Italian (ROIT)

This is an introductory, first-year language sequence with equal focus on the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. An appreciation for Italian culture is also encouraged through readings and class discussion. The sequence 10101-10102 is to be followed by ROIT 20201 or ROIT 20215.

This is an introductory, first-year language sequence with equal focus on the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. An appreciation for Italian culture is also encouraged through readings and class discussion. The sequence 10101-10102 is to be followed by ROIT 20201 or ROIT 20215.

This is a six-credit hybrid introductory language course, which combines traditional classroom with on-line instruction. Students attend class with an instructor (MWF) and work on-line (T-TH). Equal emphasis is placed on spoken and written Italian. The course is followed by ROIT 20201 or 20215.

This is a one-credit interdisciplinary and experiential learning course offered through Summer Online in June 2022 to qualified Notre Dame students. This course prepares students to serve as language coaches for immigrants in Italy participating in the Italian for Immigrants non-credit training program. Students will tackle issues of immigration and foreign language pedagogy and will learn how to use their language knowledge for service to the underprivileged. This course is open to all language students who have reached a 102 level in their foreign language. Precedence will be given to students of Italian. Approximately 4 Notre Dame students will be hired to participate in this course. Students who are not hired will be prepared to support language training for immigrants.

This course is designed to give students basic communicative ability in Italian. By presenting the language in a variety of authentic contexts, the course also seeks to provide an introduction to Italian culture and society. Students work on all four language skills: speaking, listening comprehension, reading, and writing.

Welcome to ROIT 14102 - Beginning Italian II Online Course. This course focuses on developing students' competency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. ROIT 14102 will be conducted entirely online. You will not need to be physically present on campus in order to be a student in this class. You will need to have access to a computer with a microphone, headphones, a video camera and high speed internet. We will use the latest edition of the Textbook Sentieri published by Vista Higher Learning and the Supersite. You will need to purchase the access to the Supersite with your textbook. Since the course will be held entirely online, it requires students to work independently and follow a very structured syllabus. Each day you will be involved in a variety of online tasks such as reading, listening, completing exercises, posting writing assignments and recording responses on the Supersite. Twice a week during our virtual classroom time, you will meet in real time with your instructors and a small number of classmates. Your instructors will be available for online office hours twice a week.

This is an introductory, first-year language sequence with equal focus on the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. An appreciation for Italian culture is also encouraged through readings and class discussion. The sequence 10101-10102 is to be followed by ROIT 20201 or ROIT 20215.

This is an Italian language course specifically for architecture students in Rome that will focus on the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing in the Italophone context. An appreciation for Italian culture is also encouraged through readings, visits, and class discussion.

ROIT 20111 is a six-credit hybrid Intensive course that combines second and third semesters of Italian language study, offering both traditional classroom instruction (MWF for 50 minutes each) and on-line work on the textbook Supersite on TTh. This course focuses on refining skills in all communicative aspects of Italian: reading, writing, listening and speaking. By the end of this intensive course, students will be able to better express themselves in Italian, and be culturally aware and engaged users of the language. ROIT 20111 is followed by ROIT 20202.

Welcome to ROIT 20201 - Intermediate Italian I. This is an intermediate language course focusing on oral and written production. It includes a review of some basic introductory-level grammar and transitions into more difficult features of Italian grammar and vocabulary. Students discuss and write about Italian cultural topics and current events. This course meets three hours per week on MWF and completes the remaining chapters of the Sentieri textbook and online platform.

ROIT 20202 is a fourth-semester Italian course that is designed to develop written and oral communication skills and to prepare students for upper-level courses in the Italian department. Throughout the semester, students will work towards obtaining linguistic fluency while exploring Italian culture through the films of some contemporary well-known directors. Each film will be presented in its historical and cultural context, which will provide us with the starting point of our class discussions. Cultural readings and literary excerpts drawing upon the themes of each unit and the themes presented in the films will be provided to supplement our discussion of the film.

This mini-course in Italian offers both informal and structured conversation practice. Conversation on Italian politics, society, and culture will be based on authentic materials. This course meets one hour per week for group discussions on contemporary issues and with guest speakers. Conducted in Italian. Recommended for students returning from Italy. Does not count towards Italian major or minor requirements.

At the turn of the twentieth century the US experienced one of the largest immigration waves in its history. Millions of Italian immigrants who made their way through Ellis Island at the time would leave a permanent imprint on the American landscape and social texture, just as the American experience would shape their identity. This course explores in an interdisciplinary way the many cultural aspects that define Italian-Americans, including religion, language, family structure and gender roles, traditions and celebrations, cuisine, political and social worldview, and artistic representations. The aim of this course is for students to analyze how these cultural facets created the Italian-American identity.

In the intricate and interconnected society of the Late Middle Ages in the Mediterranean Basin (12th-15th Centuries), the short story emerged as a dominant literary genre, transcending cultural and geographic boundaries. The Mediterranean’s bustling commercial networks served as a conduit for stories, knowledge, and people, bridging distant shores. During this era, Italians held sway as the Mediterranean’s foremost commercial and naval power, a dominance reflected in the multitude of short story collections written from the 12th to the 14th Centuries. Figures like Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, and Giovanni Sercambi skillfully portrayed the sociological, geographical, historical, and psychological intricacies of this cultural crossroads. The short story explored diverse themes, including courtly love, the Crusades, the interplay of the three Monotheistic Religions, class struggles, varied perspectives on women’s roles from Spain to the Arabic domains, and encounters between different cultures. This genre provided a window into the era’s multifaceted facets. This course aims to delve into the historical tapestry of the multiethnic and multicultural Italian peninsula during the Late Middle Ages. Through Italian short stories, we will explore its cultures, geography, and traditions, gaining insights into this captivating period.

How and why do some of the roads taken by migrants (including refugees) lead to Rome and Italy? What are the challenges faced by migrants upon their arrival, and on their path to citizenship? How does civil society intervene to mitigate those challenges, and to facilitate mutual integration and engagement? What are the distinctive features of Roman lay and Catholic approaches to migration? The course addresses such questions, building on contemporary Rome both as a compelling case study and as a gateway to the causes, lived experiences, and consequences of global migrations. Migrants' reception and integration happens at the local level, and in interaction with residents and existing communities. Attention to the realities of the host civil society is therefore fundamental: migration is not an issue that can simply be delegated to experts, bureaucrats, and politicians. Students investigate how the experience of the city is at the same time the experience of globalization, embodied in older and new residents' everyday life in the built environment; and they appreciate situated social engagement and its potentialities.

A mini-course that prepares students accepted for study abroad in Notre Dame's programs in Italy. Students are prepared for various cultural and day-to-day challenges that await them in Italy. Class runs the second half of the semester.

Rome, Italy (JCU): This course offers the unique opportunity to learn about a very interesting sector of Italian culture. Italian Opera is a cornerstone of Italy's culture, and it has become a topic of global significance as the craft has evolved over the years; however, its importance is often overlooked in the classroom. This course provides a deep dive into the chronological history and development of opera and how it has evolved and changed alongside Italian civilization from the Renaissance to contemporary times.

This course is designed for students who have a knowledge of Italian sufficient to understand clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. and to deal with most situations likely to arise whilst traveling in Italy. It aims to improve students' linguistic knowledge to allow them to understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialization and interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers possible without strain for either party. By the end of this course students will produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. RY - Notre Dame Rome - JCU This course focuses on grammar review and vocabulary expansion. Selected readings and films acquaint students with contemporary Italy.

This fourth-semester course is designed to explore various aspects of Italian culture while consolidating language skills, introdcing more advanced grammar and idioms, and providing experience in speaking and writing. 20202 courses (listed under ROIT 27500) are designed as a bridge to 30000-level courses for students who have completed ROIT 20201 and for students preparing to study in Italy. IC This is the core language course. Emphasis will be placed on significantly increasing competence in all aspects of language skills. In the Multimedia Lab classes students will develop both receptive and productive skills. Regular attendance and active participation will be required. Marks for active participation will be given as a portion of the final language marks. Achievement of Level B2 of the European Framework of Reference for Languages. Analyse, discuss, and produce written and aural texts (including digital media texts) on familiar situations in formal and informal contexts.

Intermediate Italian for Architecture I is a 2 credit Italian course combined with Italian Experience (1 credit): the course meets twice a week for 1 hour. ROIT 24210 corresponds to the on campus ROIT 20201 incorporating advanced language skills, cultural topics and a focus on language learning abroad, and counting towards the Italian minor/major in Italian. This Italian course has a special focus on the city of Rome, its history and culture, its map/s, neighborhoods, historical sites, monuments, art and architecture, literature and films.

Taught as IT 203 at host institution. This six-credit course meets four times per week and covers the equivalent of a full year of intermediate language study (Intermediate Italian I and Intermediate Italian II). The course is designed for highly motivated students who wish to consolidate their communicative ability in Italian while developing reading and composition skills.

Intermediate Italian for Architecture II is a 2 credit Italian course combined with Italian Experience (ARCH 34301, 1 credit) and it meets one hour twice a week. ROIT 24220 corresponds to the on campus ROIT 20202 and counts towards the Italian minor and major. This course focuses on advanced language skills, and it is centered on the city of Rome, its history and culture, its map/s, neighborhoods, historical sites, monuments, art and architecture, literature and films. The focus this semester will be on contemporary Rome and how the eternal city is mapped and described through various artistic means as a global city with multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-linguistic identities, its enchanting beauty and its profound contradictions, its aspiration to be a harmonious melting pot and its racism. The literature and films set on the city map will reveal the tension between city center and its peripheries, along with its two opposing tendencies of inclusiveness and marginalization.

This course is created with the Architecture student in mind. Taking Intermediate Italian II 24220 for one-credit in the Fall semester followed by Intermediate Italian II 24221 for two-credits in the Spring, will allow students to advance their Italian language studies while taking full advantage of the city of Rome. ROIT 24220 taken with 24221 is the equivalent to ROIT 20202 Intermediate Italian II.

This mini-course in Italian offers both informal and structured conversation practice. Conversation on Italian politics, society, and culture will be based on authentic materials. This course meets one hour per week for group discussions on contemporary issues and with guest speakers. Conducted in Italian.

Expand cultural knowledge (level B1 + B2). Develop oral expression and comprehension. Be able to understand and reproduce the content of press articles or short reports, to argue, to discuss and compare.

Intensive Italian language review and cultural historic introduction to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy.

This mini-course in Italian meets one hour per week for group discussions on varied contemporary issues in Italian culture, society, and politics. Conducted in Italian. Recommended for students in their third or fourth year of Italian. Does not count towards Italian major or minor requirements.

In this fifth-semester course you learn to analyze and understand works drawn from the major literary and artistic genres (lyric poetry, prose, theatre, epic, novel, film, opera, contemporary song). At the same time you will review and consolidate your grasp of the Italian language at an advanced level.

Italian literature and cinema have sought throughout the modern era to give testimony and bear witness to the crises of Italian history and society. This course aims to explore the role of the witness and the function of testimony in the representation of the crises of modern Italian society, including Fascism, the Mafia, and Terrorism. Analyzing literature and cinema that bear witness to the anti-Fascist Resistance, the Holocaust, the victims of Mafia violence, and Terrorist attacks, in this course, you will consider questions such as: Who is the witness of the event? Can a fictional character bear witness? What kind of testimony can the witness provide? Can testimony objectively define the event even as it reflects the subjective position of the witness? What are the meanings and the implications of the witness's narration? What role do we, as readers and viewers, have in the testimonial narrative? Together, we will reflect on the political, social, and ethical implications of testimony in the modern age. Among the texts and films we will consider in this course are works by Marco Bellocchio, Italo Calvino, Giacomo Debenedetti, Marco Tullio Giordana, Ada Gobetti, Liana Millu, Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Leonardo Sciascia, and Michele Soavi

By reading works that range from St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures to the existential meditations of Giacomo Leopardi, this course explores how nature—and by extension, the natural order—was conceived and imagined within the Italian peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the Romantic period. We will trace the continuities and evolution of nature as a literary, philosophical, and theological idea and ask how past perspectives can inform our thinking about nature and its associated problems today. Questions to be pursued include: what is nature to begin with, and what parts of reality does it encompass? To what extent does it ground human ethics and craft? What trials and perils do humans face in their efforts to know, to master, and to care for, all things that move and grow? Do natural disasters and other forms of cosmic disarray threaten our belief in the order and goodness of the natural realm? And how do our representations of nature and its inhabitants shape our understanding of them and ultimately, of ourselves?

This course helps you to understand and interpret the most important works of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, as well as painting, sculpture, architecture, and music, in their historical, social, and cultural context. We will analyze key texts from Cavalcanti, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Poliziano, and Ariosto, among others, and learn to appreciate key works of art and architecture by Duccio, Giotto, Ghiberti, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Alberti, Masaccio, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, among others. The course is taught in Italian, and also aims to help you speak, understand, and write Italian with more confidence, accuracy, and ease. Counts as a Lit-Culture course; required for majors and supplementary majors in the Lit Culture concentration; this course or ROIT 30721 required for majors in the Italian Studies concentration. Cross-listed with MI 30577.

What do we mean by the word Love? Is it passion? Madness? Is it friendship? Can it exist only among human beings? Love shapes communities, can promote war or peace, and raises fundamental questions about life. In the pre-modern world, love was conceived as a force that moved the individual and governed not only the body but the entire universe. Love was God and the quest for the Absolute. Love was also desire and the cause of many problems. By reading literature from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (from early lyric to Dante's universal love, Petrarch's exploration of the self, Boccaccio's legitimation of female desire, Michelangelo's homoerotic poetry, Machiavelli's comic impulses, Vittoria Colonna's spiritual rhymes), along with philosophical, religious, and rhetorical texts on love (from Plato and Augustine to Andrea Cappellanus, Richard of St. Victor, and Marsilio Ficino), we will see what has changed and what has persisted, and ultimately come to understand what we mean when we talk about Love.

From mythical creatures to demonic bodies and surprisingly bestial humans, this course explores the animals of medieval Italian literature. Why is the horse lascivious? How can a wolf be tamed? Which monsters from Antiquity lurk in the imagination of the Medieval world? To answer these questions and more, students will read extracts from classics of world literature – including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Boccaccio’s Decameron, and Petrarch’s Canzoniere – alongside lesser-studied poems, treatises, and short stories from the heart of the lyric tradition to the soul of medieval monasticism. As well as a strong grounding in the logic and development of the medieval “Bestiary” tradition, students will discover medieval transformations of classical myths and explore the role of non-humans in medieval depictions of the human condition itself, from love to sin and salvation. This course is taught in Italian. Students will have the chance to study selected traditions from visual art, including manuscript illuminations and wall paintings.

This course explores the rich traditions of travel writing about Italy, covering the Renaissance through contemporary times. Through readings of major authors—including Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Lord Byron (1788-1824), Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), Stendhal (1783-1842), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Henry James (1843-1916), Edith Wharton (1862-1937), D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), Mary McCarthy (1912-1989), and contemporary travel writers—students will explore how Italy has been imagined, experienced, and portrayed. Topics include cultural encounters in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Milan, the artistic inspirations drawn from Italy's immense architectural and artistic heritage, the Grand Tour, the evolution of travel to Italy as a literary genre, and cinematic interpretations of the journey to Italy theme ("Journey to Italy" [1954], directed by Roberto Rossellini; "Roman Holiday" [1953], directed by William Wyler, etc.). The course combines historical perspectives with close textual analysis, investigating how the journey to Italy has influenced European and global literary and cultural traditions.

Renowned for its rich past but full of contradictions that persist to the present day, Italy has one of the most fascinating histories and abundant cultures in the modern world. This course provides a unique perspective onto Italian modernity by exploring the wealth of Italy's modern and contemporary cultural production. We will focus on key issues that unveil the unique "spirit" of modern Italy, such as the weight of the past, the tension between political realism and idealism, the recurrence of social and political crises, immigration, revolution, and youth culture. We will investigate how issues of gender, class, race, identity, and faith have shaped Italian literature, film, and theatre in the modern age. Through the study of texts, films, and other media, the course seeks to understand the development of modern Italy and its future trajectory. Authors studied will include Dario Fo, Natalia Ginzburg, Eugenio Montale, Elsa Morante, Anna Maria Ortese, Luigi Pirandello, Igiaba Scego, and Elio Vittorini. This course is taught in Italian and satisfies the Ways of Knowing requirements for Advanced Language and Culture as well as Fine Arts and Literature.

This course offers a deep dive into the remarkable, yet frequently marginalized, works of women authors in Italian literature from the nineteenth century to contemporary times. How have these writers influenced discourses surrounding women’s emancipation and pressing social issues? What do their contributions reveal about women’s struggle to establish their voices, and claim their identity and power? Through our exploration of novels, poems, and short stories, we will uncover the unique perspectives and influences of these authors, highlighting how they have actively shaped the cultural landscape. The course will be conducted entirely in Italian, providing an immersive experience as we study works that have redefined the Italian literary canon.

Between institutions and practice: family institutions. Within the whole body of Roman institutions, whose knowledge is entrusted to the students through the study of handbooks, during the course we will analyze, in particular, institutions related to the family life.

The course analyzes the Italian Business environment, the characteristics of its culture and its inner workings. Students will be able to understand the different types of Italian corporate cultures and the role of family businesses in Italy. The course allows students to assess some of the most popular Italian brands and learn why "made in Italy" is a leading brand in the world, despite recent influences and threats from foreign investors. Company cases and special guests will be an important part of this course and will allow students to relate theory to practice.

Students participate in engaged learning activities in the city of Rome in a variety of educational and institutional settings in keeping with their academic and disciplinary areas of interest. The course includes a weekly meeting called the "Forum" in which students discuss their research projects and engagement activities. In some special cases the practicum can take the form of a 3-credit hour internship.

This course introduces students to the complexities of contemporary Italian society, taking a primarily bottom-up social science approach by examining a wide variety of contexts and exploring the ways in which Italians express, negotiate and transform their cultural and social identities. By drawing on a growing body of anthropological and sociological research, it provides students with the tools to question rigid and dated assumptions about Italian social life and enables them to analyze its multifaceted, dynamic and often contradictory forms and practices, focusing primarily on the last two decades.

This course is designed to help students gain fluency and confidence in speaking while reviewing the advanced structures of Italian grammar. Contemporary literary and journalistic texts offer an introduction to Italian culture and provide the basis for class discussions geared toward expanding vocabulary and reinforcing the idiomatic use of the language.

This mini-course in Italian offers both informal and structured conversation practice. Conversation on Italian politics, society, and culture will be based on authentic materials. This course meets one hour per week for group discussions on contemporary issues and with guest speakers. Conducted in Italian.

The aim of this class is to examine the war of Russia and Ukraine by looking at their history using political theory and concepts to understand the history of Russia and the rise of Putin and why Russia is attacking Ukraine.

The analysis of the most complex structures of grammar and syntax will be performed through reading a selection of contemporary Italian literature and by writing a short story in different controlled stages. This course aims at developing a better knowledge and understanding of the Italian language and at building a competence on basic narrative techniques towards the creation of a "personal" style. Grammar topics include: the structure of transitivity and intransitivity in the relationship between prepositions and verbs, subtle features of the subjunctive, temporal shifts in modal auxiliaries, phraseology and conjunctions in compound constructions. Taught in Italian.

In this course students will be guided through a variety of types of writing and styles (e.g. journalistic, business and professional, essay.) Although mainly designed for advanced non-native speakers, the course may also be taken by native speakers who wish to improve their writing skills. Students will reinforce their knowledge of grammar and syntax as well as develop vocabulary. In addition, students will learn fundamental writing techniques such as organizing ideas, selecting examples, drawing conclusions and using the appropriate style for the given genre or mode of discourse.

The analysis of the most complex structures of grammar and syntax will be conducted by reading a selection of articles from the most important Italian newspapers. This course aims at improving lexicon and developing in-depth conversation about current events.

The course focuses on an advanced study of Italian language from a gender perspective. It aims to consolidate the language structures previously acquired as well as apprehend both the sociocultural implications of language, and how the use of language contributes in creating and recreating ideologies. Through exposure to a broad range of texts, students will be involved in the current heated debate concerning the revision of the Italian language in a gender-inclusivity and diversity key.

Rome, Italy (JCU): This course seeks to understand the evolution of the Italian language over time. It is taught fully in Italian.

As Dante Alighieri writes at the beginning of the Convivio, “all men [and women] by nature desire to know.” This 3-credit course, taught in Italian, explores how Medieval and Renaissance Italian artists, poets, and intellectuals engaged with the problem of knowledge and its objects. What is the cosmos, and how does it function? What is the place of our world within it? How do we measure and understand our surroundings? What is the relationship between human beings and the universe, between body and mind, and what is the soul? Disciplines such as cosmology, astronomy, geography, philosophy, and theology emerged as ways of acquiring and organizing knowledge about ourselves and the world. At the same time, poetry and the visual arts gave voice to—and preserved—the history of new discoveries and ideas. From Dante, Boccaccio, and Giotto to Alberti, Isotta Nogarola and Moderata Fonte, from Campanella to Bruno and Galileo; from Botticelli and Leonardo to Raphael, Michelangelo, Plautilla Bricci and Guercino, we will examine texts and works of art that place knowledge and its transmission at their center. Students will engage in discussions on the nature of knowledge and the desire to know, consider the classification of different fields of study, and explore diverse modes and contexts of learning. The course also addresses the role of gender in the pursuit of knowledge and the relationship between vernacular language and Latin in shaping how knowledge was categorized, communicated, and transmitted in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.

Italy's deep rooted network of local food knowledge is an excellent example for students to understand what food culture is, how food scenarios changed with industrialization, and how they are evolving further today. This course presents students with the basic tools necessary for better understanding Italian food culture. Its broad perspective encompasses traditional farming and processing techniques, the industrial and global food economy and changing consumption habits. Its anthropological approach draws from classical and modern writing. Italy is world-famous for its produce diversity and vibrant peasant traditions. By exploring the complex set of influences forming the Italian food culture, students will acquire an analytical approach enabling them to read through the other foodscapes that they encounter in their home country or abroad, and eventually choose, value and embrace career paths into the food sector. Even apparently simple, everyday food staples contain layers of significance connecting to the following topics: the peculiar man-nature relationship needed for their production; preserving and cooking techniques; the influences from foreign cooking philosophies and/or crops; the pressure of the global market; and the type of socialization involved during the meal

This course examines the evolution of Italian political culture from 1945 to the present. Highlighting the problems of developing a national identity and the legacies of Fascism and the Resistance in influencing the 1948 Constitution, the course will look at Italys position during the Cold War, the economic miracle of the 1950s, the political conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s, the end of the First Republic and the political scene since 1992, as well as the political influence of such actors as the Vatican and the Mafia.

This course will trace the evolution of Italian film from the immediate postwar period to the present. Topics will include neorealism, rosy neorealism, melodrama, comedy Italian style, political films, the representation of Fascism, film and literary interactions, film documentary, the art film, popular comedy, the development of Italian television, the crisis of Italian cinema, Italian-American directors, and Italy in the global audio-visual market. Major directors, film genres, and new approaches to theoretical/critical issues in film scholarship will be stressed. Requirements will include preparation of readings, attendance at mandatory evening film screenings, as well as a number of critical papers and seminar presentations. Conducted in Italian.

This course, which is held in Italian, explores the image of Rome in Italian twentieth century literature and cinema. Literary and cinematic representations not only mirror in different ways the actual geographical, social, and cultural landscape of a city, but they also participate in shaping its identity and its self-representation. The course aims at providing students with critical keys to understanding this multilayered relationship in its different expressions.

In this class there are 5 different modules with five different Universita di Bologna professors: History, Fashion, Music, Architecture/Design, Film. Each covers the totality of the 20th century in their given fields. Lecture and Discussion based in Italian.

Students undertake independent research projects in Rome in a discipline supervised remotely by Notre Dame faculty at the South Bend campus for three credit hours. Typically students complete a research paper, and their research leads to senior theses and or further studies.

The course is divided into five major sections designed to accompany students to the major phases of armed conflicts. During each section, the student will be introduced to the major scholars, practitioners, ideas and theoretical works which have attempted to respond to them. The first section begins with an introduction to the various approaches to war and peace in the political science tradition and defines various ways of both understanding and measuring political conflict and peace. The second section considers why wars begin and whether global politics offers any suggestions to preventing armed conflicts. The third section explores why wars last, and what factors, including religious, ethnic, institutional and economic vulnerabilities, impact the length and intensity of wars. The fourth section asks what practitioners and political scientists can teach us about ending wars, including through the use of force, negotiation, education, consciousness-raising, international institutions, non-governmental and religious groups, exhaustion and peace-enforcing. The final section explores strategies to recreate peace, including truth and reconciliation processes, war tribunals and post-conflict reconstruction.

The study of Dante's Divina Commedia begun in Second Year continues through reading the Purgatorio, with concentration on some philosophical and theological questions it raises, and a detailed look at some of the more problematic passages which it contains.

This course, which is a continuation of IT 320, analyzes the major writers of Italy from the 18th century to the present, including such authors as Alfieri, Foscolo, Manzoni, Leopardi, Verga, Carducci, D'Annunzio, Pascoli, Pirandello, Montale, Pavese, and Moravia. Prerequisite: Placement or IT 301 or permission of the instructor.

The course aims to acquire the ability to understand the history of Italy from the Risorgimento until today, according to a perspective interlacing local, national and supranational dimensions. It will analyse the main political, cultural, social and economical points that characterised the Italian history, with peculiar emphasis on the 1900s.

This course will deal with the writings of Italian women writers of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their contribution has been crucial in the shaping of a recognizable, but still not fully acknowledged, tradition of women writers in Italy. Through the particular perspectives of distinguished Italian women writers, the course will explore versions of feminine writing and will introduce gender- and genre-related issues.

The aim of the course is to develop specialized knowledge of Renaissance Italian literature and its relationship with the figurative arts, through an in-depth study of the works of authors who have played a key role in both literary and artistic production, according to the most up-to-date research perspectives. At the end of the course, students will interpret the interpretation structure of the historical, historical, and linguistic character for the analysis of Renaissance literature related to artistic production and will be able to apply advanced analytical methodologies to them.

Students participate in virtual engaged learning activities with organizations in the city of Rome in a variety of educational and institutional settings in keeping with their academic and disciplinary areas of interest. One initial, mid-term and final meeting with the instructor aimed at providing context for guided reflection on the students' experiences as interns with organizations in Rome. Work to be completed in Italian.

Specialized reading related to the student's area of study.

Dante I and Dante II are an in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire Comedy, in its historical, philosophical and literary context, with selected readings from the minor works (e.g., Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia). Dante I focuses on the <i>Inferno</i> and the minor works; Dante II focuses on the <i>Purgatorio</i> and <i>Paradiso</i>. Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.

Dante I and Dante II are an in-depth study, over two semesters, of the entire Comedy, in its historical, philosophical and literary context, with selected readings from the minor works (e.g., Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia). Dante I focuses on the <i>Inferno</i> and the minor works; Dante II focuses on the <i>Purgatorio</i> and <i>Paradiso</i>. Lectures and discussion in English; the text will be read in the original with facing-page translation. Students may take one semester or both, in either order.

In the Italian Middle Ages, vision was more than a physical process, it was a way of understanding the world, navigating society, and expressing devotion and desire. Fascinated by mystical experience but saturated with social conventions that sought to control as well as to captivate the gaze, theories and mythologies of vision shaped social life and self-expression, illuminating the centuries traditionally known as the “Dark Ages” with a rich discourse on sight and perception. This course explores the theme of vision across texts and images from medieval Italy, investigating whose visions got to be recorded. Readings include poetic, devotional, and scientific texts and the study selected visual artifacts from illuminated manuscripts to major fresco cycles, ecclesiastical artworks, and domestic decorations. In addition to exploring how ‘seeing’ shaped the medieval mind, students will uncover how authors and artists investigated the space between what could be seen and what could only be imagined.

In this course students will make a close and critical reading of Giovanni Boccaccio's collection of one hundred short stories, the Decameron. A founding work of Italian literature, recognized for centuries as its best example of prose writing, its author wanted it to be an ethical manual for critically understanding reality and its political, social, and religious tenets, under the appearance of a mere entertaining work. From the experience of the 1348 Black Plague to daily issues in protocapitalist Florence, from tales of magicians and enchanted gardens to tongue-in-cheek stories, from relationships between husband and wives, children and parents, to those between kings, sultans, and their subjects, Boccaccio's stories allow us to better understand our past, while challenging our views on the self, faith, society, and the other.

The turn of the twentieth century was a period of electrifying transformation. Yet, modernity – promising progress and innovation – also revealed its darker facets: inequality, division, and existential crisis. How did Italy adapt to this rapidly evolving world? This course delves into the vibrant cultural responses of the era, from the introspective works of Nobel Prize-winning authors to the bold, revolutionary manifestos of the avant-garde. We will examine Decadent and Modernist literature alongside disruptive movements like Futurism, uncovering how Italian writers and artists confronted literary and artistic conventions. Through textual and visual analysis, we will explore how the contradictions exposed by Modernism redefined the Italian cultural tradition and continue to resonate in contemporary times. Taught in Italian.

This course traces the evolution of Italian identity through a journey across its most iconic literary landscapes—from the sun-drenched ruins of aristocratic Sicily to the industrial heart of Turin, the vibrant, gritty streets of modern Naples, and the multicultural reality of post-colonial Rome. By analyzing key cultural trends such as neo-realism, postmodernism, and the rise of post-colonial voices, students will examine how Italy transformed from a fragmented 19th-century kingdom into a complex, culturally diverse European nation. Six seminal authors anchor the course, mapping the shifting “territory” of the Italian soul across the 20th and 21st centuries. Through a carefully curated selection of complete works and substantial excerpts, students will trace a path from aristocratic decline to a multicultural future. Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard captures Sicily’s fatalistic transition during the Risorgimento, while Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man offers a harrowing, scientific testimony to the Holocaust—Italy’s moral “zero point.” Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare preserves the intimate, domestic language of anti-fascist resistance in Turin. The course then pivots to the conceptual and social transformations of the late century: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities abstracts the modern urban experience into a postmodern kaleidoscope; Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels ground the 21st century in the raw socioeconomic and gendered struggles of Naples; and Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono redefines contemporary italianità, mapping a postcolonial Rome that embraces migrant and diasporic identities. Readings from these literary works will be complemented by a selection of musical, artistic, and cinematic materials that deepen our understanding of modern Italy’s evolving cultural landscape.

This course explores the history of Italian film from the silent era to the 1960s, an epoch stretching from Francesca Bertini's Assunta Spina to Federico Fellini's La dolce vita. At the center of this period is the age of Italian neorealism, when directors such as Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, and Luchino Visconti invented new ways of looking at the world that radically transformed the history of world cinema. Focusing their attention on issues and individuals that had gone unseen in Fascist and post-Fascist Italy, the neorealists challenged established norms by making the experiences of ordinary Italians increasingly visible, developing techniques for representing reality that continue to influence filmmakers across the globe. We will analyze how questions of class, faith, gender, identity, and ideology intersect on screen as Italian directors explore and attempt to intervene in a rapidly transforming modern world. With a filmography featuring both masterpieces of world cinema and cult classics, this course will investigate how the quest to capture reality reshaped every genre of Italian film, including action & adventure, comedy, crime, documentary, melodrama, mystery, thriller and more. The course is taught in English and all films will have English subtitles.

This course begins in the 1960s, when Italy stood at the center of the film world, and traces the history of Italian cinema to the present day. We will focus on the heyday of Italian auteurs – Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti, and Pier Paolo Pasolini – examining how each brought a singular vision to the collective medium of cinema. Working against the hegemony of Hollywood, Italian filmmakers in the twentieth century created new forms of representation that inspired audiences worldwide. They continue to do so in the new millennium, building on the innovations of illustrious predecessors like Bertolucci and Pontecorvo, Wertmüller and Cavani to reveal new realities to moviegoers across the globe. We will analyze how questions of class, faith, gender, identity, and ideology intersect on screen as Italian directors seek both to expose and to recreate the illusions by which we live. With a filmography featuring both masterpieces of world cinema and cult classics, this course will investigate how pioneering Italian directors reshaped every genre of film, including action & adventure, comedy, crime, documentary, melodrama, mystery, thriller, horror, and more. The course is taught in English and all films will have English subtitles.

In this seminar we will investigate how Fascism emerged in Italy in the twentieth century, and how some Italians resisted the rise of totalitarianism. Reflecting on the role of culture throughout Italy's "difficult modernity," we will examine how leading artists and intellectuals worked to support or to combat the Italian dictatorship. Against the backdrop of the historical crises that both preceded and outlasted the Fascist period, we will engage with Italian literature, cinema, theatre, and art in order to evaluate the complex relationships between culture and power. Authors studied include Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, and Cesare Pavese. Filmmakers studied include Bernardo Bertolucci, Vittorio De Sica, and Roberto Rossellini. Course is taught in Italian

Primo Levi has been called "a major, universally recognized, icon in Holocaust literature" (Geerts), indeed "the witness-writer par excellence," because "his narrative, poetry and essays about his time in Auschwitz are among the most widely read and most widely lauded of all writings on the Holocaust" (Gordon). Levi was this and more: witness and storyteller, scientist and writer, he was among the greatest authors and moral authorities of the twentieth century. In this course, taught in Italian, we will read Levi's first and most famous work, Se questo - un uomo (If This is a Man, 1947), a masterpiece and milestone in the Italian tradition, in which Levi recounts his internment in Auschwitz. With Levi, we will ask what it means to live, what it means to be human, in and after the Nazi death camps. With Levi, too, we will broaden our exploration to address vital questions of faith, identity, meaning, truth, responsibility, love, friendship, freedom, diversity, survival, science, and salvation as we read selections from such fundamental works as La tregua (The Truce, 1963); Il sistema periodico (The Periodic Table, 1975); Lillit e altri racconti (Moments of Reprieve, 1978); and I sommersi e i salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, 1986). Throughout the course we will also make use of materials from the Primo Levi Collection of Notre Dame's Hesburgh Library, one of the world's foremost collections dedicated to the study of Primo Levi.

Students of the Italian language are eligible to sign up for an additional single credit discussion section as part of the Languages across the Curriculum (LAC) initiative in the College of Arts and Letters. Choosing this option means that students will read a canto per week of the Comedy in Italian and meet once a week with a section leader who will guide a discussion in Italian and grade some brief writing assignments. The LAC discussion section in Italian associated with this course will be graded on a pass/fail basis and credited to the student's transcript.

Students with Italian enrolled in Dante II have the option of also enrolling in a one-credit un/satisfactory Languages Across the Curriculum section, which will meet one hour per week to read and discuss selected passages or cantos in Italian.

The course deals with the theme of the origin of language. Starting from the comparison between human language and animal communication, two theoretical models will be presented: on the one hand, the model that maintains that human language is in continuity with animal communication systems (in particular, with the communication of monkeys); on the other hand, the theoretical hypothesis that maintains that between human language and animal communication there is an incurable fracture. The goal is to present arguments in favor of the continuous hypothesis through the reference to the idea that language has a gestural origin.

This course seeks understanding of the relationship between justice and mercy at the intersection of theology, literature, and mass incarceration. This interdisciplinary encounter aims to be mutually critical and illuminating. Whereas theological reflection, language, and traditions are often employed as an interpretive lens for diagnosing the injustice of mass incarceration, this course also asks: in what ways might mass incarceration allow us in turn to consider, critique, and re-imagine the conceptual and moral injustices of theological reflection? Central to this intersection, accordingly, is literature, and in the context of the present course, Dante Alighieri's Comedy. This poetic intervention by a late medieval Catholic poet is all the more significant for being unexpected. Indeed, it is noteworthy that our especially Western inherited imaginaries of damnation, purgation, and salvation, not to mention their attendant conceptions of punishment and forgiveness, remain influenced by and indebted to Dante's theological architecture of the Comedy. Thus, on the one hand, it is all the more significant that Dante hell is emphatically carceral: he not only meditates upon those most dehumanized in the lowest circle of hell by means of a story of incarceration, but also refers to hell as such as a blind prison. And yet, on the other, it is equally striking that Dante continues to garner praise, not least by Pope Francis himself, as a prophet of hope uniquely situated to narrate the over-abundant mercy of God in the context of human life. This course, then, aims to explore this charged ambiguity between carceral despair and prophetic hope at the heart of the poem, as a means of refining understanding ultimately the relationship between justice and mercy in interpersonal, civic, and spiritual life. If we can affirm, alongside Cornel West, that justice is what love looks like in public, and if we can affirm, alongside Dante, that mercy is what love looks like for the sinner, then the opposite of justice is not mercy but despair, or the refusal of love. The course as a whole traces this refusal, and its possible repair, via paired readings of the Comedy and on the age of mass incarceration. First, we will consider, alongside the Inferno, Dante's burdened reflections on the nature of human exile, despair, and violence, and their medieval and contemporary instantiation in systems of punishment. Second, we will consider, largely alongside the Purgatorio and Paradiso, Dante's articulation of salvation as the reclamation of human community, realized in practices of justice and mercy, and taking the medieval and contemporary forms of human kinship, citizenship, and prophetic voice. Third, we will conduct a four-fold reflection on conceptions of justice, as variously punitive, restorative, transformative, and ultimately, creative.

This course intends to provide a critical and cultural awareness in contemporary Italian literature and civilization. For this purpose, literary texts are always analyzed as open shapes, focusing on the relationships between their tradition and cultural legacies. We will also read together and discuss a corpus of prose works through many examples of comparative analysis and practice on different methods.

This course aims to illustrate the relationship between Italian art and politics from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century through the analysis of some specific areas. The focus on the political, cultural and artistic background will enable students to understand the work of art especially as a representation of power.

This is the mandatory course for all Italian students in their second year of Honours. The course is divided into three main parts, consisting of three weekly lessons that focus respectively on oral communication, written language, and advanced aspects of Italian usage and grammar. The module aims to develop advanced proficiency, corresponding to levels C1-C2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, in both written and spoken Italian and to refine the grammatical and stylistic quality of Italian expression. More specifically, the learning objectives are: 1. Improve expressive skills in writing and speaking. 2. Develop advanced competence in the understanding and use of syntactic, stylistic, and idiomatic structures of the Italian language. 3. Improve the ability to contextualize, critically analyze, and independently explore current issues concerning contemporary Italian society and culture. 4. Develop a broad range of vocabulary related to communication and the critical discussion of complex texts and phenomena, particularly relevant to the topics studied. 5. Improve the ability to translate and recontextualize in Italian reflections and opinions expressed in various linguistic fields and registers. 6. Deepen knowledge of contemporary Italy and the issues that characterize the country at the national and international levels.

This module focuses on the aggregate of problems known as the Southern Question that arose from the extreme economic, social, and cultural backwardness that characterized the historical development of southern Italy after national unification in 1871. We will investigate the disparities between the North and the South of Italy at the time and devote consideration to the origins and consequences of this divide as well as to the economic and political interests of the Northern elite who ruled the country as well as the responsibilities of the southern cultural elite.

The course examines the period from 1590-1612 in the life and musical career of famous Italian renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi. The course focuses on the technical and innovative characteristics of his musical compositions, as well as the poetic structure and content of the Italian texts to which he set his music, most of which during this polyphonic period were taken from Petrarch's poetry. We discuss important historical and geopolitical situations that effected Monteverdi's compositions, as well as details of his personal life.

Specialized reading related to the student's area of study.

This course is designed with the purpose of allowing students to engage in an individual or small group study under the direction of a departmental faculty member.

This course may cover an in-depth study of a particular author, theme, genre, or century. In addition to primary texts, some critical material will be required reading. This course culminates in a substantial research paper.