TABLE OF CONTENTS ERROR! NO TEXT OF SPECIFIED STYLE IN DOCUMENT. 1 Department of Italian Studies Italian Studies Faculty Profiles Italian Studies is a vast field, covering at least 10 centuries and featuring master works in every artistic and literary genre. Whether in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the modern world, Italian culture has always been in the forefront of innovation and excellence. Many of the great names of world culture in the fields of art, literature, political science, philosophy, and cinema are Italian. However, many of Italian culture s lesser-known names and works are equally rich and worthwhile studying. Our courses expose students to the wealth of Italian culture, allowing them access to and familiarity with the nation s cultural heritage and its contemporary life. As all our upper-level courses and most of our intermediate-level ones are conducted in Italian, students have ample opportunity to hone their language skills. All courses, unless otherwise listed, are conducted in Italian. For language courses, speaking and listening exercises will be assigned via a website. Qualified students are encouraged to spend their junior year in Italy on the Wellesley-Bologna program. See the Office of International Studies website for further information. The Department of Italian Studies offers both a major and a minor. See Requirements for the Major. Italian Studies Major Goals for the Italian Studies Major Through the courses it offers, the department aims: To bring those students who take only language courses to a high level of competence in the language To bring those who take their studies further to a level of proficiency so that they can enjoy a full intellectual life in the language To expose students to the names and works from a variety of genres that form (but also contest) the nation s literary tradition and cultural heritage To introduce students to the crucial moments and events of Italian history and political life, starting in the Middle Ages and going on to the present To give students a methodological grounding that will serve them well should they opt to pursue their interest in Italian Studies at graduate school Requirements for the Italian Studies Major The major in Italian Studies offers students the opportunity to acquire fluency in the language and knowledge of the culture of Italy in a historical perspective. Students are strongly urged to begin Italian in their first year. ITAS 101, 102, 103 count toward the degree, but not the major. Students majoring in Italian are required to take nine units above the 100 level. One of these courses must be ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274. Two of the nine courses must be at the 300 level and be taken in the department. The requirement to take two courses at the 300 level may not be met by taking ITAS 350 (Research or Individual Study), ITAS 360 (Senior Thesis Research), or ITAS 370 (Senior Thesis). One course may be taken outside of the department, on a related topic to be decided by the student and her major advisor. Students are encouraged to consult with the chair about the sequence of courses they will take. Courses given in translation count toward the major. Qualified students are encouraged to spend their junior year in Italy on the Eastern College Consortium program in Bologna (of which the Department of Italian Studies is a participant) or on another approved program. Honors in Italian Studies The only route to honors in the major is writing a thesis and passing an oral examination. To be admitted to the thesis program, a student must have a grade point average of at least 3.5 in all work in the major field above the 100 level; the department may petition on her behalf if her GPA in the major is between 3.0 and 3.5. See Academic Distinctions. Italian Studies Minor Requirements for the Italian Studies Minor The minor in Italian Studies requires five units above the 100 level. Courses offered in translation count toward the minor. For students entering 2012 or later, at least three of the five courses must be in Italian (and can include ITAS 201, ITAS 202, and ITAS 203). ITAS - Italian Studies ITAS 101 - Elementary Italian (1.0) These courses focus on the development of basic language skills through the study of grammar. Viewing of language video programs, television programs, and films; listening to traditional and modern songs; and reading of passages and short stories, writing of compositions and oral presentations on cultural topics offer an introduction to Italy and its culture. Three periods. Instructor: Laviosa, Southerden Three periods. Each semester of ITAS 101 and ITAS 102 earns one unit of credit. However, both semesters must be completed ITAS 102 - Elementary Italian (1.0) These courses focus on the development of basic language skills through the study of grammar. Viewing of language video programs, television programs, and films; listening to traditional and modern songs; and reading of passages and short stories, writing of compositions and oral presentations on cultural topics offer an introduction to Italy and its culture. Three periods. Instructor: Laviosa, Southerden Prerequisite: ITAS 101 Each semester of ITAS 101 and ITAS 102 earns one unit ITAS 103-01-F - Intensive Elementary Italian (1.25) Covering the same material as ITAS 101 and ITAS 102, this "blended" course meets three times a week and includes a substantial amount of work online outside the two class periods. Through the daily practice and reinforcement of the four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) students will reach an intermediate level mastery of the Italian language and a basic understanding of modern Italian society in one semester. Methods employed include in-class conversation and roleplaying activities, as well as the latest technology in online learning. ITAS 103-01-S - Intensive Elementary Italian at MIT (1.25) Covering the same material as ITAS 101 and ITAS 102, this "blended" course meets twice a week and includes a substantial amount of work online outside the two class periods. Through the daily practice and reinforcement of the four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) students will reach an intermediate level mastery of the Italian language and a basic understanding of modern Italian society in one semester. Methods employed include in-class conversation and role-playing activities, as well as the latest technology in online learning. This course meets on the MIT campus. Open to Wellesley students. ITAS 104 - First-Year Seminar: The Cities of Italy: An Introduction to Italian Culture (in English) (1.0) This seminar is dedicated to the representation of Italian cities in Italian literature, art, and cinema from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. By presenting cities as spatial narratives, we will introduce students to some of the most important moments in Italian history and will invite them to examine the representation of urban landscape as a privileged vantage point to understand Italian culture. The seminar is designed to introduce students to the field of Italian Studies and to provide them with a solid background in Italian history and culture.. Open to first-year students only. No letter grade. ITAS 201 - Intermediate Italian (1.0) ITAS 201-ITAS 202. The aim of these courses is to develop students' fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture as well as the writing of compositions are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions. Three periods., Laviosa Prerequisite: ITAS 101- ITAS 102, or ITAS 103. Each semester of ITAS 201 and ITAS 202 earns one unit ITAS 202 - Intermediate Italian (1.0) ITAS 201-ITAS 202. The aim of these courses is to develop students' fluency in spoken and written Italian. The reading of short stories, articles from Italian newspapers, and selected texts on Italian culture as well as the writing of compositions are used to promote critical and analytical skills. Listening is practiced through the viewing of Italian films. Both reading and listening activities are followed by in-class discussions. Three periods. Instructor: Laviosa Prerequisite: ITAS 201
2 WELLESLEY COLLEGE COURSE CATALOG 2016-2017 Each semester of ITAS 201 and ITAS 202 earns one unit ITAS 202W - Intermediate Italian in Rome (1.0) This intensive three-week program is a rigorous linguistic and a valuable full-immersion cultural experience in Italy. Like ITAS 202 on campus, the course consists of a fastpaced grammar review with practice of all language skills through readings of literary texts and newspaper articles, oral discussions, presentations on Italian current events, and compositions on cultural topics examined in class. The course includes a rich program of guest speakers, both Italian university professors and artists, and attendance at film screenings and theatre performances. Instructor: Laviosa Prerequisite: ITAS 201. Application required. Term(s): Winter Students must have received credit for ITAS 201 in order to receive credit for ITAS 202W. Not offered every year. Subject to Provost's Office approval. Not open to students who have taken ITAS 202. ITAS 203 - Intensive Intermediate Italian (1.25) This course is for students who have taken ITAS 103 or both ITAS 101 and ITAS 102. The course covers the same material as ITAS 201 and ITAS 202 over four class periods per week. The aim of the course is to improve and strengthen the skills acquired in Elementary Italian through reading authentic literary and journalistic texts, viewing of contemporary films, writing compositions, and grammar review. This is an intensive course developed especially for students with a strong interest in Italian Studies. Prerequisite: ITAS 103 or both ITAS 101 and ITAS 102. ITAS 225 - The Great Beauty: Transnational Italian Cinema and Its Legacies (in English) (1.0) In the aftermath of the neorealist revolution, a unique synergy of geopolitical, cultural, and aesthetic factors propelled several Italian filmmakers into the international limelight. During what came to be known as Italian cinema s golden age, many of its epochal films were in fact made across national borders, in a dialogue with other (film) cultures. Whether they treated the history of another country (e.g. Algeria s anticolonial struggle), rewrote quintessentially foreign genres (e.g. Dario Argento s horror), or even dared to challenge Walt Disney (Fantasia s remake Allegro ma non troppo), these films exemplified the many facets of what today we would call Italian transnational cinema. This course examines some of the most significant films from such period and traces their influence into their twenty first century successors. Instructor: Viano (Cinema and Media Studies) Cross-Listed as: CAMS 225 Distribution: ARS ITAS 261 - Italian Cinema (in English) (1.0) A survey of the directors and film styles that paved the way for the golden age of Italian cinema, this course examines, first, Italian cinema of the first two decades of the twentieth century, going on to fascist cinema before embarking on an in-depth journey into the genre that made Italian cinema famous, namely, neorealism. We will analyze major films by Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, and Antonioni (among others) with a view to understanding the ethical, social, political, and philosophical foundations of the neorealist aesthetic. ; ARS ITAS 263 - Dante's Divine Comedy (in English) (1.0) The course offers students an introduction to Dante and his culture. The centrality and encyclopedic nature of Dante's Divine Comedy make it a paradigmatic work for students of the Middle Ages. Since Dante has profoundly influenced several writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, knowledge of the Comedy illuminates modern literature as well. This course presumes no special background and attempts to create a context in which Dante's poetry can be carefully explored. ITAS 270 - Italy in the Twenty-First Century (1.0) The course is designed to introduce students to the literature, film, politics, history and social issues of twentyfirst century Italy. In addition to reading and viewing representative texts and films, the course will also pay close attention to contemporary events through on-line newspapers, magazines and TV channels. Prerequisite: ITAS 202, ITAS 203, or equivalent or permission of instructor ITAS 271 - The Construction of Italy as a Nation (1.0) The course aims, first, to give students who wish to continue their study of Italian the chance to practice and refine their skills, and second, to introduce students to one of the major themes of Italian culture, namely, the role played by Italian intellectuals in the construction of Italy as a nation. We will read how Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli imagined Italy as a nation before it came into existence in 1860; how the nation came to be unified; and how the experience of unification has come to represent a controversial point of reference for twentieth-century Italy. Other figures to be studied will include Bembo, Castiglione, Foscolo, Gramsci, Tomasi di Lampedusa, D'Annunzio, Visconti, Levi, Blasetti, and Rossellini. Prerequisite: ITAS 202 ITAS 272 - Small Books, Big Ideas. A Journey Through Italian Identities (1.0) Unlike other European literatures, contemporary Italian literature lacks a major work of fiction representing the nation's cultural identity. Rather, Italian literature boasts the small book, brief unclassifiable narratives that express the variety and complexity of Italian culture. Realistic novels or philosophical short stories, memoirs or literary essays, these works are a fine balance between a number of literary genres and, as such, are a good entranceway into the multifaceted and contradictory identity of Italy as a nation. The course will combine a survey of contemporary Italian literature with a theoretical analysis of how Italian identity has been represented in works by Moravia, Calvino, Ortese, and others. Prerequisite: ITAS 201 Corequisite: and ITAS 202 or ITAS 203 as a corequisite. ITAS 273 - Italy in the 1960s (1.0) The 1960s was a period of great change in Italy. The major consequence of the economic boom of the late 1950s was to transform Italy from a predominantly agricultural to an industrialized nation. Through a study of literary and cinematic texts, the course will examine this process in detail. Time will also be given to the consequences of the radical changes that took place: internal immigration, consumerism, the new role of intellectuals, resistance to modernity, neo-fascism, student protest. Authors to be studied will include Italo Calvino, Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ermanno Olmi, Umberto Eco, and authors from the Neo-Avant Garde movement. Prerequisite: ITAS 202, ITAS 203. ITAS 274 - Women in Love: Portraits of Female Desire in Italian Culture (1.0) This course is dedicated to the representation of female desire in Italian culture. From Dante's Francesca da Rimini to Pasolini's Medea, passing through renowned literary characters such as Goldoni's Mirandolina, Manzoni's Gertrude, and Verdi's Violetta, the course will explore different and contrasting voices of female desire: unrequited and fulfilled, passionate and spiritual, maternal and destructive, domestic and transgressive. In particular, the varied and beautiful voices of women in love will become privileged viewpoints to understand the changes that occur in Italian culture in the conception of desire and other intimate emotions, as well as in the notion of gender and sexuality. Students will read texts by men and women from a wide variety of literary genres and artistic forms including not only prose and poetry, but also theatre, opera, and cinema. They will also read important theoretical essays on the conception of love in Western cultures by Barthes, de Rougemont, Giddens, and Nussbaum. Prerequisite: ITAS 202 or ITAS 201. ITAS 275 - Between Transcendence and Transgression: Desire from Dante to Milton (1.0) This course takes as its focus the discourses of desire informing some of the major works of English and Italian literature from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Through an exploration of the themes of transcendence and transgression in Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Ariosto, and Milton, students will analyze the dynamics of desire (whether sexual, psychological, or textual) that open up exciting vistas on the tensions between human and divine love, excess and control, lack and fulfillment, suffering and joy. The roles of transcendence and transgression will also be considered in the relationship each author entertains with his or her literary models and predecessors to see how desire shapes a dialogue across geographical and temporal boundaries. Cross-Listed as: ME/R 275 ITAS 309 - Italian-Jewish Literature (1.0) In the light of events like the high-profile trial of a Nazi war criminal and Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter on the responsibilities of Christians in the Holocaust, this course aims to discuss the question of Jewish identity in contemporary Italian culture. Students will read prose and poetry, essays and articles, as well as watch films that address issues such as religious and national identity in a culturally and linguistically homogeneous country like Italy. The course will also give students an overview of the formation and transformation of the Jewish community in
ERROR! NO TEXT OF SPECIFIED STYLE IN DOCUMENT. 3 Italian society. In addition to well-known Italian-Jewish writers like Primo Levi and Giorgio Bassani, students will read pertinent works by non-jewish writers like Rosetta Loy. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, ITAS 274, or by permission of the instructor. ITAS 310 - Fascism and Resistance in Italy (1.0) This course examines the two fundamental political and cultural experiences of twentieth-century Italy: the 20-year fascist regime and the resistance to it. We will study the origins of fascism in Italy's participation in World War I and its colonial ambitions, and then follow the development of fascism over the two decades of its existence and ask to what extent it received the consensus of the Italian people. We will go on to examine the various ways in which Italians resisted fascism and the role the ideals that animated antifascist thinking had in the postwar period. Authors to be studied include: Marinetti, D'Annunzio, Pascoli, Croce, Gobetti, Rosselli, Bassani, Ginzburg, Carlo and Primo Levi, and Silone. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274. ITAS 315 - Italian Mysteries (1.0) Italian Mysteries introduces students to the Italian tradition of mystery and detective writing of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with particular attention paid to its philosophical and semiotic dimensions. It also exposes students to some of the political mysteries that have characterized Italy since the end of World War II and which have become the subject of much contemporary mystery writing, films, and documentaries. From an aesthetic standpoint, we will ask why a new generation of young writers has been drawn to these mysteries as subjects of their writings and examine the variety of narrative forms they use to investigate them. Authors to be studied will include Carlo Emilio Gadda, Umberto Eco, Carlo Luccarelli, Dario Fo, Simone Sarasso, Giuseppe Genna, and the writing collectives known as Luther Blisset and Wu Ming. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273 or ITAS 274. ITAS 316 - Dreams of Eden: Gardens in Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature and Art (1.0) This course will focus on the topos of the garden in Italian literature and art during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Looking at the descriptions of memorable gardens in literary works by Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, alongside paintings by artists such as Mantegna, Da Vinci, Botticelli, and Michelangelo, students will explore the relationship between the self and God, the earthly and the transcendent, nature and culture. An analysis of the female inhabitants of the gardens will, in turn, offer an opportunity to consider how far the garden may be considered a gendered space, and/or a political one, that embodies the conflict between love and duty, woman and God, illusion and reality. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273 or ITAS 274. students will be exposed to a rich body of work and the tradition it both follows and renews. In particular, the course will focus on a series of specific themes, giving special attention to language and style. These will include: the opposition between rural and urban landscapes; the tension between dialects and the national language; the complex dynamics of tradition and innovation. Through initial exposure to selected classical poets, including Dante and Petrarch, students will gain in-depth knowledge of the main formal structures of Italian poetry, from the classical sonnet, going on to free verse. In addition, we will read poems by the Italian greats of the twentieth century, namely Ungaretti, Saba, and Montale, as well as works by contemporary poets, such as Caproni, Sereni, and Valduga. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274, or permission of the instructor. ITAS 349 - The Function of Narrative (1.0) Beginning with Boccaccio and going on to Manzoni, Verga, and beyond, the course introduces students to the major figures of the Italian narrative tradition. We then go on to study twentieth-century narrative texts, all the time seeking answers to the question of why narrative is such a fundamental human need. Why, for example, do we narrate our experience of life and the sense we have of ourselves, even in the form of diaries? Do the stories we tell faithfully reflect reality or do they create it? The course concludes with a reflection on narrative technique in cinema illustrated by the films of Antonioni. Other authors to be studied may include Calvino, Ceresa, Rasy, Pasolini, Celati, and Benni. Prerequisite: ITAS 271, ITAS 272, ITAS 273, or ITAS 274 or permission of the instructor. ITAS 350 - Research or Individual Study (1.0) Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. Open to juniors and seniors. ; Spring ITAS 360 - Senior Thesis Research (1.0) Prerequisite: Permission of the department. ; Spring Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester. ITAS 370 - Senior Thesis (1.0) Prerequisite: ITAS 360 and permission of the department. ; Spring Students enroll in Senior Thesis Research (360) in the first semester and carry out independent work under the supervision of a faculty member. If sufficient progress is made, students may continue with Senior Thesis (370) in the second semester. ITAS 320 - The Landscape of Italian Poetry (1.0) The course is dedicated to the representation and exploration of landscape in the Italian poetic tradition. By studying how the varied and beautiful Italian landscape found expression in the literary works of major poets,
4 WELLESLEY COLLEGE COURSE CATALOG 2016-2017 Index
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