Vermont Summer Sessions

The Italian School at Middlebury provides one of the most intensive study options available to graduate-level students of Italian, in an environment with a very low teacher-to-student ratio. In the classroom, you will build your language skills while pursuing a concentration in one of four areas: general studies in Italian, literary studies, language and linguistics, and culture and communication.

Classroom work is only the beginning of your summer at the Italian School. Outside class, you will reinforce your cultural fluency through participation in numerous cocurricular activities, all conducted in Italian. While playing soccer, talking economics, experimenting with Italian cuisine, acting in a drama, or discussing the history of Italian film, you will acquire specialized vocabulary and gain insight into the culture, both past and present. Beyond just speaking the language, you will find yourself thinking, writing, joking, and even dreaming in Italian.

New courses for 2012*

During the summer of 2012 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.

In 2012, two new core courses at the graduate level will be offered: 6550 will teach grammar and stylistics while 6602 has been specially designed to hone writing and reading skills with a cultural emphasis, and deepen students’ appreciation of literature. 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 Manzoni, the cinematic representation of the mafia in Italian cinema, contemporary writers, Dante, Semiotics, Italian political thought from Gramsci to Saviano, Tarantismo, as well as theories of literary criticism.

Two new courses especially designed for the M.A. program in Mediterranean Studies, will be offered. Students may also earn credit for  the regular M.A. with both of these courses, the first of which will be taught by Gino Tellini on the Mediterranean myth of Ulysses in Italian Literature.  The other course and will be taught by Abdelkarim Hannachi, an expert on Arabic and Islamic Civilization and Mediterranean culture. This course will examine significant intercultural aspects and manifestations in the Mediterranean basin. As a socio-cultural scholar and researcher, Hannachi has also been engaged for years in work for the promotion of cultural integration of immigrants in Italian society.  He has presented at numerous conferences and has taught many courses on themes regarding immigration, integration, and inter-cultural affairs in the Arab and Mediterranean worlds.

The 2012 summer program will also include two introductory courses on the history of Italian literature and culture designed for students starting the graduate program. For those specializing in second language teaching, for the first time we will offer a course on the use of new technologies in the classroom as well as two new courses on linguistics taught by Emanuela Piemontese. We will continue  to offer the methodology course for second language instruction which includes a practicum.

*For a complete list of course listings, please click on Course Listing on the left side of this page.