ITAL101 Elementary Italian I

Italian 101 is the first half of a two-semester elementary sequence. Our emphasis is on the development of basic oral and written competence, and reading and aural comprehension skills. In this course, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to function in day-to-day circumstances in Italian as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture.



Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will learn to talk about things in your own immediate environment, such as family, friends, daily routine, likes and dislikes, and you will learn how to handle basic social interactions such as meeting people, planning events, eating out, inquiring about other people's lives, and relating information in simple terms. We will explore roughly five units of the textbook; additionally, your linguistic experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance.



Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in the continuation of the Italian Elementary sequence in Spring (Italian 102): language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 101 and Italian 102, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic foundation--which is necessary to access Intermediate and Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL102 Elementary Italian II

This course is the second half of a two-semester elementary sequence. Our emphasis is on the continuing development and strengthening of oral and written competence, and reading and comprehension skills. Specifically, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to describe and narrate simple events in the past and in the future, make comparisons, express possibility, express your point of view, and agree and disagree with the opinions of others. You will also reach a better understanding of culture, society, and everyday life in Italy as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. By the end of this course, you can expect to be able to function quite ably and with assurance in day-to-day circumstances in Italian. We will explore roughly five units of the textbook; additionally, your linguistic and cultural experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in this course after taking Italian 101 to continue their Italian Elementary sequence: language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 101 and Italian 102, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic foundation--which is necessary to access Intermediate and Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL101

ITAL103 Intensive Italian

Intensive Italian is a course designed for highly motivated students who wish to learn the basics of Italian language in one semester. The course emphasizes the development of basic oral and written competence, and reading and aural comprehension skills. In this course, you will master the linguistic skills necessary to function in day-to-day circumstances in Italian as you develop the ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture.



Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. We will use the textbook both in class and at home; additionally, your linguistic experience will be broadened by reading authentic texts and by viewing, listening to, and discussing cultural artifacts such as films, songs, and commercials. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance.



This course is particularly recommended for students with a background in other romance languages, such as Spanish, French, or Portuguese.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL111 Intermediate Italian I

Italian 111 is the first half of a two-semester intermediate sequence. Authentic artifacts such as literary excerpts, films, newspaper articles, songs, and commercials constitute the starting points of this course. These include topics ranging from stereotypes and perceptions of Italy to significant moments in Italian history and politics, family and student life, employment, immigration/emigration, organized crime, and environmental awareness, all of which shed light on the rich diversity and complexities within Italy and offer a variety of opportunities to improve and refine your ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will build on previously learned grammatical structures and acquire more complex ones that will allow you to improve your ability to relate information, narrate stories, make hypotheses, express your opinions, and debate the opinions of others, both in writing and in conversation. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in the continuation of the Intermediate Elementary sequence in Spring (Italian 112): language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 111 and Italian 112, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic and cultural foundation--which is necessary to access Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL102

ITAL112 Intermediate Italian II

Italian 112 is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence. Authentic artifacts such as literary excerpts, films, newspaper articles, songs, and commercials constitute the starting points of this course. These include topics ranging from stereotypes and perceptions of Italy to significant moments in Italian history and politics, family and student life, employment, immigration/emigration, organized crime, and environmental awareness, all of which shed light on the rich diversity and complexities within Italy and offer a variety of opportunities to improve and refine your ability to speak and understand Italian in a communicative and meaningful context. The course also challenges you to recognize, explore, and understand cultural differences and similarities between your native culture and Italian culture. Grammar undergirds everything we do and say in this course; whether or not we are engaged in an explicit grammar exercise, you are always learning grammar that enables you to communicate effectively. Specifically, you will build on previously learned grammatical structures and acquire more complex ones that will allow you to improve your ability to relate information, narrate stories, make hypotheses, express your opinions, and debate the opinions of others, both in writing and in conversation. Class is conducted entirely in Italian. Because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor, your attendance, participation, and preparation are of the utmost importance. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in this course after taking Italian 111 to continue their Intermediate Elementary sequence: language learning is cumulative and requires time and consistent effort. Italian 111 and Italian 112, taken together, will provide a strong linguistic and cultural foundation--which is necessary to access Advanced courses at Wesleyan and to succeed in study abroad experiences in Italy.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL111

ITAL216 Words and Sex: Storytelling, Censorship, and Boccaccio's Decameron

We will explore literary genres and representations of sex and gender in Boccaccio's Decameron. Through close readings of selected tales and cultural analyses of their trans-historical and transnational reception, we take the Decameron's words as point of departure for the study of storytelling and the politics of readership. As modern readers of Boccaccio's renowned and classic Medieval collection of short tales, we investigate the text's notions of love, gender, and sexuality by comparing and contrasting the Decameron with various other texts across varying media, from the works of Petrarch and Chaucer to the modern readings of D. H. Lawrence and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and from visual arts to digital humanities. Students are invited to creatively engage with these and other texts of their choice (and with approval of the instructor) in order to produce, by the end of the course, either a) an analytic blog post that may be published on the H-Net of the Transnational Italian Studies working group; or b) an individual or collective project inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL293
Prereq: None

ITAL220 Italian Gaming Lab: Using Tabletop Games for Language Learning (CLAC.50)

Italian Gaming Lab is designed as a game-based Italian language laboratory that will focus on why and how tabletop games can be effective tools for language learning; examples will include board games, card games, and tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), an increasingly popular type of game that is based on collaborative storytelling in which participants either impersonate one or more characters or create and organize entire worlds.



In this CLAC course, we will explore how a game-informed pedagogy can work in Italian language and culture classrooms and to highlight analog gaming approaches that have worked inside and outside the language classroom. We will discuss the basics of Game-Based Learning (GBL) applied to L2 acquisition, as well as play a series of games that can illustrate the gameful principles previously studies. Participants will discuss the application of gaming principles to L2 acquisition and create reports and playful presentations on their linguistic journey through play. The course offers students the opportunity to use language creatively and to develop critical knowledge within the rising and innovative field of Game-Based Learning and educational game design.



The course will be conducted in Italian, and games will be played in Italian. Both intermediate/advanced learners of Italian (second-year level or above) and native speakers are welcome. If you are unsure about whether your language background is sufficient for the course, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST220
Prereq: ITAL102

ITAL221 Culture, Society, and History in Italy

This course is designed for students who have completed at least two years of college-level Italian or who have achieved equivalent competency through study in Italy. Our primary objective is to enhance students' speaking abilities and Italian cultural literacy through exposure to a variety of Italian texts and contexts. The course will be organized both thematically and chronologically, taking into consideration a group of three themes that could change from one year to the next. Some groups or themes that might organize the course include the following groupings: l'amore, la morte, e l'altro; la città, la campagna, i sogni; il passato, il presente, e il futuro. We examine these themes in literary texts, paying attention to the different genres, and in opera and film. Students are expected to participate actively in this seminar setting. Class is conducted entirely in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL222 Ruin and Redemption: Narrating Twentieth-Century Italy

When fugitive far-left terrorist Cesare Battisti was extradited to Italy in January 2019 to serve out a life sentence for crimes committed in the late 1970s, he provided fresh evidence for the way that 20th-century events still cast long shadows into contemporary Italy. The events, their narration and re-narration over time tell the story of unresolved conflicts and overturned verdicts in a context characterized by repression, revisionism, and rehabilitation. In this course we study three historical events of the past century that continue to haunt contemporary Italian society, culture, and politics: fascism; civil war and resistance; and the political violence of terrorism in the 1970s and 80s. We approach these events by examining the ever-changing narratives about them. For each narrative we focus on specific issues (e.g., for fascism: the rise of fascism, racism and anti-Semitism, colonialism, Mussolini's cult of personality, the exaltation of war, fascist intellectuals, the art of the regime, etc.), but we use these as an entry point to articulate contradictions and complexity. We explore these narratives through various media and forms of expression: from films to novels, from landmarks to newspaper articles, from poems to billboards. By exploring how the polarizations of these narratives flow into the 21st century, we unveil the fractures and conflicting agents at the core of contemporary Italy.



The course is conducted in Italian. Authors include: Gianni Amelio, Marco Bellocchio, Italo Calvino, Liliana Cavani, Umberto Eco, Beppe Fenoglio, Dario Fo, Natalia Ginzburg, Helena Janaczek, Primo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luisa Passerini, Cesare Pavese, Rossana Rossanda, Roberto Rossellini.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL222
Prereq: None

ITAL223 Home Movies: Italian "Families" on Film

What is "the family" in an Italian social and cultural context? How has it changed over time? How has it responded to the transformations of Italian society since the time of the postwar economic miracle until today? Have its contours changed to adapt to new values? Has it fossilized existing values? Are families limited to flesh-and-blood kinship or are they constructed along lines of shared values and loyalty? This course seeks some answers to these questions through a sustained exploration of a variety of types of families as they are presented in Italian cinema from roughly 1950 until today. We will take stock of representations of the "traditional" family and the related social values, seeking to understand how Italian filmmakers, through their focus on the family, enter into the debate concerning tradition and change within Italian society, culture, and history. To that end, we will examine family dynamics along a broad spectrum of relative and intersecting aspects including affiliation, love, and rivalry; elective families (organized around crime syndicates, families constituted according to affinity); "failed" and "challenged" families and what that means; and examples of single-parent and same-sex families that seek to challenge conventional heteronormative paradigms. Along the way, we will recur to some critical readings (in sociology, history, and anthropology) that will help us frame our inquiry. This course is conducted in Italian. ITAL 223 is an appropriate course for anyone seeking an advanced class after ITAL112.



We will screen one primary film each week, which will anchor our discussions and serve as the basis for that week's activities. Students will also make 10-15 minute presentations on a secondary film that will serve as a "companion" to the primary text and will thicken our understanding of that week's themes.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL223
Prereq: ITAL221 OR ITAL222

ITAL224 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Rethinking the Italian Renaissance

In this course we explore the intellectual achievements of the Italian Renaissance. We study the development of new secular values and the quest for the fulfillment of body and soul, glory, and exuberant pleasures. We question notions of beauty, symmetry, proportion, and order. We also unveil often-neglected aspects of Renaissance counter-cultures, such as the aesthetics of ugliness and obscenity and practices of marginalization (e.g., misogyny, homophobia). We inquire into the rediscovery of classical civilizations. We consider how the study of antiquity fundamentally changed the politics, literatures, arts, and philosophies of Italy at the dawn of the modern era. Through a close reading of texts by authors such as Francesco Petrarca, Niccolo Machiavelli, and Michelangelo, we investigate continuities and ruptures between their quest for human identity and ours. This course is conducted in English, and all primary and secondary sources are in English.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L224, COL224, MDST223
Prereq: None

ITAL225 Italian/Middletown: Podcasting Middletown's Italian Treasures

This class uncovers Italian Treasures in Middletown, both on and off campus.

An advanced course in Italian that is as suited for fifth-semester students as it is for those returning from Bologna or who have already taken a course in Italian, we will explore Italian podcasts and podcasting in Italian before turning our attention to podcast production of our own. Our course begins with audio explorations of podcasts in Italian, which will allow us to examine a variety of themes and subjects (e.g., true crime, sports, health, politics, among others), conducting contextualized grammar review as we go. Alongside study of both the medium of podcasting and examples of Italian podcasts, we will learn about the history of Middletown's Italian community and conduct a hunt for Italian treasures to explore and study. How does Middletown's Italian past link to its present? And to Wesleyan? Where can we find Italian "treasures" on campus and off?



Throughout the semester, students will produce several short audio assignments, for which they will prepare (and submit) scripts. In service to all audio assignments, students will work on their pronunciation and diction with the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from the University of Bologna. In addition to the brief audio assignments and scripts, major assignments include one 5-min podcast episode at midterm and one 7-min episode by the end of November. In the last week of class, students will collaborate on editing and producing a 55-min podcast that folds together all their individual chapters and includes music and linking narrative. This final podcast will be broadcast on Wesleyan's WESU.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL226 The Cosmos of Dante's "Comedy"

In 1321, Dante Alighieri completes the final cantos of the "Comedy" and breathes his last. After 700 years, the "Comedy" has not finished saying what it has to say. This course provides an in-depth introduction to Dante's masterwork as a point of entry to the history of Western literature, philosophy, and science. The core of the course consists of an intensive study of Dante's encyclopedic poem in relation to the culture and history of Medieval Europe. We examine the poem as both a product and an interpretation of the world it describes. We also observe how the "Comedy" casts its long shadow on modern culture: in Primo Levi's description of the horror of Nazi concentration camps, or in Amiri Baraka's fragmentary representation of America's infernal racist system. We investigate the challenges that Dante's text elicits when it migrates to visual and cinematic arts (from medieval illuminations to Robert Rauschenberg to David Fincher), continuously camouflaging and adapting to different media. Major topics of this course include: representations of the otherworld; the soul's relation to the divine; Dante's concepts of governance and universal peace; mythology and theology in Dante's Christian poetics; the role of the classics in the Middle Ages; intertextuality and imitation; genres and genders in medieval literature; notions of authorship and authority during the 13th and 14th centuries; the culture and materiality of manuscripts in the Middle Ages; and the reception of Dante's work from the 14th century to the present. The course combines a close analysis of Dante's inventiveness and literary strategies with exercises in analytical writing and in multimedia translation and adaptation, aimed at prompting critical reflection on the ways in which present cultural practices are built upon the practices of the past. This course is conducted in English; no previous knowledge of Italian is required.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L226, COL234, RELI218, MDST226, WLIT250
Prereq: None

ITAL227 Devotion and Deception: Erotic Discourse from Dante to Petrarca

In this course, we will investigate the ideology, content, and material forms of love literature from Dante Alighieri to Francesco Petrarca. Through a close reading of such texts as Dante's Vita nova (ca. 1295), Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1353), and Petrarca's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (often referred to as the poetry book par excellence: il canzoniere, ca. 1374), we will unveil the literary and fictitious nature of medieval erotic literature. We will explore the origins of love poetry in medieval France and its subsequent interpretation and rewriting in Italian courts and comuni. We will inquire into the cultural constructions of the medieval notion of the lyrical self and how it still has an impact on our own notion of consciousness. We will study the forms, themes, and characters that populate 'love stories' in the Middle Ages. We will analyze the dynamics of composition, circulation, and reception in manuscript culture. Our close analysis of the texts as they have been preserved in manuscript form will help us gauge the differences between medieval and contemporary ways of writing, reading, and loving. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL296, MDST247
Prereq: None

ITAL229 Roads to Rome: Italian Cinema from Neorealism to Today

Do all roads lead to Rome? In ancient times, people across the Mediterranean referred to Rome as Caput Mundi, "the capital of the [Western] world." In 1906, while living there, James Joyce wrote to his brother Stanislaus: "Rome reminds me of a man who lives by exhibiting to travellers his grandmother's corpse." Four decades later, in 1948, film critic Jean-Georges Auriol remarked: "At present, there is no doubt that Rome is the capital of cinema in Europe, if not the world."



This course offers a virtual journey to the Eternal City by means of a critical survey of Italian cinema from neorealism to the present. By analyzing fundamental films that take Rome as their setting and subject, we will discuss major trends in postwar Italian cinema as we explore the history of Italy from fascism to today. Through the works of Federico Fellini, Cecilia Mangini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paolo Sorrentino, Lina Wertmüller, and others, including several Academy Awards winners and nominees, we will address topics such as the legacy of World War II and the transition to democracy, traditional and queer notions of love, the relationship between Italy and the United States, Catholic religion and the Vatican, politics and organized crime, and the transnational representation and aestheticization of Italy.



This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL231 Italian Colonialism and Its Legacies

This course is an introduction to the history and consequences of Italian colonialism. We will study literary and historical texts describing the social and political forces that led to colonization as well as writings by colonized people and their descendants in order to gain a balanced, comprehensive understanding of this often-overlooked moment in Italian history. Students will read futurist, fascist and postcolonial theoretical work and will examine Italian, African and Albanian cultural artifacts representative of the colonial experience. We will also discuss current debates about immigration in Italy and their relationship to this colonial history. Literary texts will include: Dell'Oro's L'abbandono; Cialente's Cortile a Cleopatra; Ali Farah's Madre piccola; Marinetti's Mafarka futurista; and work by prominent Italian scholars of colonialism such as Del Boca and Isnenghi. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL232 Italy at School: Biography of a Nation

Soon after the unification of Italy (1861), the Coppino Law extended primary school to five years, making it free of charge and mandatory for its first three years (1877). Edmondo De Amicis would subsequently depict these reforms in his best-selling novel Cuore (1886), a text that introduced some enduring features of school narratives but also many stereotypes, thus attracting constant criticism and inspiring several parodies of its moralistic underpinnings. Ever since then school narratives have become a key component of Italian culture, creating a genre that has thrived especially in the last three decades, with a number of both fiction and nonfiction books published by teacher-writers who have reflected on their experience.



In this course we will study Italy from the perspective of these texts about school that often originated within school walls themselves. In so doing, we will reconstruct the history of a relatively young country, Italy, through the institution that, like no other, has been given the responsibility of "making Italians." At the same time we will question the image of Italian society that school narratives have, intentionally or not, contributed to portraying. In addition to reading Lucio Mastronardi's Il maestro di Vigevano (1962), we will focus on a wide range of materials, including novels, memoirs, poems, popular songs, films, and works of art that, even in the absence of a unanimously acclaimed "classic" of the genre, have shaped the Italian collective imaginary. Materials will be organized around five poles that have been quintessential to the debate on school in Italy across politics and culture: characters (teachers and students, obviously, but also colleagues, classmates, and families), labor and working conditions (including themes such as precarious work, class conflict, labor rights), gender and identity (questioning traditional gender roles and discussing integration of migrants at school), places and geographies (addressing topics from school design to teaching in prisons, as well as center-periphery integration and north-south divide), and actions (both those of teachers and of students, such as obtaining a certification vs. passing a test, disciplining students vs. questioning teachers' authority, resigning from job vs. cutting classes). The course will be conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: EDST232
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL233 Modern Italy on the Silver Screen: 1960--2015

This course is an introduction to modern Italian culture through the lens of Italian cinema. Beginning in the postwar era, we will look at the radical transformations that have shaped contemporary Italy by examining the aesthetic and narrative trends of the silver screen. Italian cinema holds an important place in global film culture, giving rise to new artistic forms (from neorealism to spaghetti westerns and arthouse slashers) that have dramatically impacted foreign and domestic sensibilities. Among the films screened are Fellini's La dolce vita, Pasolini's Mamma Roma, De Sica's Matrimonio all'italiana, Leone's Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Argento's Suspiria, Moretti's Caro diario, Ozpetek's Saturno contro, and Giordana's Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti. Each film screening is accompanied by a brief presentation of the socio-historical context in which it was produced, allowing students to situate the artistic projects within broader Italian social and political histories. By the end of the term students will have an understanding of the last half-century of Italian national history and will be familiar with key terms in film theory and analysis. This course is taught in English; films will be screened in Italian with English subtitles.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: RL&L233
Prereq: None

ITAL235 The Invention of Fiction: Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron

In this course we read and discuss Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (ca. 1353), a collection of 100 short stories traded by an "honest brigade" of 10 Florentine men and women. They tell each other these stories while sheltered in a secluded villa as the plague of 1348 rages in Florence. We study the Decameron as both a product and an interpretation of the world Boccaccio inhabited. We examine the Decameron's tales and narrative frame as a point of entry into the cultural and social environment of medieval Italy. We look at its scurrilous, amusing, and provocative innuendos as traces of erotic, religious, ethnic, and cultural questions. We investigate the sexual exuberance of many of Boccaccio's tales and the tension between "high" and "low" culture. We consider the development of mercantilism and literacy in early-modern Europe and its emerging virtues of wit and self-reliance. We review the dynamics of composition and reception in manuscript culture and the book's adaptation into different media, from illuminations to film. And by impersonating the 10 Florentines, we will reenact their pastime of telling stories and appreciate Boccaccio's remarkably modern sensibility and unsurpassed art of writing fiction. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST245, COL255
Prereq: None

ITAL236 Inferno

In this course we read and discuss Dante's Inferno (ca. 1306-1309) and its afterlife. Inferno is the poetic description of Dante's (imagined or actual) journey through Hell. We study how its poetry and narrative embody the notions of love, sorrow, evil, guilt, redemption, and punishment. We examine the poem as both a product and an interpretation of the world it describes and of its radical otherness: its representation of the otherworld, its relationship with religion and faith, its fear of death, its obsession with the Devil. We inquire into Dante's inventiveness and poetic technique, reviewing his magisterial use of realistic and figurative language. We observe how Inferno casts its long shadow on modern culture: in the description of the horror of Nazi concentration camps (Primo Levi's memoir), or in the representation of the inauthentic life in consumerist society (Pier Paolo Pasolini's rewriting of Inferno in contemporary Italy). We investigate the challenges that Dante's text elicits when it migrates to visual and cinematic arts (or to Disney comics), continuously camouflaging and adapting to different media. And we critically reflect on how, after seven hundred years, Inferno has not finished saying what it has to say. The course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL238 What's in a Name? Autobiography and Autofiction in Modern Italian Culture

This course explores the relationship between a person's (or a character's) identity and their name, examining the crucial relevance of naming and renaming practices in shaping individual identities and collective narratives through a wide variety of Italian texts. In the first module, we read Holocaust memoirs and contemporary short fiction and we listen to podcasts and songs by Black and Jewish Italian authors to analyze the nuanced ways in which names shape racial identity, from the derogatory act of name-calling and the deprivation of personal names to the empowering act of reclaiming one's name and narrative. In the second part of the course, we consider coming out stories and gender transition accounts, including graphic novels and feature films, to reflect on the impact of putting into words one's gender identity and choosing new names in individual journeys of self-discovery and affirmation. In our last module, we focus on the last twenty years of Italian literature to study one of its dominant genres (that some Italian critics polemically named a "disease"): autofiction, a blend between autobiography and fiction. For the final essay or project, each student will choose a recently published novel to read, analyze, and adapt or (partially) translate. This course is conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: None

ITAL241 Antonioni and Cinema of the Environment

From its earliest days, the cinema has sought to capture the wonders of the world: exotic landscapes, industrial inventions, and human prowess in the face of nature. At the same time, many important filmmakers--and particularly those in the Italian tradition--have mined their medium's capacity to register and comment upon environmental change. Few directors traversed the upheavals of the 20th century quite like Michelangelo Antonioni. Beginning with his early documentaries, we'll explore cinema's relationship to both the natural world and the built environment across Antonioni's long career. From the foggy landscape of the Po valley to the urban centers of Milan, Rome, London, and Los Angeles, we will assess the images produced by location shooting and realist techniques, but also by formal abstraction and non-narrative time. What might Antonioni's inclination toward abstraction and detachment ("Antoniennui," in a memorable pun) tell us about the world? How should we square his stylistic tendencies with his camera's attention to an environment under pressure? What lessons does his cinema hold for the present?



We'll approach these questions using the core methods of the humanities: close reading, careful viewing, and critical analysis. Along the way, we'll sharpen our understanding of film scholarship, and explore how to make critical (and creative) arguments about cinema and the environment.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL245 Not Just Neorealism: Italian Cinema, its History and Politics (CLAC.50)

This 0.5-credit course is conducted in Italian and designed to supplement the English-language Italian cinema course "Not Just Neorealism: Italian Cinema, its History, and Politics" (RL&L 245). The presentations that are part of the requirements for the parent course (RL&L 245) will serve as our basis in this discussion-based section: Students will be responsible for screening films in addition to those required for 245, for presenting them, and, during the discussion sections in Italian, responsible also for linking them to the course material. Further, students enrolled in the CLAC will also make mini-presentations to the broader body of the students enrolled in the parent course only, linking the extra screenings to those that are part of the course syllabus, and enriching the discourse and knowledge base.



Students are required to be simultaneously enrolled in the parent course in order to enroll in the CLAC section. For this reason, enrollment is granted on a POI basis.



Students must have advanced competency in Italian: completed ITAL 221 or a course with a higher number, spent a semester (or more) in Wesleyan's Program in Bologna, or be linguistically proficient. For any questions about linguistic preparation, please contact the instructor.



Please note that at present this section is not acceptable as one of the nine required courses for the ITST major.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST245
Prereq: ITAL221

ITAL246 Crises and Emergencies in Modern Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic revived a longstanding concern in Italian theory about the relationship between rule of law and state of exception. This course draws upon biopolitics and cultural studies to investigate the relevance and ramifications of the emergency management paradigm in modern Italy. It also provocatively questions an established trend in public discourse, namely the rhetoric of the crisis: "crisi di governo," "crisi di valori," but also "emergenza migratoria," "emergenza ambientale," and so on. Why is Italy constantly in crisis? By relying on various genres of literature and on a wide range of media including films, songs, and social media, we will analyze artistic representations of these crises and emergencies, as well as the state responses to them. The critical exploration of case studies from four interconnected thematic areas revolving around issues of public health, power, body, and space will often unveil diverging narratives, allowing for reflections on the tension between safety and freedom, vulnerability and resistance, individual and collective memory, and truth and fiction.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Prereq: ITAL222

ITAL247 Coming Out/Coming of Age: Narratives of Becoming in Italian Culture

By examining narratives of "becoming" in Italian literary and screen texts, we will work to read against a dominant "master" narrative of Italian culture that is cis-male, patriarchal, and "white." The literary and screen texts we will explore in depth include some "classic" narratives of coming of age in the Italian cultural tradition which we will lay alongside Italian cultural "coming out" narratives, some "classic," others less so. What can we learn from such adjacencies? What does one "come out" of with regard to either strand of inquiry? Is adolescence a "closet" out of which one emerges with a sexual identity? Does one come of age as an artist or "come out" as a practitioner of a particular artistic genre (filmmaker, poet, novelist)? How do artistic choices of practice subtend and inform sexual identity? What gets left behind in this "progress" of "becoming"? These are some of the questions we will address in this course, conducted in Italian.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL352
Prereq: None

ITAL249 Italian Filmmaking by the Book: Adaptations, Texts, and Contexts

This course explores the adaptations and transformations of Italian literary texts into their cinematic and televisual counterparts. We will principally study Italian narratives from the 20th and 21st centuries and their screen adaptations as a way of uncovering the modes and means by which Italian screen culture borrows from literary antecedents. Is the relation between literary texts and their screen adaptations a love story or bad romance? Is it characterized by a "faithfulness" to the text or a "betrayal"? Throughout the semester, students will acquire an enriched understanding of the assorted texts and their contexts by studying varied genres (short fiction, novels, nonfiction, detective stories), a variety of themes (crimes both real and imagined, petty and powerful; historical revisionism; personal and political dilemmas), and diverse geographical settings focusing principally on Southern Italy (including cities and islands reaching from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic).



All students in the course will study a common core of five author/director pairs. The core consists of "Il Gattopardo" (di Lampedusa/Visconti); "Io non ho paura" (Ammaniti/Salvatores); "L'amica geniale" (Ferrante/Costanzo); "Gomorra" (Saviano/Garrone/Sollima); and "Novelle per un anno/Caos" (Pirandello/Taviani). Additionally, students will, in consultation with the instructor, choose a sixth pairing from the list of the following titles, which will serve as the basis of their end-semester presentation as well as an element of the oral final exam: "Il giorno della civetta" (Sciascia/Damiani); "Il contesto/Cadaveri eccellenti" (Sciascia/ Rosi); "I Malavoglia/La terra trema" (Verga/Visconti); "Padre Padrone" (Ledda/Taviani); "Quo vadis, baby?" (Verasani/Salvatores); "Acciaio" (Avallone/Mordini); "Il conformista" (Moravia/Bertolucci); "Todo modo" (Sciascia/Petri); "Minchia di re/Viola di mare" (Pilati/Maiorca); "Benzina" (Stancanelli/Stambrini); "Il padrino" (Puzo/Coppola); "La tregua" (Levi/Rosi); and "Le forme dell'acqua" (Camilleri/Sironi). Students may also care to consider literary texts from earlier historical periods: Basile's 16th-century "Il cunto de li cunti/Il racconto dei racconti" (Garrone) and Collodi's 19th-century "Pinnochio" (with adaptations by Disney, Benigni, and Garrone). This course will be conducted in Italian. This course is appropriate for all students who have completed ITAL 112 or whose placement exam indicated a course numbered ITAL 221 or higher.



Students are encouraged to put the lengthened winter break to good purpose. All students are expected to read the first book of Ferrante's Neapolitan quartet, "L'amica geniale," during the winter break. It is a long novel, but students will find that the Italian is not challenging. Any edition in Italian will be fine (e.g., electronic, print, used, etc.). Reading in advance of the semester will facilitate students' workload as well as keep Italian flowing during the lengthy pause. It is further greatly recommended that students read di Lampedusa's "Il Gattopardo" in advance of the semester. If students have already taken an Italian course numbered 221 or higher, or have already studied in Italian, it is recommended that they read "Il Gattopardo" in Italian. Any edition will serve.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL289
Prereq: None

ITAL256 Medieval Gigs: Saints, Scholars, Sailors, Sinners

A friar preaching to birds, a scoundrel passing as a saint, a nun conversing with Jesus, a Greek hero sinking into hell, a scholar talking to the dead, and a merchant exploring uncharted territories: We find unusual professional figures gigging in Italy circa 1300. In this course we explore medieval alterity through the voices of its most illustrious representatives: from Francis of Assisi to Dante Alighieri, and through a variety of other workers in the Italian economy. We examine various aspects of medieval religious culture ranging from mystical visions to the institutional politics of the Church. We consider the development of mercantile capitalism and its emerging virtues of wit and self-reliance. We track seafarers as they encounter the Other during their maritime voyages. For those staying closer to home, like clerics and other literate "Italians," we review the dynamics of composition and reception from orality to manuscript culture. We observe how medieval culture is embodied through different media, from manuscript illuminations to film. And by combining micro- and macro-perspectives, we approach the Italian Middle Ages from a broad aesthetic, historical, and socio-anthropological standpoint.



The course is conducted in Italian. Authors include Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Angela of Foligno, Giotto, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Marco Polo, and Christopher Columbus.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: MDST258
Prereq: None

ITAL260 Castles of Cards: Italian Romance Epic Storytelling Lab

Celebrated authors of 20th-century Italian literature such as Italo Calvino and Gianni Celati have included in their works several features of Renaissance romance epic, from the importance of orality and the idea of sharing stories with a community of listeners to multi-threaded narratives and a playful attitude to the world of storytelling. The current popularity of fantasy literature and TV series puts us in an ideal position for the study of the chivalric romance and for an exploration of the continuities and the differences between past and present literary forms. In this course we focus on canonical and less canonical texts of the Italian Renaissance epic and their modern rewritings. After a multimedia investigation of Andrea da Barberino's "Guerrin Meschino," Luigi Pulci's "Morgante," Boiardo's "Inamoramento de Orlando," Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata" along with their rewritings by authors such as Bufalino, Nori, Celati, Calvino, and Giuliani, we will take inspiration from Calvino's "Il castello dei destini incrociati" to transform the classroom into a storytelling lab. The same deck of tarot cards that Calvino used for his book will help us to take part in a role-playing game and create a collaborative story that will gradually unfold throughout the semester. The class aims both at studying the Italian romance epic in order to reenact it creatively and also at using this collaborative rewriting as an interpretive tool to explore Renaissance literature from within.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL261
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL263 Mythic & Modern: Reappropriating Classical Themes in Contemporary Drama and Performance

What does it mean to defy the authority of the patriarch, of family, or of government? How do these structures of authority intersect in contemporary society? How do we, today, understand "destiny"? How do we challenge it, and what are the consequences for doing so? How do we break the patterns of shame and disenfranchisement inherited from the shared past? These are just some of the social, political, and ethical concerns transmitted over time by playwrights, stage and performance artists, and film directors who treat classical myths as valuable constructs for interrogating our contemporary world and society. In this collaborative, project-based course we explore how classical myths have been appropriated within the modern Italian and Italophone cultural context. Just as important as our study and discussion of modern adaptations of classical models are the staged readings of key scenes incorporated strategically throughout the semester that help us develop an organic understanding of the material from the inside. Our overarching aims include: 1) exposing what persists in modern adaptations of classical myths, 2) tracking the kernels of change that the adaptations present, and 3) understanding why performers over time, working in disparate cultural milieus, continue to seek and derive inspiration from classical myths. The mythic figures we examine may include any of the following: Sophocles' Antigone, Euripides' Oedipus and Medea, Aeschylus' Agamemnon, as well as figures from the Oresteia and from such epics as Homer's "Iliad" and Virgil's "Aeneid." This course is taught in conjunction with ITAL263 and FREN263. The final collaborative performance, scheduled during the final exams period, will involve students from across the Romance Languages and offers the unique opportunity for cohort building among students of French, Italian, and Spanish.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: THEA263
Prereq: ITAL221

ITAL267 Female Dicks: Police, Detectives, and Private Investigators in Contemporary Italian Culture

Through the act of detection and "solution" of a crime, classic detective stories and police procedurals often serve as consoling narratives, knitting up the unraveled social fabric and seeing that justice will either be served or promised. In solving the crime, the detective--sometimes called a "dick" in the classic American hard-boiled detective literature--often restores order to social chaos. What changes when women--female dicks--conduct the investigation? Do women investigators, as agents of detection, uphold existing (patriarchal) power structures, dynamics, and epistemologies? Challenge them? Transform them? These are some of the themes we will contemplate as we study Italian "gialli" published since 1995.



We will concentrate on three different types of female dicks: la Deferente (the deferential), la Scomoda (the disquieting, uneasy), and la Vendicatrice (the vindicator). We will read novels in several different book series privileging Bologna as a location; further, we will also explore films and television series, trying to plumb the relationship of these Italian screen texts to the phenomenon of global and transnational noir.



This course is conducted through the medium of Italian and is suitable for anyone who has already taken a fifth-semester course (or one that is more advanced) on the Middletown campus or who has participated on the ECCO Program in Bologna. If you have questions about whether this is the course for you, please contact the instructor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: COL367
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL289 The Mediterranean Archipelago: Literary and Cultural Representations

"Islands which have / never existed / have made their ways / onto maps nonetheless" (Nicholas Hasluck). In this course, we study Mediterranean islands as geographical, textual, and metaphorical spaces. We focus on specific islands--both fictional and real--as case studies for the aesthetic, political, and metaphysical implications of insularity, while also aiming to present the Mediterranean as a spatial, historical, and cultural network of relationality and conflict. Elaborating upon Predrag Matvejevitc's statement that "the Mediterranean is not only geography," we approach Mediterranean insularity not only in cartographical representations (from Greek geographers to Arab cartographers), but also as poetic topos (from Ariosto's Island of Alcina to Goethe's Capri), narrative stratagem (from Homer's Phaeacia to Boccaccio's Rhodes), literary protagonist (from Deledda's Sardinia to Murgia's Sardinia), political concept (from Plato's Atlantis to Campanella's Taprobane), and existential condition (from Cervantes's Cyprus to Cavafy's Ithaca). We engage in a diachronic and synchronic exploration of Mediterranean islands' inherent dialectic between resistance and occupation, identity and assimilation, marginality and integration, zoological extinction and speciation, inbreeding and metissage, autochthony and allogeny, linguistic conservatism and creoleness, territorial boundedness and internal division. Our approach will also be archipelagic and include methods and concepts from historical linguistics and dialectology to diplomatic history and postcolonial poetics.
Offering: Crosslisting
Grading: OPT
Credits: 1.00
Gen Ed Area: HA-CHUM
Identical With: CHUM389, MDST360, WLIT340
Prereq: ITAL112

ITAL333 The Cosmos of Dante's Comedy - Medieval Italian Lab (CLAC .50)

This optional lab is dedicated to students who are taking or have taken RL&L 226 (The Cosmos of Dante's Comedy) and want to read and discuss sections of Dante's masterwork in Italian. The lab is designed for upper-intermediate and advanced learners of Italian, but students with reading knowledge of Italian should contact the instructor if they feel this course may be appropriate for them.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT
Credits: 0.50
Gen Ed Area: HA-RLAN
Identical With: CGST333
Prereq: None

ITAL401 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL402 Individual Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL403 Department/Program Project or Essay

Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ITAL407 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ITAL408 Senior Tutorial (downgraded thesis)

Downgraded Senior Thesis Tutorial - Project to be arranged in consultation with the tutor. Only enrolled in through the Honors Coordinator.
Offering: Host
Grading: A-F

ITAL409 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL410 Senior Thesis Tutorial

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL411 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL412 Group Tutorial, Undergraduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL419 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ITAL420 Student Forum

Student-run group tutorial, sponsored by a faculty member and approved by the chair of a department or program.
Offering: Host
Grading: Cr/U

ITAL491 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL492 Teaching Apprentice Tutorial

The teaching apprentice program offers undergraduate students the opportunity to assist in teaching a faculty member's course for academic credit.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT

ITAL502 Individual Tutorial, Graduate

Topic to be arranged in consultation with the tutor.
Offering: Host
Grading: OPT