News
Italian Students Embody the Wisconsin Idea
May 2, 2018
Undergraduate and graduate students in this semester's ITALIAN 450 class took on an interesting project: translate Carlo Goldoni's comedic play La familia dell'antiquario, or The Antiquarian's Family, into English. Inspired by an article about the UW-Madison professor who founded the original Wisconsin Dramatic Society, which produces lesser known and foreign plays, Professor Stefania Buccini developed the course for advanced undergraduate students and native Italian graduate students. The class has spent the entire semester translating Goldoni's play, first from Venetian dialect to modern Italian, and then from Italian to English. The English-language translation will allow Goldoni's work to reach a larger Wisconsin audience - a great example of the Wisconsin Idea in action! Read the full article here.
Course on Machiavelli Reaches Across Departments & Programs
April 5, 2018
ITALIAN 365: Machiavelli and His World is a three credit course that introduces students to the major works of Machiavelli through the close reading of his writings in cultural and historical contexts. Offered jointly with Political Science, Integrated Liberal Studies, and Literature in Translation, the course aims to cultivate in students a broad understanding of Machiavelli's principal intellectual attitudes, a deeper understanding of his literary sensibility, and the ability to articulate controversies and complexities surrounding his thought. Offered Fall 2018, MW 4:30 - 5:45 PM. Instructor: Kristin Phillips-Court.
New French course connects Literature and Medicine
March 28, 2018
This 3 credit course, taught in French, will examine "Les maux et let mots: La médecine et la culture de Molière à Mesmer" / "Woes and Words: Medicine and Culture from Molière to Mesmer." Using the tools of both cultural history and close literary analysis, this course will survey the interactions between literature and medicine in the eighteenth century, the period commonly known as the Enlightenment. FRENCH 464 is designed to provide a capstone-like experience for undergraduate French majors and certificate students, as well as to meet medical school requirements for a literature course, including the required writing component (a substantial final term paper that entails some research). Offered Fall 2018, TR 4:45 - 6:00 PM. Instructor: Anne Vila.