Introduction to the 2008 Program

Benvenuti alla scuola italiana!

Proud of its reputation and long tradition of commitment to high academic standards, during the 2008 session the Scuola Italiana is again offering a wide range of challenging courses. As in the past, these courses will deal with Italian language, linguistics, and literature, as well as the culture, art and civilization of Italy, examined in all their most significant aspects and manifestations. The motivation and the effort of the students selected, added to the expertise and the dedication of faculty drawn from European, North American and Canadian institutions, ensure maintenance of the School’s high standards.
What makes the Middlebury experience so unique is its long-standing observance of the “language pledge,” a commitment made by each student in writing to use exclusively the Italian language for the duration of the session. In spite of the considerable demand this formal pledge places on all, generations of students consider it a most valid and effective learning tool. Adherence to this rule is, therefore, strictly enforced at all times.
To be sure, the success of the summer session is due to a great extent to the fact that students and faculty live under the same roof and take part in all the cultural and social activities sponsored by the School: film screenings, lectures, concerts, plays, dinners, parties, and picnics. All of this contributes to create a cordial and collegial atmosphere that is very conducive to learning and is unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere.
In 2008, the first three levels of language instruction will also emphasize various aspects of the multifaceted Italian culture. A special feature, besides the afternoon conversation sessions, will be a six week theatrical workshop where students will be assigned parts and experiment with role playing. At the end of the summer session students will perform for the entire school. This special workshop is designed to help undergraduates improve their diction, while learning new idiomatic expressions outside of the traditional classroom setting. Undergraduate students are also required to participate in the three special writing workshops and encouraged to take advantage of the workshop on traditional Italian dances conducted by our artist in residence, Michela Musolino, who will be on campus for the first three weeks.
The two core courses at the graduate level: IT 6502 and IT 6601 will teach grammar and stylistics, emphasizing culture. Advanced culture and civilization courses and graduate literature courses will focus on a wide range of topics through various periods of Italian civilization. They will include courses on Italian emigration in the world, Southern Italian identity in literature and cinema, Futurism, Dante and the Mediterranean, contemporary theater from Dario Fo and Franca Rame to the present, a course on Holocaust literature, and a creative writing seminar. Other courses will focus on the working class milieu, the Italian epic, and seminars will be held on Italo Calvino, literary critical theory, and on the complex history of Italian colonialism. The School will also offer a six week course on Roberto Rossellini by one of his assistant directors who is currently a professor and director in his own right. This summer’s program will include as well the addition of three new introductory courses on the history of Italian literature and culture.
During the summer of 2008 the Italian School will again supplement its regular six-week graduate program with two intensive three-week sessions designed for teachers and graduate students of Italian, taught by professors of international prominence. During the first session there will be a new course on Romance Philology and Marcel Danesi will teach a course on methodology for second language instruction which includes a practicum.
The second session will offer a course on the art of creative writing and a new course taught by Vittorio Zucconi, which will examine crucial events in various periods of Italian history that all students of Italian culture should be familiar with. Each course meets Monday through Friday for two hours daily, and carries one unit or three semester hours of graduate credit. Students enrolled in the six-week graduate program are eligible to take one or more of these courses as part of their normal course load of three units (nine semester hours) of credit for the summer.
A special feature of the 2008 session will be the presence on campus of many professors, writers, and artists as “Special Guests in Residence.” Both students and faculty will certainly benefit greatly from the many contributions that Claudio Bondì, Enrico Bernard, Mario Domenichelli, Maria Carla Papini, Vittorio Zucconi, Domenico Scarpa, Ferruccio Marotti, Michele Lettieri, Antonio Nicaso, Marcel Danesi, Michela Musolino, Julian Gargiulo and all the other instructors and students will bring to the cultural life of the School during their stay at Middlebury. During the last ten days of the summer session the Italian School will also host Dario Fo and Franca Rame who will be glad to interact with students and who will also attend the two plays staged by the school in their honor.
With such an ample variety of academic offerings and the numerous cultural and social activities that are scheduled, I am confident that the 2008 summer school will be a memorable learning experience for all students and professors. I count on all of us to do our best to make this a most successful and fruitful period of study in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

A questa estate!
Antonio Vitti
Director