Undergraduate Courses for Fall 2024
French
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French 101: First Semester French
Pre-Requisite: None*
*Students with previous knowledge in French MUST take the French placement exam.
Credits: 4
Description: For students with no previous training in the language; oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of French and Francophone cultures.
Instructor: Graduate TA
French 102: Second Semester French
Pre-Requisite: French 101 or placement via placement exam
Credits: 4
Description: Continuation of French 101.
Instructor: Graduate TA
French 203: Third Semester French
Pre-Requisite: French 102 or placement via placement exam
Credits: 4
Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.
Instructor: Graduate TA
French 204: Fourth Semester French
Pre-Requisite: French 203 or placement via placement exam
Credits: 4
Description: Continuation of French 203 with more advanced materials. Advanced oral practice and conversation, grammar review, reading, vocabulary expansion, creative writing and study of French and Francophone cultures.
Instructor: Graduate TA
French 211: TOPIC - Exploring Paris
Pre-Requisite: None
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3 credits
Description: Explore Paris through diverse, historical, creative, and anecdotal perspectives offered by writers, filmmakers, and other artists.
Instructor: Joshua Armstrong
French 228: Intermediate Language and Culture
Pre-Requisite: French 204 or placement via placement exam
TAUGHT IN FRENCH
Credits: 3
Description: Enhance writing and speaking proficiency through cultural readings on France and the francophone world. Review of grammar and focus on more complex grammatical structures. A required prerequisite for the French major.
Instructors: Ritt Deitz and Graduate TA
French 271: Literature, Comics and Film in French
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228
TAUGHT IN FRENCH
Credits: 3
Description: An introduction to reading and analyzing literary works, comics, and film, with special emphasis on the development of writing skills in French. The program will concentrate on shorter works from the major genres of French literature, and prepare students for future study of literature.
Instructors: Ewa Miernowska and Graduate TA
French 288: Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)
Pre-Requisite: None
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: An overview of the global humanitarian NGO, Doctors without Borders (or Médecins sans Frontières MSF) including its history, mission, organization, and the cultural, political, and ethical challenges it faces. Explores issues of global health, social justice, and humanitarian action. Features distinguished global practitioners with first-hand experience in health crisis situations.
Instructor: Ritt Deitz
French 311: Advanced Composition and Speaking
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 228
TAUGHT IN FRENCH
Credits: 3
Description: Learn to write essays on a variety of topics, using different registers of French, and work to correct pronunciation and improve conversation skills.
Instructor: Anne Theobald
French 321: Medieval and Early Modern French Literature
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 271
TAUGHT IN FRENCH
Credits: 3
Description: Introduction to important literary works from the medieval era to the French Revolution.
Instructor: Jan Miernowski
French 322: Modern French and Francophone Literature
Pre-Requisite: FRENCH 271
TAUGHT IN FRENCH
Credits: 3
Description: Introduction to important literary works of modernity (from the French Revolution to the twenty-first century).
Instructor: Josh Armstrong
French 347: Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Pre-Requisite: French 311, 312, 321, 322, or 325
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: An introduction to the political, social, intellectual, artistic and literary development of French culture, from its origins to the French Revolution (1789).
Instructor: Anne Theobald
French 462: French/Francophone Cultural Studies Across the Centuries
Pre-Requisite: French 321 or 322
TAUGHT IN French
Credits: 3
Description: A study of how culture has evolved over the course of French history, in relation to a chosen topic.
Instructor: Nevine El Nossery
TOPIC: Littérature et Cinéma Francophone
Italian
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Italian 101: First Semester Italian
Pre-Requisite: None*
*Students with previous knowledge in Italian MUST take the Informal Italian Placement Test (contact Mandi Schoville for information).
Credits: 4
Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of Italian cultures.
Instructor: Graduate TA
Italian 102: Second Semester Italian
Pre-Requisite: Italian 101, Italian 181 or placement via informal Italian placement test*
*contact Mandi Schoville for information
Credits: 4
Description: Oral practice and conversation, grammar, reading, vocabulary building, and study of Italian cultures. Continuation of Italian 101.
Instructor: Graduate TA
Italian 203: Third Semester Italian
Pre-Requisite: Italian 102, 201 or placement via informal Italian placement test*
*contact Mandi Schoville for information
Credits: 4
Description: Conversational practice, review of grammar, viewing and discussion of Italian films, and class reading of short stories.
Instructor: Graduate TA
Italian 204: Fourth Semester Italian
Pre-Requisite: Italian 203 or placement via informal Italian placement test*
*contact Mandi Schoville for information
Credits: 4
Description: Conversation and writing practice, review of grammar, and class reading of a modern Italian novel.
Instructor: Graduate TA
Italian 311: Advanced Italian Literature
Pre-Requisite: Italian 202 or 204
TAUGHT IN ITALIAN
Credits: 3
Description: Development of accurate and nuanced capacity for expression in Italian and for understanding the spoken and written language. Also addresses Italian phonetics and phonology to develop accurate pronunciation.composing and editing.
Instructor: Loren Eadie
Italian 321: Studies in Italian Literature and Culture I
Pre-Requisite: Italian 202 or 204
TAUGHT IN ITALIAN
Credits: 3
Description: Focuses on masterworks of Italian literature in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, and on the ways in which this period laid a foundation of today’s Italian society and culture. Includes historical, social, and cultural contexts of the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
Instructor: Jelena Todorovic
Italian / Lit Trans / ILS / Poli Sci 365: Machiavelli and his World
Pre-Requisite: Satisfied Communications A requirement
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: Introduces students to the major works of Machiavelli through the close reading of his writings in cultural and historical contexts. Discussion and targeted writing assignments will aim at cultivating in students 1) a broad understanding of Machiavelli’s principal intellectual attitudes, 2) a deeper understanding of his literary sensibility, and 3) the ability to articulate controversies and complexities surrounding his thought.
Instructor: Kristin Phillips-Court
Lit Trans 200: Food Cultures in Italian Literature - FIG
FIG COURSE
Pre-Requisite: None
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: Investigate the representation of food in Italian literature from the 19th Century to the present and the connection between food and identity in Italy and Italophone culture. Covers novels, short stories and poems and work on methods of literary analysis by focusing on questions of genre, narrative structure, characters, metaphorical and allegorical interpretation, etc. The theme of food (in relation to hunger, class, gender, identity, diaspora, sustainability, etc.) is central in the literary material included.
Instructor: Grazia Menechella
Lit Trans 248: National Identity in the Global World - The Italian Case - FIG
FIG COURSE
Pre-Requisite: None
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: What is a national identity in the context of the fluid globalized world in which we live? How are identities affected by big migratory waves within the same country and, more importantly, from one country or continent to another? The Italian case is one of the many in the so-called Western world that can help us to monitor the possible answers to these questions. Through readings and discussions of novels, avant-garde manifestoes, poems, two main tasks will be accomplished. The first task of analyzing literary texts in a variety of genres (epistolary novel, historical novel, avant-garde rhetoric, poetry) to familiarize ourselves with textual analysis and some theoretical tools supporting the interpretative tasks of literary criticism. And the second task of appreciating the rhetorical devices that those texts adopt at different times of Italian modern and contemporary history.
Instructor: Ernesto Livorni
Lit Trans 254: Literature of Modern Italy - Existentialism, Fascism, Resistance
Pre-Requisite: Sophomore Standing
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: This course will offer a general introduction to the modern Italian novel (in translation) in philosophical, artistic, and socio-historical contexts. Students will be introduced to several of the most significant literary authors and movements in Italy during the 20th – 21stCenturies, and they will gain a broad understanding of modern Italian culture, history, and society. The central themes of the course include: modernism and postmodernism, immigration and nationalism, futurism and Italian avant-gardes, fascism and anti-fascism, feminism and gender in Italy, terrorism and political extremism, Mafia and anti-Mafia, colonialism and post-colonialism, and the impact of globalization on contemporary Italy. Authors covered include: Aldo Palazzeschi, Carlo Levi, Beppe Fenoglio, Dacia Maraini, Gabriella Ghermandi, and Nanni Balestrini.
Instructor: Graduate TA
Lit Trans 255: Black Death and Medieval Life Through Boccaccio's Decameron
Pre-Requisite: Sophomore Standing
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: Have you ever wondered what it was like to live during the Black Death? Were our medieval and early-modern ancestors different from us, or are we challenged with similar problems? What can we learn from their lives? And, if we could, what could we teach each other? Discuss these topics while reading one of the world’s greatest literary classics, Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a text that will make us both laugh and cry. Through reading the Decameron, investigate medicine, art, culture, music, politics, religion, interpersonal and transcultural relations, warfare, fashion, gender and gender roles, as well as everyday life in the Middle Ages and early modernity. Also examines medieval written documents, twentieth-century feminist responses to the Decameron and filmic renditions of it, medieval frescoes, historical descriptions of the plague, and modern descriptions of, and reactions to, the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instructor: Jelena Todorovic
Lit Trans 260: Italy and the Invention of America - From Columbus to Word War II
Pre-Requisite: None
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH
Credits: 3
Description: Focuses on the central role played by Italy in the European vision of America between Columbus’s voyages and the Second World War.
Instructor: Stefania Buccini
Graduate Courses for Fall 2024
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French 820: College Teaching of French
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
TAUGHT IN French
Credits: 3
Schedule: Fridays, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Description: French 820 is designed to help elementary- and intermediate-level language instructors understand key concepts of communicative, literacy-oriented teaching. Readings, reflections, class discussions and activities, and course assessments seek to integrate theoretical and practical elements of language teaching and to facilitate course participants becoming more confident in designing instructional materials.
Instructor: Heather Allen
French 947: Seminar - Literature Questions
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
TAUGHT IN French
Credits: 3 credits
Schedule: Tuesdays, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Description: The seminar will explore the mutual relationship between the concept of Nature and the concept of History in premodern, modern, and nonmodern French literatures and cultures.
The leading research questions are:
- To what extent are Nature and History irreconcilable and to what extent are they indistinguishable?
- Does History follow a natural flow and is Nature shaped by the historical becoming?
From the premodern point of view, the above questions imply the confrontation between the perennity of nature and the vicissitudes of human fortune. From the modern point of view, they imply the contrast between beauty and evil. From the nonmodern point of view they imply the hybridization of ecology and politics. All these three points of view will be given equal attention and put into dialogue throughout the semester.
The readings will mainly focus on four authors representing the three moments of French literary and cultural history: premodernity (up to the peak of the Renaissance in the middle of the 16th century); modernity (between the end of the 16th century and the middle of the 20th century); and nonmodernity (in the 21st century). These three moments of French literary and cultural history will be represented by Pierre de Ronsard (premodernity), Michel de Montaigne and Albert Camus (modernity), and Bruno Latour (nonmodernity). By reading extensive fragments of these authors’ works, we ill grasp their original poetics and their specific philosophical approaches.
The seminar will meet once a week for two hours. We will work on texts that will be assigned in advance, along with indications regarding the issues to be considered while preparing for the seminar discussion. Each student will conduct a semester-long research project, hopefully resulting in a conference paper and/or a publishable article. Co-authored projects are possible. During the semester short written and oral exercises will help students advance toward their specific academic goals such an MA exam/thesis or prelims.
The seminar discussion will be conducted in English unless everybody comes from the French graduate program, in which case the seminar discussion will be conducted in French. The texts will be read in the original language, but I would like to accommodate students from outside of the French graduate program by allowing them to do their readings in translation (English, Italian, etc.). Graduate Students in French may satisfy their requirements in the Middle Ages-16th-17th c. or in the Francophone-20th-21st c. areas.
Instructor: Jan Miernowski
Theme: History and Nature in Premodernity, Modernity, and Nonmodernity
French 948: Seminar - Literature Questions
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
TAUGHT IN French
Schedule: Mondays, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Description: Study of literature and culture organized thematically or by time period.
Instructor: Florence Vatan
Theme: Les Visages du rire
Qu’est-ce que le rire? Pourquoi rit-on? Comment rit-on? Peut-on rire de tout? À l’appui d’exemples empruntés pour l’essentiel au XIXe siècle (Balzac, Hugo, Daumier, Grandville, Gautier, Flaubert, Sand, Maupassant, Rimbaud, Jarry), nous examinerons diverses facettes du rire, du grotesque au mot d’esprit en passant par la satire, la parodie, la caricature, l’humour, l’ironie, le vaudeville, le burlesque ou le non-sens. Le séminaire sera également l’occasion d’explorer des textes théoriques, anciens ou plus récents, sur le comique et sur le rire, parmi lesquels des textes de Baudelaire, Bergson, Freud, Plessner et Bakhtine.
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Italian 631: Features in Italian Literature
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
TAUGHT IN Italian
Credits: 3
Schedule: Mondays, 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm
Description: Is modern poetry so hermetic that cannot be understood, revealed in all its meanings? Is meaning doomed to escape, the more poetic the expression of that meaning is? The course addresses such and related questions, while focusing on Italian poetry written in the first half of the twentieth century and it invites students to a comparative reading with poetry from other European literatures (especially French) as well as world poetry influential on specific poets. The main poets in question are: Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo.
Instructor: Ernesto Livorni
Topic: Ermetismo
Is modern poetry so hermetic that cannot be understood, revealed in all its meanings? Is meaning doomed to escape, the more poetic the expression of that meaning is? The course addresses such and related questions, while focusing on Italian poetry written in the first half of the twentieth century and it invites students to a comparative reading with poetry from other European literatures (especially French) as well as world poetry influential on specific poets. The main poets in question are: Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Eugenio Montale, Salvatore Quasimodo.
Italian 731: Features in Italian Literature
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
TAUGHT IN Italian
Credits: 3
Schedule: Thursdays, 2:30 pm to 5:00 pm
Description: In-depth exploration of periods and concepts of Italian literature, from the Middle Ages to Baroque period. Topics vary.
Instructor: Kristin Phillips-Court
Theme: Theme: History, Narrative, and the Poetics of Precarity in Early Modern Italian Literature (Discussion in English and Italian)
By end of the fifteenth century humanist appreciation for the libero arbitrio (free will) seemed to portend an inestimable potential of the human spirit, capable of reordering reality through ideal forms of expression (literature, art, architecture) and human action. But if the promise of self-determination could be fulfilled, it came often at great and grave personal risk. During the tumultuous years of plague, shifting alliances, holy war, social mobility as a zero-sum-game, and various internecine conflicts, strategies for “achieving supreme felicity and preventing submission to untoward and wicked Fortune” (L.B. Alberti) ranged from “just waiting it out” (N. Machiavelli) to acquiring “all possible accomplishments” (F. Guicciardini) to producing “virtuous works” (B. Castiglione). If one was neither cardinal nor soldier, but instead a poet, the chances economic survival were slim. The poet’s need to navigate political conflict while serving another made his or her livelihood all the more precarious. Taking precarity as our topic, we shall investigate the ways in which literary texts express political, social, and personal vulnerability, foreboding, vain hopes, ambition, resignation, resentment, and similar articulations of human fragility that inhabit otherwise “ideal” poetic worlds (Ariosto), revisionist worlds (Castiglione), and “official” historical narratives (Villani, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Varchi, Vasari).
Italian 951: Seminar - Studies in Italian Literature
Pre-Requisite: Graduate or Professional standing
Credits: 3 credits
Schedule: Tuesdays, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Description: Advanced seminar.
Instructor: Stefania Buccini
Topic: Identità e scrittura nel Settecento
The course delves into the examination of multifaceted aspects present in autobiographical texts, spanning from Vico to Alfieri, and employing modern theories and methodologies.