Along with providing an historical overview of the Italian philological tradition by investigating its evolution and transformations, this course will identify the principal research instruments, and their appropriate use. Particular attention will be given to the following topics: definitions and outline of the history of philology, the various types of editions, texts and their history, the preparatory stages of critical editions and their characteristics. The course is aimed at the philological "apprentice," that is, those who are approaching this field of study for the first time.

The aim of this course is to retrace "la questione della lingua" in Italy in order to suggest a different approach to, as well as another perspective on, this crucial period of the history of Italian literature and language. Particular attention is given to those factors, which are usually considered marginal (book market, economic situation, religious influence, popular texts/works, and so on) in order to show how they interacted with the question of language. The main idea is that these very factors had a profound impact on Italian society and determined the socio-linguistic situation that ensued in the Italian peninsula.

An examination of Dante's works and criticism on them.

This course will examine and discuss the presence of Augustine's De civitate Dei in Dante's works, both Latin (in English or Italian translation) and Italian (original texts), with a particular attention devoted to Dante's political and anthropological thought. The De civitate Dei is a major point of reference for Western Medieval Culture but, for a number of reasons, it has been neglected so far as one of Dante's sources.

This course will investigate the intersections between Italian Literature and Visual Arts in the 16th and 17th centuries, with particular reference to the works of the following artists and writers: Vasari, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Giordano Bruno, Raffaello, Castiglione, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, Boccaccio, Tiziano, Caravaggio, Marino, etc.

This course examines Petrarch's literary production and its influence on Renaissance culture in Italy, Europe, and the globe. Special attention is given to Petrarch's lyric poetry, Petrarchism as a transnational phenomenon, and Petrarch's global legacy in the development of discourses related to Eurocentrism, race-making, and colonialism.

This is a research seminar that will train students in methodological and transversal questions raised by medieval and early Modern Italian literature and culture. Students should have some reading ability in Italian, or Latin to deal with material for which no English translations are available. More specific language requirements are adjusted in consideration of the degree (MA/PhD) and program (Italian/others) of the students enrolled. The specific topic will change from year to year depending on the instructor and course emphasis.

This course explores drama and performance culture in Renaissance Italy (1350-1650). Students explore a variety of dramaturgical genres (e.g., comedy, tragedy, pastoral drama, and commedia dell'arte) to answer this question: How did Renaissance Italians represent, question, and subvert issues related to identity and difference on stage? Assigned readings feature works by Niccolò Machiavelli, Isabella Andreini, and Pietro Aretino, and class discussion will focus on topics such as the history of gender and sexuality, social class, ethnicity and race, disability, and aging.

This course examines the literary and cultural world of Florence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, focusing on rulers such as Lorenzo, Alessandro, and Cosimo I de' Medici. Students will examine a variety of texts and cultural products (e.g., artworks, poetry, narratives, history and biography, theatred, as well as manuscripts and printed books) to learn about the socio-political realities of the time as well as the importance of gender, sexuality, religion, and racial difference in premodern Florence.

This course explores premodern Italian culture from a global perspective. Focusing on a selected group of case studies, students learn to situate Italy within transregional networks of contact, encounter, and exchange. By examining a variety of texts alongside artworks, maps, and illuminated manuscripts, students investigate how travel and colonization influenced premodern Italian culture. The course will also feature a digital humanities workshop on manuscript studies and geospatial analysis.

This course explores literature produced during the Renaissance in Italy (1348-1600). Students examine a wide range of literary genres, including poetry, narrative forms, and drama, to investigate how Renaissance Italian writers reflected issues related to social practices of belonging, identity-making, and the marking of differences among human beings. Class discussions will focus on gender and sexuality, social class, race, disability, and aging; assigned readings include works by authors such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Vittoria Colonna.

Aims to introduce the study of Baroque poetry through the analysis of those poetics which either led to specific poetical experiences, or were determined by them. An examination of the development of Aristotle and Horace’s literary theories (on such points as verisimilitude, imitation, utile et dolci, marvelous, etc., in late Renaissance poetics will lead to the presentation of the changes, or deformations which those motives underwent during the Baroque. Major poets of the l7th-century, such as Marino, Tassoni, and Chiabrera, as well as minor authors, will be read in the light of those theoretical approaches.

An examination of the conventions and techniques of the Commedia dell'Arte tradition; viewed against the background of contemporary dramaturgy, and appraised from the perspective of modem theories of theatrical discourse. Topics studied include: the semiotics of performance; stochastic composition processes; plot-building strategies; space; structural rhythm; masks, and ideology. No previous knowledge of semiotics is required but a definite interest in theory is presupposed.

The course will study the most representative trends, authors and plays of Italian theatre of 17th and 18th century. Commedia dell’arte scripts as well as works by Guarini, Della Valle, De’ Dottori, Gravina, Martello, Maffei, Marcello, Metastasio, Gozzi, Goldoni, Galiani, Bettinelli, and Alfieri will be studied.

The course will focus on the main aspects of the history of post-Tridentine Italian religious drama, will discuss the theoretical treatises on the genre by Castelvetro, Pallavicino Mazzoni, Maffei, Crescimbeni, Gravina, Martello, Quadrio, as well as authors such as Della Valle, De' Dottori, Scammacca, Metastasio, Martello, Bettinelli, Granelli.

The cultural and theoretical issues that constitute the foundation of Luigi Pirandello's essay on humour will provide the background against which several of his novels, short stories and/or plays will be discussed. Narrative and dramatic texts are intertwined in the dialogic history of Pirandello's overturning of traditional XIX century narrative and dramatic strategies. During the seminar, students will be engaged in the investigation of the complex trajectory travelled by Luigi Pirandello in his remapping of both genres (i.e., narrative and drama) in the Western tradition.

The course will provide a detailed study of a period, author, movement, genre, or critical question in Italian literature and culture between the 19th and the 21st century. The specific topic will change from year to year depending in the instructor.

This is an experiential learning course that will be structured and conducted as a workshop. In the fall of 2019, the course will focus on early modern editions of sacre rappresentazioni (religious plays) in order to discuss and practise transcribing from sixteenth and early seventeenth-century published texts, translating such texts into English, and providing a critical apparatus for the translations (introduction, bibliography, footnotes). The course will begin with a discussion of early modern Italian handwriting (paleography), type-faces, scribal abbreviations, grammar, and vocabulary; it will then turn into an experiential learning workshop that will see graduate and senior undergraduate students work together to transcribe early modern Italian texts into modern notation, translate them into English, and then create a scholarly apparatus to accompany their English translation.

This course will explore texts of different genres produced by Italian authors of African descent including novels, essays, poetry, slam poetry, short stories, autobiographical writing. Topics will include issues of race, gender, identity, racism and anti-racism, colonialism, coming to age experiences, agency, and resistance. This course will follow the principles of a reading group in which students will have the opportunity to take part in collective readings, using the Italian original texts or the English translation, with further socio-cultural context provided in class. Students will be asked to lead class conversations, presentations and text analysis. On occasion, some of the authors will join the class and engage in Q&A and conversations. During the course, students will also be invited to explore forms of autobiographical/creative/fiction writing as forms of assignment.

The course will cover the culture of the period between Italian unification and the 1930s. It will consider the various responses to the process of modernization and the ensuing transformations in the traditional modes of production, circulation and reception of literature and art. Topics to be discussed include: the debate on the function of art and the artist; the formation of new literary genres and forms; the rise of mass culture; the historiographic accounts of the period. Readings will include works by Pascoli, D'Annunzio, Aleramo, Marinetti, Svevo, Bontempelli, as well as historical and theoretical studies of modernism. Students will conduct seminars on specific case studies of the theoretical issues raised in the course.

This course will consider the relationship between Italian cinema and literature in its various iterations, such as adaptation, homage, borrowing, and reference. The specific topic will change from year to year.

This course will examine how the history of Italian cinema is created and disseminated. Through the study of specific genres, filmmakers, or periods, students will gain a deeper understanding not only of Italian cinema, but also of the methodologies of film history.

Through the exploration of a variety of literary and cinematic works this course will grapple with questions arising from the repositioning of film noir in a transnational and global context. We will study films from Mediterranean cinemas (primarily Italian, French, and Spanish) understanding the permeability of noir to ideas and styles from many cultures. Ultimately, this course traces an alternative history of noir, one that engages with dark shadows and rainy North American cityscapes as well as with the sunny landscapes and blue hues of the Mediterranean basin.

This course aims to explore the work of Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989), among the most notable authors of 20th-century Italian literature, by intertwining literary studies and digital humanities. The theoretical component of the course will place Sciascia's oeuvre into its cultural context (from the crisis of the Christian Democracy to the Moro case, the Years of Lead and Sicilian Mafia), exploring the genesis of his books and Sciascia's experiments with different literary genres. Moreover, it will include hands-on modules (including some online lectures by guest experts) on digital archives and scholarly editing, enabling students to experience the physical archive and learn the methods of "authorial philology," i.e., scholarly editing of twentieth century authors. By exploring the unique resources offered by the Sciascia Archive Project, an archive preserved in the Department of Italian Studies, students will reflect on Sciascia's reception in the Italian and North American context.

Based on a professor's research project currently in progress, the following will enable a student to play a useful role in the project while receiving concrete training in research.

Based on a professor's research project currently in progress, the course will enable a student to play a useful role in the project while receiving concrete training in research.

Based on a visiting professor's lecture series and on a research project currently in progress, the course will enable students to further explore a topic closely related to the lectures and to participate meaningfully in a cutting-edge research project by a professor of international distinction.

Based on a visiting professor’s lecture series and on a research project currently in progress, the course will enable students to further explore a topic closely related to the lectures and to participate meaningfully in a cutting-edge research project by a professor of international distinction.

Practice in language analysis based on elicited data from a native speaker of a foreign language, emphasizing procedures and techniques. (Given by the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics.)

This gateway course will offer an introduction to the anthropology of religion. We will selectively cover some of anthropology's "turns" and current trends, contextualizing them in longer histories of anthropological debate and research. Throughout, the course will address three aspects of the anthropology of religion: theory, fieldwork as method, and ethnographic writing. The goals of the course include: 1) to help students situate their own research projects in ongoing or emerging disciplinary conversations; 2) to develop and fine-tune the students' research design; and 3) to prepare students for future teaching in the field of the anthropology of religion.