ITALIAN (ITAL)

A study of the ailing Body Politic, as manifested in Italy during various pandemics. We focus on literary and aesthetic responses to the 1348 bubonic plague pandemic syphilis the 16th c., tuberculosis and cholera in the 19th c., and Covid-19. Using critical and creative tools, we study literature, chronicles, medical treatises, and study manuscripts, works of art, architecture, and cartography. Taught in English; no knowledge of Italian required.

Introduces the essential elements of Italian structure and vocabulary and aspects of Italian culture. Aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing are stressed in that order. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 101 and ITAL 401.

Continues study of essential elements of Italian structures, vocabulary, and aspects of Italian culture. Aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing are stressed in that order. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 102 and ITAL 401.

Florence, 1300. Decades of political violence and the Church's moral bankruptcy spark Dante's poetic vendetta: a tour of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise to see souls getting their just deserts. Dante re-invents comedy to include horror and hallucination, philosophy and gossip, ethics and eros. Students engage analytically and creatively with literary and visual culture of the Italian middle ages.

Develops language skills for communication. Reviews and expands grammar of elementary Italian with increasing emphasis on reading and writing in the context of Italian culture. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 203 and ITAL 402.

Continued development of language skills for oral and written communication through reading and discussion of literature and expository texts. Further study of grammar. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 204 and ITAL 402.

An introduction to Renaissance Studies via a selection of texts and images from the period. The course teaches students to interpret, appreciate, and critique literary and visual expressions from the Italian Renaissance, while considering their aesthetic forms, rhetorical strategies, contexts, and functions in shaping subsequent ideas and ongoing arguments about the Renaissance in the longer history of Western and global cultures.

A study of modern Italy, with special attention to literature, culture, and socio-environmental transformations. Examined authors include 20th-century writers, artists, thinkers, filmmakers, environmentalists, and critics. In English.

An introduction to Italian fascism through history, literature, and film. A look at different forms of culture under fascism and how fascist culture has been remembered after its fall.

This course focuses on the history of modern Italy and examines changes in political, social, economic structures. Students will engage in the search for an "Italian identity." Topics will include unification, World War I and II, Italian fascism, the postwar Italian Republic, the Mafia, terrorism, popular culture, and Silvio Berlusconi.

Learning contract required. Students participating in UNC-led study abroad programs develop activities to supplement instruction in on-campus courses. Supervised by the on-campus instructor, students file reports on the sites, language, and culture of the country in which they are studying. Pass/Fail only. Permission of the instructor and the instructor's department.

Intensive grammar review and communication course that allows skill-building in oral and written fluency in the context of learning about major debates of Italian history, society, and culture. In Italian.

A recitation section or stand-alone course for selected courses that promote the use of foreign language proficiency across the curriculum (LAC). Co-registration required unless a stand-alone LAC course, contact instructor or view Notes to determine.

Designed to expand oral skills to a variety of publics and across a variety of communicative contexts. Students will also have the opportunity to increase their proficiency in written communication in a variety of contexts as well.

Italy's urban landscape has played a role in the shaping of the very idea of the city throughout the centuries. However, a critical approach is imperative, an approach that takes into account how institutionalized power mechanisms have led to vast inequalities in access to the resources (economic, cultural, ecological) of urban centers and peripheries and thus contested versions of who has the right to the city.

A multidisciplinary examination of Italian Civilization from its beginnings in antiquity until the rise of the modern nation-state. Areas examined include history, art history, music and literature. In Italian.

A multidisciplinary examination of Italian society and culture from its national unification until the present. The course will cover many cultural and political themes by examining texts from various media: film, literature, music, television, journalism, and architecture. In Italian.

Analysis of films from World War II to the present. Lectures and discussion in English. Films in Italian with English subtitles. Readings in Italian for majors, in translation for nonmajors.

Themes in Italian cinema: literary adaptation, neorealism, a single auteur or period, representations of fascism, the city, the country, industrialization, social space, north/south difference, regionalism, gender, and sexuality.

Expansion of speaking, writing, vocabulary, and grammar in Italian through the study of a variety of films. Topics relating to global issues, transnational connections between different countries, and diversity in Italy will be explored.

Studies in Italo-American encounters and relationships. Different iterations of the course may focus on different historical periods, from early modern to post-war and contemporary, and different media including fiction, travelogues, film, visual art, and non-fiction.

Provides an overview of modern Italian history from unification through the present, exploring institutions of politics, culture, family, religion, and media, and addressing themes of multiculturalism, racism, gender, and populism among many others. By learning how historical events, symbols, ideologies and narratives overlay contemporary debates over the proper relationship between state and society, students learn to question their assumptions about such relationships in their own country as well.

Introduces students to Italian women writers whose works explore how historical realities such as fascism, resistance, migration, immigration, and changing institutions of work and family have affected women.

Examines ideals and practices around gender and sex from the Renaissance to the Counterreformation. Re-evaluates the historiography of early modern culture and asks students to think critically about literary and artistic canon-formation through the lens of gender studies.

Introduces students to the world of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, situated within the context of medieval and early modern Europe.

This course examines medieval Italians' preoccupation with fraud through literary and historical texts: its philosophical definition and taxonomy, its perceived threat to moral and social order, the hermeneutics of fraud detection, and strategies for bearing the burden of proof.

Examines the historical relationships between food and culture in Italian society.

Explores the 13th c. origins of Italian-language literature from linguistic, historical, cultural, and material perspectives. Topics include courtly love, poetic rivalries, Sicilian and Tuscan lyric, religious and political poetry, comedy and satire, multiethnic Sicily, the legendary rulers Federico II and Genghis Khan, paleography, and manuscript culture. In Italian.

Environmental and ecological topics occupy center stage in the horizon of modern and contemporary fiction. Taking Italy as its main observatory, this course explores the global "environmental imagination" of the 20th and 21st century through its most significant interpreters. Taught in English.

Studies in the Italian romanzo. Different iterations of the course take up different approaches - historical, theoretical, comparative, environmental - and core texts.

This course examines Italian landscapes in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list by undertaking an eco-cultural exploration across places, literature, and film. In English and open to students of all programs.

This course examines how Italian literature and film convey relevant insights about ecological crises and planetary communities, contributing to shaping environmental imagination. Repeatable for credit. In Italian.

Required preparation, two major-level courses or permission of the instructor. A tutorial for advanced students in Italian on a topic agreed upon by the student and a member of the faculty.

Independent study on a selected topic in Italian literature and culture agreed upon by the student and a member of the faculty.

A seminar on a previously announced subject.

Covers levels one and two of the basic language sequence in one semester. Designed for highly motivated undergraduate/graduate language learners, especially those who have experienced success with learning another language. Intensive approach to developing all skills but with an emphasis on speaking. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 401 and ITAL 101 or 102.

A continuation of ITAL 401, covers levels three and four in one semester. Develops all skills, with increasing emphasis on reading, writing, and cultural analysis. Designed for highly motivated undergraduate/graduate language learners, especially those who have experienced success with learning another language. Prepares students for advanced courses. Students may not receive credit for both ITAL 402 and ITAL 203 or ITAL 204.

Offers a panoramic reading of Italo Calvino's works from his first works on the Resistance and war to his posthumous legacy. Taught in English.

Studies in the evolution of the Italian language between its Latin origins and present debates around language pedagogy and English hegemony. Topics may include medieval and humanist language theory; grammar books and the codification of literary Tuscan in the sixteenth century; academies and dictionaries; philology in practice and in theory, world philology; nationalism, Italy's post-WWII linguistic standardization, and globalization.

This course will explore how contemporary Italian and European poetry provide a terrain for a cultural and ecological transition towards protecting our environment from its current crisis. Taught in English.

Discusses Nazi-fascist dictatorships and the Holocaust, as well as the democratization of Western societies after WWII. Also discusses Primo Levi's legacy today, in a time in which the memory of the recent past is always on the verge of being erased by new discriminatory discourses and renewed forms of violence. Taught in English.

Required of students reading for honors. Preparation of an essay under direction of a member of the faculty. Topics to be approved by thesis director in consultation with honors advisor.

Restricted to senior honors candidates. Second semester of senior honors thesis. Thesis preparation under the direction of a departmental faculty member.

An introduction to modern Italian criticism and to current methods of research and scholarship. Bibliographic survey of basic tools and secondary literature. Guidance in preparation of papers, theses, and dissertations. Staff.

An exploration of the literary, visual, and religious representations of Hell shaping late medieval Italian culture, culminating in a close reading of Dante's Inferno as a lucid indictment of the political hellscape. Additional consideration of Dante's evolving poetic response to political fragmentation from the De vulgari eloquentia to the Comedy. Permission of the instructor for undergraduates.

Focusing on Dante's lyric poetry, Vita nova, and Purgatorio, this course tracks various issues related to the generation of poetry in Dante's works and in medieval culture. Topics include medieval psychology, dream theory, conversion, inspiration, devotion, and eros, in addition to manuscript culture, authorship, tradition, and canonicity. Permission of the instructor for undergraduates.

Petrarch's vernacular lyric has famously been called "monolinguistic" for its unity of style and lexicon, yet his Latin works show surprising aesthetic experimentation in mordant satire and classically-inspired invective. This course examines works in both tongues as essential to his authorial persona. Based on the wealth of manuscript evidence documenting Petrarch's reading and writing processes, we will observe and analyze his literary self-fashioning.

A reading of Boccaccio's Decameron and minor works in their cultural contexts. Topics of extended focus may include civic values, representations of gender, positive and natural law, pandemic, hygiene and sanitation; narrative structure, epistemology, authorship, translation and censorship, manuscript culture, genre theory, and the Decameron's afterlife in the age of Covid-19.

A topics course exploring humanism as an international intellectual and social revolution and offering some of its core readings from among the Italian humanists of the fifteenth century. Different iterations of the course take up different thematic coordinates, approaches and core texts.

A topics course with core readings from among the genres popular in sixteenth-century Europe: lyric, romance, dialogue, pastoral, treatise. Cultural studies topics may include the rise of print culture; the 'Italian' wars; debates around gender, language, and the peninsula's small states; classicism vs. innovation; proto-nationalism, cosmopolitanism, ethnography; religious conflict; visual and material culture; non-human animals and ecocritical perspectives.

The Age of the Baroque, Campanella, the new genres, Tassoni. The literature of Arcadia, the Enlightenment, Goldoni, Parini, and Alfieri.

Preromanticism; Alfieri; the lyrics and novels of Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni; the romantic drama from Pindemonte to Niccolini.

This course explores the major literary expressions of the second half of the 19th century and their conversations with their landscapes. Authors and movements include Verismo and Verga, Grazia Deledda, Pascoli, Scapigliatura, and Decadentismo.

Examines the critical issues raised by the Italian avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes of the 20th century.

This course explores the works of major modern writers (Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cesare Pavese, Anna Maria Ortese, Elsa Morante, Italo Calvino, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg etc.) in conversation with contemporary literary theories and in a comparative perspective.

This course explores the works of major 20th and 21st century playwrights (Pirandello, Eduardo de Filippo, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, Marco Paolini, Ascanio Celestini etc.) in their conversation with social issues, historical changes, political phenomena, and environmental emergencies.

Special study and research in set topics, with particular emphasis on theory and comparative perspectives. Subjects include specific genres (e.g. autobiography, the social novel, postmodern fiction, etc.), current debates (new Italian epic, Italian Theory, etc.), and the "new humanities" (environmental humanities and ecocriticism, medical and legal humanities, energy humanities, humanism and posthumanism, history of the humanities, etc.)

A tutorial on a topic agreed upon by the student and a member of the graduate faculty.

Research in a special field under the direction of a member of the graduate faculty.

Research in a special field under the direction of a member of the graduate faculty.