Spanish, Italian & Portuguese

Italian Spring 2024

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ITAL 1020 Elementary Italian II with Stella Mattioli and Sarah Annunziato

MoWeFr 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM; 1:00 PM - 1:50 PM

TuTh 9:30 AM-10:45 AM; 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

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 Tuedays and Thursdays or Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, while 40% of the work must be completed online both through the textbook’s website and the students’ personal diaries on Canvas.

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ITAL 2020 Intermediate Italian II with Francesca Calamita

TuTh 2:00 PM-3:15 PM; 3:30 PM-4:45 PM

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.

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ITAL 2030 Intermediate Italian II for Professionals: Italian for Public Relations, Television, and Social Media with Stella Mattioli

MoWe 2:00pm - 3:15pm

Memes and emoticons are a universal language aimed at appealing to a general audience. Online content must be relatable and easy to understand. When it comes to social media, though, every culture has its key to a hidden world that speaks effectively only to the members of its community. It is time for you to join this cultural group! In 2030, you will be equipped with the technical tools and cultural competencies to understand and fully enjoy the last Italian tendencies in terms of public relations and social media. You will solidify your linguistic understanding, get to know Italian Instagram stars, become familiar with Italian most popular memes and their socio-cultural background; all while acquiring practical skills useful to access the Italian world of public relations.

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ITAL 3020 Advanced Italian II with Enrico Cesaretti

MWF 11:00pm - 11:50pm

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ITAL 3460 Growing-Up Italian Style: Children’s Culture with Sarah Annunziato

TuTh 12:30pm - 1:45pm

In his book, Children’s Literature, a Reader’s History From Aesop to Harry Potter, Seth Lerer writes, “ever since there were children, there has been children’s literature.” It is precisely for this reason that children’s literature is a central part of each and every culture. Although written simplistically, works for younger audiences are anything but. In fact, fairytales, picture books, nursery rhymes and young adult fiction often teach us vital lessons about daily life in any given society.

Italy is no exception to this rule. In this course, we will explore how major works of literature for children, from Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, to the poetry of Gianni Rodari, reflect changing views of childhood and parenting in the boot-shaped nation. Students will learn how children’s literature of the nineteenth-century helped to create an Italian national identity. We will also examine how Italian children’s literature evolved in accordance with the country’s school system by looking at how innovations in early childhood education, such as the theories of Maria Montessori, influenced and were influenced by writers of children’s books. In addition, we will look at how new technologies, such as film and television in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, changed the nature of story-telling for younger audiences.

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ITTR 3680 Eve's Sinful Bite: Foodscapes in Women's Writing Culture and Society with Francesca Calamita

TuTh 5:00pm - 6:15pm

This course explores how Italian women writers have represented food in their short stories, novels and autobiographies in dialogue with the culture and society from late nineteenth century to the present. These lectures will offer a close reading of the symbolic meaning of food in narrative and the way it intersects with Italian women's socio-cultural history, addressing issues of gender, identity and politics of the body.

Language

Italian