91556

ITAL 201 Intermediate Italian I

Franco Baldasso

M . W . . . T . . .

10:30 am -11:30 am 10:30 am -11:30 am

OLINLC 115 OLINLC 120

FLLC

This course intends to reinforce students’ skills in grammar, composition, and spoken proficiency, through intensive grammar review, conversation practice, reading/analysis of short texts, writing simple compositions, as well as the use of magazine articles, video and songs.  Students engage in discussion and must complete compositions and oral reports based on Italian literary texts and cultural material. Prerequisites: Two semesters of elementary Italian or Intensive Italian 106 (or the equivalent). Class size: 20

91554

ITAL 227 Sicily and Writing

Franco Baldasso

. T . Th .

11:50 am -1:10 pm

OLINLC 208

FLLC

South of Europe but at the center of the Mediterranean world, Sicily has been at the crossroads of cultures and peoples since Homer. The majestic, skeptical, bitter narratives of Sicily’s writers, from Giovanni Verga, to Luigi Pirandello, to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, trace a philosophical counter-narrative to Italy’s modernity. Sicilian novelists portray the complexity of Italian civilization with peculiar humor and awareness of their difference. Celebrated filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti and Francesco Rosi amplify the many tensions of Sicilian narrative through visually striking cinematic interpretations. Targeted to students interested in honing their skills in Italian, this course also provides a critical understanding of the diversity and richness of Italy’s local cultures, through novels, films and original 19^th-century photographic materials. Prerequisites: Italian 202, or permission of instructor. Conducted in Italian. Class size: 15

91555

ITAL 331 DEMOCRACY AND DEFEAT: Italy after Fascism

Franco Baldasso

M . . . .

1:30 pm -3:50 pm

OLIN 309

FLLC

Cross-listed: Human Rights The seminar takes bestows an interdisciplinary approach to the cultural and intellectual history of Italy from 1943 to 1950, addressing post-Fascist Italy as a case study in the broader question of establishing democracy after totalitarianism. The heterogeneous aspects of the Italian cultural field after WWII are considered in a wide-ranging framework, in which postwar histories are informed not simply by the external context of the Cold War but also by preceding wartime discourses. The course encompasses the ideological debate of the late 1940s, the role of aesthetics in reshaping the national self (Neorealism and its discontents), and the politics of memory enacted by literature and film (Italo Calvino, Curzio Malaparte, Carlo Levi). It also investigates the legacy of violence left by Fascism and the war, the trauma of national defeat, and Italian responsibility in WWII and the Holocaust (Primo Levi, Rosetta Loy). FIt finally, it surveys the persistence of gender and racial exclusions after the establishment of a new democracy. Prerequisites: Italian 202 or permission of instructor. Conducted in Italian Class size: 15