ITALIAN 101. Italy: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. 3 Units.
Renowned for its rich cultural tradition, Italy is also one of the most problematic nations in Europe. This course explores the contradictions at the heart of Italy by examining how art and literature provide a unique perspective onto modern Italian history. We will focus on key phenomena that contribute both positively and negatively to the complex "spirit" of Italy, such as the presence of the past, political realism and idealism, revolution, corruption, decadence, war, immigration, and crises of all kinds. Through the study of historical and literary texts, films, and news media, the course seeks to understand Italy's current place in Europe and its future trajectory by looking to its past as a point of comparison. Taught in English.
ITALIAN 115. Virtual Italy. 4-5 Units.
Classical Italy attracted thousands of travelers throughout the 1700s. Referring to their journey as the "Grand Tour," travelers pursued intellectual passions, promoted careers, and satisfied wanderlust, all while collecting antiquities to fill museums and estates back home. What can computational approaches tell us about who traveled, where and why? We will read travel accounts; experiment with parsing; and visualize historical data. Final projects to form credited contributions to the Grand Tour Project, a cutting-edge digital platform. No prior programming experience necessary.
Same as: CLASSICS 115, ENGLISH 115, HISTORY 238C
ITALIAN 127. Inventing Italian Literature: Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca. 4 Units.
This course examines the origins of Italian literature in the late Middle Ages. We will read selections from Dante's Vita Nuova and Inferno; Petrarca's Canzoniere; and Boccaccio's Decameron. Taught in Italian. Recommended: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent level of proficiency.
ITALIAN 128. The Italian Renaissance and the Path to Modernity. 4 Units.
Are humans free and self-determining agents possessed of infinite potential or limited beings subject to the vagaries of fortune? What is the relationship between love and beauty? Is it better for a leader to inspire love or fear? These are the kind of questions Renaissance thinkers asked and we will pursue in our study of the literature, art, and history of Italy from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In this course, you will become acquainted with major writers, thinkers, and artists, and key ideas, innovations, and movements. Examining masterpieces of literature (poetry and prose), art (painting, drawing and sculpture), theater and music, including works of the High Renaissance, we will explore such topics as love, power, faith, reason, and contingency in human affairs. With the themes of discovery, invention and adaption as our guide, we will reflect on perennial tensions between imitation and inspiration, tradition and innovation, and conformity and transgression in Renaissance and early modern Italy. Taught in Italian. Recommended: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent (2 years of Italian). This course fulfills the Writing in the Major (WIM) requirement.
ITALIAN 129. 19th and 20th Century Literature and Culture: Constructing and Re-Constructing Italy. 4 Units.
This course will explore 19th and 20th century Italian history through a literary and cinematic lens. The Italian Risorgimento and unification in the mid-19th century opened a series of debates that resonated throughout the 20th century and its political and social turns: by looking at several works of literature, essays, films, and visual art, students will reflect on the cultural, historical, political, and social dynamics that shaped the Belpaese throughout the past two centuries. The construction of modern Italy will be analyzed as both an ideological and aesthetic process, to provide students with a grasp of how Italian-ness has been shaped from the 19th century to today. This course is both an introduction to modern Italian literature and culture, and a continuation of the study of the Italian language. All class discussion, reading, and writing will be in Italian. Recommended: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent.
ITALIAN 138. The Politics of Love in 20th-Century Italy. 3-5 Units.
Italy is often associated with love and passion, both in its literary and cinematic representations as well as in the tourism industry, promising visitors unprecedented opportunities for romance and excitement.nHow has this conception of Italy emerged and developed? Does it still hold us captive today? How has the idea of a "romantic Italy" shifted over the years, as Italian society itself has undergone significant transformations?nWe will explore these questions through literature (both poetry and prose), philosophy, history, and film. Topics will include sexuality, love, gender, marriage, and divorce, and the way they have been debated in modern Italian society and politics. The course will be taught in English and the materials will be discussed in translation.
ITALIAN 142. The Good Life: Renaissance Perspectives on Perennial Questions. 3-5 Units.
What constitutes a good life? What conditions and relationships enable one to live well, and what attitudes and activities, systems and structures bring them about or make them possible? Renaissance men and women asked such questions, turning to study of the classical past and to close observation of their contemporary world in search of satisfying answers. This course will explore their reflections and investigations, experimentations and creations, examining seminal conceptions and ideals of the Renaissance through their expression in text and image. Topics will include beauty and love; virtue and honor; excellence and exceptionalism; freedom and justice; power and authority; leadership and governance; wealth and prosperity; work and service; education and religion; health and medicine; family, friendship and community. Focusing on Italian contexts with reference to broader European and global trends, discussion and analysis will center on discrepancies between the real and the ideal in Renaissance society and culture. Taught in English. NOTE: New Italian Studies Assistant Professor Sarah Prodan will teach this course.
ITALIAN 148. Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave. 3-5 Units.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Same as: FRENCH 148, FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 248
ITALIAN 149. Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art. 3-5 Units.
Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Same as: ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 349
ITALIAN 152. Boccaccio's Decameron: The Ethics of Storytelling. 3-5 Units.
This course involves an in-depth study of Boccaccio's Decameron in the context of medieval theories of poetry and interpretation. The goal is to understand more fully the relationship between literature and lived experience implied by Boccaccio's fictions. We will address key critical issues and theoretical approaches related to the text. Taught in English translation, there will be an optional supplementary Italian discussion section during weeks 2-9.
Same as: ITALIAN 352
ITALIAN 154. Film & Philosophy. 3 Units.
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 154A, ENGLISH 154F, FRENCH 154, PHIL 193C, PHIL 293C
ITALIAN 154E. Film & Philosophy CE. 3 Units.
Issues of authenticity, morality, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Blade Runner (Scott), Do The Right Thing (Lee), The Seventh Seal (Bergman), Fight Club (Fincher), La Jetée (Marker), Memento (Nolan), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English. Satisfies the WAY CE.
Same as: FRENCH 154E, PHIL 193E, PHIL 293E
ITALIAN 155. The Mafia in Society, Film, and Fiction. 4 Units.
The mafia has become a global problem through its infiltration of international business, and its model of organized crime has spread all over the world from its origins in Sicily. At the same time, film and fiction remain fascinated by a romantic, heroic vision of the mafia. Compares both Italian and American fantasies of the Mafia to its history and impact on Italian and global culture. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 155A
ITALIAN 175. CAPITALS: How Cities Shape Cultures, States, and People. 3-5 Units.
This course takes students on a trip to major capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Dante, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Gogol, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a Letter Grade.
Same as: COMPLIT 100, DLCL 100, FRENCH 175, GERMAN 175, HISTORY 206E, ILAC 175, URBANST 153
ITALIAN 179. Italian Art, Italian Food: Florence and the Banquet of Culture. 1 Unit.
This class is being offered in collaboration with Stanford in Florence, Bing Overseas Studies Program. This online activity course transports students to three world-class Florentine museums - the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. Students will be accompanied by the respective museum directors who will discuss their collections and take questions from the students. The visits are all double sessions: the first dedicated to the history of the collection and the second focused on the principal masterpieces each museum contains. Stanford in Florence resident art historian, Timothy Verdon, will guide students on these visits beginning in the recently re-installed Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which he directs, and then moving on to the Uffizi where he will be joined by its Director, Eike Schmidt, and finally, he will go the Accademia Gallery where the Director, Dr. Cecilie Hollberg, will discuss her museum. After each set of two museum visits, the course will feature a cooking class (three in total), taught by Florentine chef Maria Valiani, and inspired by the artists and works found in the museums themselves. One unit of credit, CR/NC.
ITALIAN 181. Philosophy and Literature. 3-5 Units.
What, if anything, does reading literature do for our lives? What can literature offer that other forms of writing cannot? Can fictions teach us anything? Can they make people more moral? Why do we take pleasure in tragic stories? This course introduces students to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. It addresses key questions about the value of literature, philosophical puzzles about the nature of fiction and literary language, and ways that philosophy and literature interact. Readings span literature, film, and philosophical theories of art. Authors may include Sophocles, Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Proust, Woolf, Walton, Nietzsche, and Sartre. Students master close reading techniques and philosophical analysis, and write papers combining the two. This is the required gateway course for the Philosophy and Literature major tracks. Majors should register in their home department.
Same as: CLASSICS 42, COMPLIT 181, ENGLISH 81, FRENCH 181, GERMAN 181, ILAC 181, PHIL 81, SLAVIC 181
ITALIAN 190. The Celluloid Gaze: Gender, Identity and Sexuality in Cinema. 4 Units.
This course examines femininity and gender representation in cinema. The rich tradition of film theory, from the key semiotic approaches of the 1970s-1990s until the current and equally influential methodologies, will provide the framework for an informed analysis of the films. Topics: the question of the gaze, the power of looking, of being looked at, and of looking back; women as disruption in the patriarchal/cultural text; maternity both as a sign of normalcy as well as a locus for obsession and manic concerns; the woman¿s body as a place of illness and sexuality. Our main object of investigation will be Italian cinema but we will also analyze a few Hollywood films which have inspired much feminist debate; we will focus as well on recent cinematic re-conceptualizations of gender and sexuality. Students will become familiar with key theoretical concepts such as the gaze, desire, intersectionality, masochism and masquerade, as well as modes of feminist resistance to traditional gender hierarchies. Taught in English.
ITALIAN 199. Individual Work. 1-12 Unit.
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ITALIAN 200. Italian Modernities: Lecture Series and Course. 1-2 Unit.
Over the course of the whole year, we will invite 6 speakers to present work on modern Italian culture and literature; these sessions will be supplemented by seminar meetings in which we discuss the work of our guests and prepare writing projects that relate to them. May be repeated for credit.
Same as: ITALIAN 300
ITALIAN 206. Dante and the Romantics. 5 Units.
Dante Alighieri has profoundly influenced literary tradition. The Romantic poets admired Dante¿s capacity to find spiritual redemption in moments of personal crisis, melancholy, and alienation. They drew inspiration from his protomodern blend of lyric and epic, of romance and dream vision, and of allegorical pilgrimage and spiritual autobiography. Prophetic poets like P.B. Shelley and John Keats turned to Dante in their dying attempts at epic. William Blake illustrated The Divine Comedy and adapted the Dantean style of visionary world-making in his own illuminated poetry. T.S. Eliot (a belated Romantic in poems like ¿The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock¿) used Dante¿s technique of the dramatic monologue as a vehicle to explore character. This course will focus on The Inferno and its lasting legacy on the poetry of modernity.
Same as: ENGLISH 206
ITALIAN 214. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.
In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 214, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 314
ITALIAN 216. Michelangelo Architect. 5 Units.
The architecture of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), "Father and Master of all the Arts," redefined the possibilities of architectural expression for generations. This course considers his civic, ecclesiastic, and palatial works. It proceeds from his beginnings in Medicean Florence to his fulfillment in Papal Rome. It examines the anxiety of influence following his death and his enduring legacy in modernism. Topics include: Michelangelo's debt to Classical and Early Renaissance prototypes; his transformation of the canon; the iterative sketch as disegno; architecture and the body; the queering of architectural language; sketch, scale, and materiality; Modernism and Michelangelo. The historiography of Michelangelo has predominantly favored studies in painting and sculpture. Our focus on architecture encourages students to test new ideas and alternative approaches to his work.
Same as: ARTHIST 416A, CEE 33A
ITALIAN 228. Science, technology and society and the humanities in the face of the looming disaster. 3-5 Units.
How STS and the Humanities can together help think out the looming catastrophes that put the future of humankind in jeopardy.
Same as: FRENCH 228, POLISCI 233F
ITALIAN 232B. Heretics, Prostitutes and Merchants: The Venetian Empire. 5 Units.
Between 1200-1600, Venice created a powerful empire at the boundary between East and West that controlled much of the Mediterranean, with a merchant society that allowed social groups, religions, and ethnicities to coexist. Topics include the features of Venetian society, the relationship between center and periphery, order and disorder, orthodoxy and heresy, the role of politics, art, and culture in the Venetian Renaissance, and the empire's decline as a political power and reinvention as a tourist site and living museum.
Same as: HISTORY 232B
ITALIAN 233. When Worlds Collide: The Trial of Galileo. 4-5 Units.
In 1633, the Italian mathematician Galileo was tried and condemned for advocating that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the cosmos. The Catholic Church did not formally admit that Galileo was right until 1992. Examines the many factors that led to the trial of Galileo and looks at multiple perspectives on this signal event in the history of science and religion. Considers the nature and definition of intellectual heresy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and examines the writings of Galileo's infamous predecessor Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake in 1600). Looks closely at documents surrounding the trial and related literature on Renaissance and Reformation Italy in order to understand the perspectives of various participants in this famous event. Focal point of seminar involves the examination of the many different histories that can be produced from Galileo's trial. What, in the end, were the crimes of Galileo?.
Same as: HISTORY 235D, HISTORY 335D, ITALIAN 333
ITALIAN 237. Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy. 3-5 Units.
Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Same as: ARTHIST 218A, ARTHIST 418A, ITALIAN 337
ITALIAN 240. Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World. 3-5 Units.
What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these ¿universal geniuses¿ and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of ¿Renaissance man¿ known as polymathy. Taught in English.
Same as: ITALIAN 340
ITALIAN 248. Cinema and the Real: Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave. 3-5 Units.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, in Italy and France, a handful of movie directors revolutionized the art of cinema. In the wake of World War II they entirely re-defined the aesthetics of the 7th art in films such as "Bicycle Thieves," "400 Blows," "Rome Open City," and "Breathless." These works shared an aesthetic and a philosophy of "the real" - they eschewed big studios and sets in favor of natural light, on-location shooting, and non-professional actors to capture the present moment. This survey course will explore how the dialogue between Italian neo-realism and the French New Wave has yielded some of the most revolutionary filmic masterpieces of both traditions, while raising theoretical and philosophical questions about form, time, space, fiction, representation, and reality. Films: Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Agnès Varda.
Same as: FRENCH 148, FRENCH 248, ITALIAN 148
ITALIAN 257. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.
What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.".
Same as: COMPLIT 257, COMPLIT 357A, FEMGEN 257X, FEMGEN 357X, FRENCH 257, FRENCH 357, ITALIAN 357
ITALIAN 261. War and Peace: Writings by and about Veterans in the 20th and 21st Centuries. 2-5 Units.
Since the aftermath of World War One, and with increasing urgency in contemporary America, stories about and by veterans are assigned a double role: that of exposing the horror of war yet also defending the possibility of a just war, and that of healing both veterans themselves and the society they return to. Key questions for this course are: Given the current practice of using writing and the hero¿s journey as a model for healing veterans and making their voices heard in our culture, can we look back to post-World-War-One culture and see if writing fulfills a similar function? And given how many post-World-War-One veterans became famous writers, how do we assess the interplay between literature, poetry, memoir, journalism, personal letters, photo accounts? Is there a connection between artistic innovation and the capacity to heal?.
Same as: FRENCH 261, FRENCH 361, ITALIAN 361
ITALIAN 262. Symbolism in Literature and the Arts. 3-5 Units.
This course will deal with the some of the 19th and 20th century authors and artists associated with Symbolism. We will focus on some key theoretical essays about the symbol, as well as on symbolist poetry, novels, visual arts, cinema, and music. In reading authors such as Coleridge, Blake, Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Valéry, Pascoli, Campana, d¿Annunzio, and Savinio, we will explore the nature and uses of the symbol in art.
Same as: FRENCH 262, FRENCH 362, ITALIAN 362
ITALIAN 265. Word and Image. 3-5 Units.
What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
Same as: ARTHIST 265A, ARTHIST 465A, COMPLIT 225, ITALIAN 365
ITALIAN 272. Body Doubles: From the Fantastic Short Story to Science-Fiction. 2-5 Units.
How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.
Same as: FRENCH 272, FRENCH 372, ITALIAN 372
ITALIAN 286. Poetry and Philosophy. 2-5 Units.
When and why do philosophers resort to poetry?nWhat is the relationship between poetic metaphor and philosophical argumentation?nWhy is the poetic often associated with empathy - recently touted as an essential human characteristic - whereas philosophy is considered more objective?nWhat is poetry's role in the pursuit of wisdom or the good life?nAuthors include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Agamben, Ricoeur, Derrida, Irigaray, Wyschogrod, and Cavarero.
Same as: FRENCH 286, FRENCH 386, ITALIAN 386
ITALIAN 290. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.
With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 290A, COMPLIT 390A, FRENCH 290, FRENCH 390, ITALIAN 390
ITALIAN 300. Italian Modernities: Lecture Series and Course. 1-2 Unit.
Over the course of the whole year, we will invite 6 speakers to present work on modern Italian culture and literature; these sessions will be supplemented by seminar meetings in which we discuss the work of our guests and prepare writing projects that relate to them. May be repeated for credit.
Same as: ITALIAN 200
ITALIAN 312. Feminist Activists. 3-5 Units.
Is it true that European, and Italian, feminism is more cultural and artistic, whereas American feminists foreground political and economic issues? How can we understand the connections and disjunctions between activism and literature in both contexts, and in the history of feminism from the early twentieth centuty to the present? How do these different strands of feminism come together today in global thinking? We will read both feminist fiction and theory to discuss these questions; authors include Aleramo, Woolf, Banti, McCarthy, Bulter, and Cavarero.
ITALIAN 314. Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett. 3-5 Units.
In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 281E, COMPLIT 381E, FRENCH 214, FRENCH 314, ITALIAN 214
ITALIAN 321. Giambattista Vico. 1-5 Unit.
An intensive reading of Vico's New Science. Emphasis will be on Vico's philosophy of history and theories of poetic wisdom, myth, and language. Vico will be put in dialogue with René Descartes, Rousseau, Auguste Compte, Claude Lévi Strauss, and Paul Feyerabend, whose ideas about myth and science converge in striking ways with Vico's.
Same as: FRENCH 321
ITALIAN 325. Petrarch & Petrarchism: Fragments of the Self. 3-5 Units.
In this course we will examine Francis Petrarch's book of Italian lyric poems, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, and its reception in early modern France, England, and Spain. Readings from Petrarch's epistolary and ethical writings will contextualize historically and intellectually the aesthetics and ethics of the fragment in his poetry. With this foundation, we will investigate the long-lasting impact of Petrarch's work on Renaissance poetry and humanism, with attention to both the literary and the material aspects of its reception. Taught in English.
ITALIAN 327. Giambattista Vico & Claude Lévi-Strauss. 3-5 Units.
An intensive reading of Vico's New Science with special emphasis on Vico's theory of anthropogenesis, myth, and the poetic origins of human consciousness. Vico's thought will be placed in relation to Lévi-Strauss's theories of myth and so-called "primitive thought". Readings include Vico's New Science and Lévi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth", and the first chapters of his book The Savage Mind. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 230, FRENCH 330
ITALIAN 332B. Heretics, Prostitutes and Merchants: The Venetian Empire. 4-5 Units.
Between 1200-1600, Venice created a powerful empire at the boundary between East and West that controlled much of the Mediterranean, with a merchant society that allowed social groups, religions, and ethnicities to coexist. Topics include the features of Venetian society, the relationship between center and periphery, order and disorder, orthodoxy and heresy, the role of politics, art, and culture in the Venetian Renaissance, and the empire's decline as a political power and reinvention as a tourist site and living museum.
Same as: HISTORY 332B
ITALIAN 333. When Worlds Collide: The Trial of Galileo. 4-5 Units.
In 1633, the Italian mathematician Galileo was tried and condemned for advocating that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the cosmos. The Catholic Church did not formally admit that Galileo was right until 1992. Examines the many factors that led to the trial of Galileo and looks at multiple perspectives on this signal event in the history of science and religion. Considers the nature and definition of intellectual heresy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and examines the writings of Galileo's infamous predecessor Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake in 1600). Looks closely at documents surrounding the trial and related literature on Renaissance and Reformation Italy in order to understand the perspectives of various participants in this famous event. Focal point of seminar involves the examination of the many different histories that can be produced from Galileo's trial. What, in the end, were the crimes of Galileo?.
Same as: HISTORY 235D, HISTORY 335D, ITALIAN 233
ITALIAN 337. Michelangelo: Gateway to Early Modern Italy. 3-5 Units.
Revered as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo Buonarroti's extraordinarily long and prodigious existence (1475-1564) spanned the Renaissance and the Reformation in Italy. The celebrity artist left behind not only sculptures, paintings, drawings, and architectural designs, but also an abundantly rich and heterogeneous collection of artifacts, including direct and indirect correspondence (approximately 1400 letters), an eclectic assortment of personal notes, documents and contracts, and 302 poems and 41 poetic fragments. This course will explore the life and production of Michelangelo in relation to those of his contemporaries. Using the biography of the artist as a thread, this interdisciplinary course will draw on a range of critical methodologies and approaches to investigate the civilization and culture of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Course themes will follow key tensions that defined the period and that found expression in Michelangelo: physical-spiritual, classical-Christian, tradition-innovation, individual-collective.
Same as: ARTHIST 218A, ARTHIST 418A, ITALIAN 237
ITALIAN 340. Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World. 3-5 Units.
What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these ¿universal geniuses¿ and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of ¿Renaissance man¿ known as polymathy. Taught in English.
Same as: ITALIAN 240
ITALIAN 346. Body over Mind. 3-5 Units.
How does modern fiction, aided by modern philosophy, give the lie to Descartes' famous "I think therefore I am"? And how does writing convey the desire for a different, perhaps stronger, integration of mind and body? Does the body speak a particular truth that we must learn to hear, that the mind is not always connected to? How do modern metaphors for the mind-body connection shape our experience? These questions will be explored via the works of major French and Italian writers and thinkers, including Pirandello, Calvino, Camus, Houellebecq, Sartre, and Agamben.
Same as: FRENCH 246, FRENCH 346
ITALIAN 349. Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art. 3-5 Units.
Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Same as: ARTHIST 119, ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 149
ITALIAN 352. Boccaccio's Decameron: The Ethics of Storytelling. 3-5 Units.
This course involves an in-depth study of Boccaccio's Decameron in the context of medieval theories of poetry and interpretation. The goal is to understand more fully the relationship between literature and lived experience implied by Boccaccio's fictions. We will address key critical issues and theoretical approaches related to the text. Taught in English translation, there will be an optional supplementary Italian discussion section during weeks 2-9.
Same as: ITALIAN 152
ITALIAN 357. Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, and Adriana Cavarero. 3-5 Units.
What does it mean to say the personal is the political, or, in the case of Arendt, that the personal is not political, especially if you are a woman? This course explores how Weil, De Beauvoir, Arendt, and Caverero contend with the question of personhood, in its variegated social, political, ethical, and gendered dimensions. Particular attention will be given to a philosophy of social change and personal transformation, and to the enduring relevance of these women's thought to issues of our day. Texts include selections from "Gravity and Grace," "The Second Sex," "The Ethics of Ambiguity," "The Human Condition," "Between Past and Future," "Stately Bodies," and "Relating Narratives.".
Same as: COMPLIT 257, COMPLIT 357A, FEMGEN 257X, FEMGEN 357X, FRENCH 257, FRENCH 357, ITALIAN 257
ITALIAN 361. War and Peace: Writings by and about Veterans in the 20th and 21st Centuries. 2-5 Units.
Since the aftermath of World War One, and with increasing urgency in contemporary America, stories about and by veterans are assigned a double role: that of exposing the horror of war yet also defending the possibility of a just war, and that of healing both veterans themselves and the society they return to. Key questions for this course are: Given the current practice of using writing and the hero¿s journey as a model for healing veterans and making their voices heard in our culture, can we look back to post-World-War-One culture and see if writing fulfills a similar function? And given how many post-World-War-One veterans became famous writers, how do we assess the interplay between literature, poetry, memoir, journalism, personal letters, photo accounts? Is there a connection between artistic innovation and the capacity to heal?.
Same as: FRENCH 261, FRENCH 361, ITALIAN 261
ITALIAN 362. Symbolism in Literature and the Arts. 3-5 Units.
This course will deal with the some of the 19th and 20th century authors and artists associated with Symbolism. We will focus on some key theoretical essays about the symbol, as well as on symbolist poetry, novels, visual arts, cinema, and music. In reading authors such as Coleridge, Blake, Poe, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Valéry, Pascoli, Campana, d¿Annunzio, and Savinio, we will explore the nature and uses of the symbol in art.
Same as: FRENCH 262, FRENCH 362, ITALIAN 262
ITALIAN 365. Word and Image. 3-5 Units.
What impact do images have on our reading of a text? How do words influence our understanding of images or our reading of pictures? What makes a visual interpretation of written words or a verbal rendering of an image successful? These questions will guide our investigation of the manifold connections between words and images in this course on intermediality and the relations and interrelations between writing and art from classical antiquity to the present. Readings and discussions will include such topics as the life and afterlife in word and image of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Dante's "Divine Comedy," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and John Milton's "Paradise Lost;" the writings and creative production of poet-artists Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Blake, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; innovations in and correspondences between literature and art in the modern period, from symbolism in the nineteenth century through the flourishing of European avant-garde movements in the twentieth century.
Same as: ARTHIST 265A, ARTHIST 465A, COMPLIT 225, ITALIAN 265
ITALIAN 369. Introduction to the Profession of Literary Studies. 1-2 Unit.
A survey of how literary theory and other methods have been made institutional since the nineteenth century. The readings and conversation are designed for entering Ph.D. students in the national literature departments and comparative literature.
Same as: COMPLIT 369, DLCL 369, FRENCH 369, GERMAN 369
ITALIAN 372. Body Doubles: From the Fantastic Short Story to Science-Fiction. 2-5 Units.
How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.
Same as: FRENCH 272, FRENCH 372, ITALIAN 272
ITALIAN 377. Medieval Lyric: How Lyric Moves. 3-5 Units.
Through the study of various vernacular premodern traditions, this graduate level course examines the qualities that make texts "lyric" and place them into conversation with contemporary theories of lyric. The course will situate medieval lyric within the critical discourse of poetics, the Global South, the archive, and anachrony. We will consider the movement of verse within and among various material contexts (song, manuscript, artworks, objects, tombstones). Poets considered: troubadours, trouvères, Galician-Portugese cantigas d'amigo, Stilnovists, Dante, Petrarchan poetry, Jean Renart, Charles d'Orléans, Villon, Pound, Brazilian Concrete Poetry.
Same as: COMPLIT 377, FRENCH 377
ITALIAN 386. Poetry and Philosophy. 2-5 Units.
When and why do philosophers resort to poetry?nWhat is the relationship between poetic metaphor and philosophical argumentation?nWhy is the poetic often associated with empathy - recently touted as an essential human characteristic - whereas philosophy is considered more objective?nWhat is poetry's role in the pursuit of wisdom or the good life?nAuthors include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Agamben, Ricoeur, Derrida, Irigaray, Wyschogrod, and Cavarero.
Same as: FRENCH 286, FRENCH 386, ITALIAN 286
ITALIAN 390. Magic, Science, and Religion. 3-5 Units.
With the rise of the human sciences in the later nineteenth century, "magic," "science," and "religion" came to be understood as entirely separate domains, with different versions of truth and divergent methods of inquiry. But how has this division broken down in the past 150 years? How is it, for example, that other people's religion is "merely magic"? How does science still draw on religious categories, in particular to claim the universe is meaningful? How have new forms of magic shaped new age, global culture? We will examine these questions by pairing literary texts with readings from anthropology, history of science, religious studies, and cultural criticism. This course is taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 290A, COMPLIT 390A, FRENCH 290, FRENCH 390, ITALIAN 290
ITALIAN 395. Philosophical Reading Group. 1 Unit.
Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with Professor Robert Harrison is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.
Same as: COMPLIT 359A, FRENCH 395
ITALIAN 398. Intensive Reading in French/Italian. 10 Units.
Enrollment is limited to French/Italian Ph.D. students. Course is designed for French/Italian Ph.D. students to prepare for department milestone exams.
Same as: FRENCH 398
ITALIAN 399. Individual Work. 1-12 Unit.
Repeatable for Credit.
ITALIAN 75N. Narrative Medicine and Near-Death Experiences. 3 Units.
Even if many of us don't fully believe in an afterlife, we remain fascinated by visions of it. This course focuses on Near-Death Experiences and the stories around them, investigating them from the many perspectives pertinent to the growing field of narrative medicine: medical, neurological, cognitive, psychological, sociological, literary, and filmic. The goal is not to understand whether the stories are veridical but what they do for us, as individuals, and as a culture, and in particular how they seek to reshape the patient-doctor relationship. Materials will span the 20th century and come into the present. Taught in English.
Same as: FRENCH 75N
ITALIAN 802. TGR Dissertation. 0 Units.
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