Italian Language Program

This course offers a rapid review of the basic patterns of the language presented in ITAL 10100 and further explores the language and the cultural norms necessary for everyday communication in Italy. It is designed to help students obtain functional competency in speaking, writing, reading, and listening with a focus on present and past time frames. Students will practice all three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational). They will also explore aspects of Italian culture, traditions, and regions through a selection of texts and audio-visual materials that aim to raise cultural awareness and encourage intercultural reflection.

ITAL 10300 Beginning Elementary Italian III

In this second part of the intermediate sequence, Students explore aspects of Italian society – with a focus on social issues and socioeconomic changes – cultural practices, and perspectives through a variety of literary and non-literary texts and audio-visual materials. The course raises cultural awareness and encourages intercultural reflection, while offering students several opportunities to practice all three modes of communication (interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational). Students develop listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills through a variety of activities. This class presents new grammatical structures and lexical items, while reviewing patterns from ITAL20100.

ITAL 20300 Language History Culture III

This course examines aspects of Italian language and culture through the study of a variety of Italian films. While acquiring the necessary vocabulary and conceptual tools to identify formal filmic elements, students will improve their language proficiency and broaden their knowledge of Italian culture, with a particular attention to historical and sociolinguistic features. Film analysis will also help foster intercultural reflection and awareness of selected past and current social issues in Italy. Taught in Italian.

This course offers insight into 20th- and 21st-century Italian language and culture through the practice of translating comics. As a verbal medium, comics present a variety of registers, from the elevated language of literary adaptations to creative parodies; from the standard Italian adopted in serial comics to the colloquial or regional Italian used in graphic novels and webcomics. As a visual medium, the interpretation of comics entails developing the ability to read the images together with the text, while keeping into consideration the space constraints imposed by captions and balloons. Using a variety of primary sources from 1908 to the present (comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, webcomics), students will have the opportunity to participate in translation tasks, gaining awareness of the Italian language and the cultural importance of translation; they will also expand their knowledge of well-known Italian comics and reflect upon the cultural context in which they were brought to life. In this course, students will practice translation from Italian to English as well as continue to perfect their speaking and writing skills in Italian through a variety of creative oral and written activities. Taught in Italian.

ITAL 27500 Women and the Mafia in Contemporary Italian Cinema

This course will examine how gender dynamics within mafia contexts have been represented in a selection of Italian films. Students will engage in cinematic analysis by drawing from sociological and psychological studies on female roles in relation to organized crime. Both these fields, sociology and psychology, have underscored the important part that women play in relation to the mafia, notwithstanding the rigid patriarchal structure that allows only male affiliation. Although focusing primarily on Sicilian mafia, this course will include information on other types of Italian mafia, namely Camorra, ‘Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita. Vocabulary in Italian to identify formal elements of the films will be provided throughout the course. Taught in Italian.