Italian Undergraduate Courses Fall 2020

Please check SIS for sections, dates, times, locations, and instructors.

Elementary Italian II is the second class in the four-course sequence that is necessary to complete the foreign language requirement. In this course, students will learn to narrate in all tenses of the indicative, express opinions, make hypotheses, and give orders. They will improve their writing skills by producing a number of original texts, including blog posts, essays, and articles. Students will also develop their ability to understand spoken Italian by listening to songs, commercials, and movie clips, and they will read and study song lyrics, newspaper headlines, poems, and some short stories. Students of Elementary Italian II will also have many occasions to learn more about life in contemporary Italy as they study the country’s language.

60% of this course will take place face to face during regularly scheduled class meetings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while 40% of the work must be completed online both through the Connect website and the students’ personal e-Portfolios.

Much like learning to play a sport or a musical instrument, studying a foreign language requires constant practice. Therefore, all course activities will be conducted in Italian.

Please check SIS for sections, dates, times, locations, and instructors.

ITAL 2020 Intermediate Italian II is the fourth class in the four-course sequence which fulfills the language requirement. In this course, students will further develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills as well as deepen their cultural literacy in Italian. You will accomplish these goals with the guidance of your instructor, through review of grammar, short readings, compositions, and listening and speaking activities. Students will also have the opportunity to listen to songs, comment on works of art, watch commercials and short films, read and write newspaper articles, analyze how the Italian language reflects the movement towards gender parity, and meet natives of Italy in your quest to become more confident and competent users of the Italian language.

Much like learning to play a sport or a musical instrument, studying a foreign language requires constant practice. Therefore, all course activities will be conducted in Italian.

Please check SIS for times and locations

As the plague swept through Italy in the mid-1300s, three young men and seven young women from Florence escaped the city to the countryside, where they spent 10 days telling stories.  So begins Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, one of the many masterpieces that we will explore in this course.  ITAL 3110 focuses on foundational works of Italian literature, art, architecture, and music in their historical and cultural context and to relate them to contemporary issues. We will examine some of the most extraordinary personalities of an age of luminaries, among them, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Castiglione, Machiavelli, Giotto, Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo.  Prerequisite: ITAL 2010.