reformation politics and the Rights of State (Ragion di Stato, in which any action is legitimate if beneficial to
those in power), the two prevailing ideological systems of seventeenth century Europe. In addition, we will read some poetic works, like those of Marino, which take as their
inspiration some of the new scientific discoveries and utopian ideals of the age. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Campanella, La città del sole. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003; B. Brecht, Vita di Galileo. Torino: Einaudi Tascabili, 2005.
A course-pack in a CD format will be available.
6601 Stylistics: Techniques of Composition and Interpretation
Iuele-Colilli, Ferrarese
This course is designed to improve students' ability to write Italian correctly and with a certain elegance of style. Examples of writings will be analyzed for their effectiveness and manner of expression. Discussions will focus also on rhetorical strategies, the language of advertising, sports, politics, business Italian, as well as the relationship between the written and the spoken language. Daily written assignments will include translations, linguistic exercises, descriptions, narrations, summaries, essay writing, book reviews and oral presentations. (1 Unit)
Required Text: 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.
6610 Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
Colilli
This course examines the emergence of Italian literary culture from its earliest manifestations in the thirteenth century to the 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.
6611 Modes of Critical Theory
Colilli
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.
6605 Introduction to Linguistics.
Marcato
The course aims to describe the properties of language, the objectives and methods of the various theories of linguistics. This course will explore the study of historical and theoretical linguistics, the characteristics of communications, the relationship between language and culture. A special section of the course will cover the different levels of linguistics analysis (phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon and semantics). A series of appropriate exercises will allow the students to comprehend and to apply the theoretical notions. (1 Unit)
Required text: G. Berruto, Corso elementare di linguistica generale, Torino, Utet, 2005.
6661 Mediterranean Boccaccio: Geography, Magic and ‘Poetry’ between Paris, Florence and Naples.
Morosini
A course on Mediterranean Boccaccio originates from the awareness that a culture and its visual and literary texts cannot be considered without taking into account the context that generated them. The context we consider in this class is the culture of the Mediterranean in XIII and XIV Centuries, namely the cultural, commercial and intellectual exchanges through the Mare Nostrum. The course aims to follow the path of what can be considered as mostly ‘Mediterranean’ in the Decameron starting from a study of the representation of the cities and in particular of the city of Naples, one of the Mediterranean cities most loved by Boccaccio. In this course the students will be introduced to a reading of Boccaccio’s texts with a particular focus on the Decameron, a literary, social and cultural observatory of Italy in XIV Century. The approach is both philological, as a ‘direct’ access to the Italian texts, and cultural by means of contextualizing them in the literary and social setting that generated it.
The first part of this course aims to locate Boccaccio within Mediterranean culture by looking at the role of Florence with Naples and France and the relationship Boccaccio had with the Florentine Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Grand Seneschal of the Angevin Kingdom in Naples, not to mention the impact that the Southern city had on Boccaccio’s literary imaginary.
The second part of the course is the actual reading of Boccaccio’s texts and it follows progressively the themes of the Decameron. The students receive a list of selected novelle from selected Days of the Decameron.
The themes are: Decameron as “epopea dei mercatanti” (V. Branca), Boccaccio and the romance tradition in Old French; literary models of the Decameron; geography, otherness (the role of Islam), women, tricksters, merchants and travelers; Mediterranean cities (Sicily, Jerusalem, Babylon) and gardens, magic and necromancy, poetry and the role of the poet/narrator. A mandatory and complementary part of this course is, in the last three weeks, the theatre workshop led by the Florentine director Carlo Romiti that will direct the student’s performance of Alatiel’ story (Decameron II 6) . (1 Unit)
Required texts: G. Boccaccio, Decameron, a cura di V. Branca. 2 Voll. Lessico critico decameroniano, ed. R. Bragantini e P. M. Forni, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1997. Boccaccio geografo, ed. R. Morosini, M. Gennari.
6682 History and Culture of the Italian Experience in Argentina
Grilli
Argentina’s history was deeply influenced by the European presence thanks to the millions of immigrants that settled this South-American nation. The objective of the course is to describe the important social and cultural contributions that the Italians had by exploring five specific areas: History, Music, Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture. Particular attention will be given to the history of Italian immigration, the Italian influence on tango, the linguistic influence on the typical Lunfardo and Cocoliche argot of Buenos Aires.
The relationship between the two cultures on such topics as Art and Architecture, Literature and Cinema will be closely explored and analyzed from an historical and cultural prospective.
Finally the course will cover the literary production of a living Italian writer, Antonio del Masetto, author of the acclaimed novel Oscuramente Fuerte Es La Vida, 1990 and the cinematographic production of Italian-Argentian director Marco Bechis.
(1 Unit)
6725 Pirandello, European Theater and the Mediterranean
Santeramo
The course is an in-depth study of some of Luigi Pirandello's most important dramatic works, together with an analysis of his theoretical essays on theatre. The study of Pirandello s encounter with the stage as “capocomico” and its influence on Pirandello’s playwriting will also be studied. The course will also focus on the influence Sicilian culture(s), (in particular the Ancient Greek, Arab and Jewish) had on the playwright’s vision and style. (1 Unit)
Required Texts: Essays: “L’umorismo”, “Illustratori, attori e traduttori” and “Teatro nuovo e teatro vecchio”.
Plays: Così è se vi pare; Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore; Enrico IV; La sagra del Signore della Nave; Sogno, ma forse no? Questa sera si recita a soggetto and I giganti della montagna.
Short stories: “La patente”, “La giara” and “Un goj”.
Critical works on Luigi Pirandello and his opus: Leonarda Sciascia, Pirandello e la Sicilia. Milano: Adelphi, 1996. Donato Santeramo, Pirandello: la parola, la scena e il mito. Roma: Nuove Edizioni Universitarie, 2006.
6800 Independent Study
Vitti
By permission only. (1 Unit)
DML 902 Research Paper
Antonio 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.
SESSION I: July 2 - July 26
6608 Italian Language and Culture: Major Events and Changes from 1947 to the Present.
Piemontese
The aim of this course is to study the major events that have contributed to changing the image and the role of Italy in Europe and in the world. The course will analyze some of these changes, mainly those in the cultural and linguistic spheres of Italian society, in order to challenge the false stereotypes that give Italy an image which does not coincide with reality. Besides studying the reasons and motivations behind the great interest and increase of the study of the Italian in the world, the course will also explore how Italy has coped with all of the problems related to industrialization and the organization of a complex society that developed late due to its political history and delayed democratization. (1 Unit)
Required Texts: Costituzione della Repubblica Italiana (1947), con l’introduzione di T. De Mauro e una nota storica di, L. Villari, Torino, UTET-Fondazione Bellonci, 2006; T. De Mauro, La cultura degli italiani, (a cura di Francesco Erbani), Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2004.
6636 The Influence of Cyberlanguage and Adolescent Slang on Contemporary Italian
Danesi
In a world where technology has made written communication rapid, languages are being shaped more and more by the requirements of the new cyberspace medium. One of the most conspicuous of these is the proclivity towards efficiency and economy, as evident in the constant production of compressed forms (abbreviations of words and phrases, acronyms, etc.) in the written language of chat rooms and of other such virtual linguistic communities. Is this a new linguistic phenomenon responding to new technologies? Or, is it a contemporary manifestation of an inbuilt “principle of least effort” in communication systems? And is it spreading to the language generally? This course will look at this question as it concerns the Italian language today, assessing its implications in the light of the history of the language through the ages. It will also look at the convergence between youth slang and general tendencies within modern Italian. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Alfonzetti, G. La relativa non-standard: Italiano popolare o italiano parlato? Palermo: Centro di Studi Filogici e Linguistici Siciliani, 2002.
Clivio, G. P. and Danesi, M. The Sounds, Forms, and Uses of Italian: An Introduction to Italian Linguistics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
SESSION II: July 27 - August 17
6651 Mangiare italiano: Historical, Cultural and Linguistic Aspects
Marcato
The course describes the history of food in Italy, throughout the centuries. Also the course will analyze the formation of different regional traditions. The historical, cultural and linguistic culinary traditions will be illustrated by a series of pertinent documents.
Special attention will be dedicated to the relationship that existed between the New World and Italy and in general the Mediterranean area, and the reciprocal exchange of products and recipes. In addition the course will examine the effects in North America that the Italian immigration had, especially on the American culinary experience. (1 Unit)
A course pack will be provided.
6667 The History of Italy through its Scandals
Zucconi
The aim of this course is to present the political history of postwar Italy through the dynamic of the scandals that in many ways anticipated and, like a barometer, provoked the seasonal changes in the country’s cultural climate.
In a conservative and Roman Catholic society such as the Italy’s, sexual scandals are the accepted substitution for revolutions to which Italians are genetically and historically allergic. The course will analyze how Italian morals changed from the atrocious murder and hanging of Mussolini and his lover Carla Petacci to the election of transgender Vladimir Luxuria, born Vladimiro Guadagno, with Rifondazione Comunista, the heir to the Italian Communist Party, which after the war elected Proletariat Puritanism as a symbol of its moral superiority. The course will also study the major scandals of the other decades and will conclude with a close look at the effects of Berlusconi’s free channel programs on the current Italian cultural transformation.
The course will consist of lectures and students’ presentations on one of the books purchased and not discussed in class, a final oral report and a written paper. Four films will also be screened in the evening during the three weeks. (1 Unit)
Required texts: Sergio Turone, Corrotti e corruttori dall’Unità d’Italia alla P2, Bari: Laterza, 1984. Giorgio Galli, Affari di Stato: l’Italia sotterranea, Ed. Kaos, 1991.
David Lane, “L’ombra del potere, Bari: Laterza, 2004. Ettore Bernabei, L’uomo di fiducia, Milano: Mondatori, 1999.