Fall 2001

**Course information subject to change**
**Cross-reference with Department Roster**

Italian-110 Elementary Italian

Staff
See Course Offerings for times

A first semester elementary language course for students who have never studied Italian before or who have taken a placement test and received a score below 380. All students who have previously studied Italian are required to take the placement test. Classes are conducted in Italian and emphasize the development of listening comprehension and speaking, with training in reading and writing. The course is organized around oral/aural communicative activities such as role-plays and interactive grammar exercises. In Italian 110 your listening skills will be greatly developed for you will be exposed daily to authentic language spoken at normal speed by native Italians. Some of these are short conversations, songs, and poems. As the semester progresses the conversations will be longer. Your classwork will be supplemented with homework using a cassette with a workbook, to further enhance your listening skills. In class you will get ample opportunity to speak, as much of the class period will be spent working in pairs or small groups. You will also be exposed to simple Italian texts so that your reading skills will be developed. These texts will gradually become more complex as you acquire the vocabulary necessary to read at a higher level. You will also be challenged to work on your writing skills, starting with sentences and building up to paragraph-length essays.

Italian-112 Elementary Italian-Accelerated

Staff

MWF 9-10; TR 9-10:30
Permission needed from department

Italian 112 is an intensive elementary language course for students who have never studied Italian before but who have demonstrated a certain facility for learning languages and who have already fulfilled the language requirement. This course may not be taken to fulfill the language requirement or by students with previous knowledge of Italian. The course is designed to develop function proficiency in the four skills and gain familiarity with Italian culture. The primary emphasis is on the development of the oral/aural skills, speaking and listening. Readings from authentic material on topics in Italian culture as well as frequent writing practice are also included.

As in other Italian courses, class will be conducted entirely in Italian. Your listening skills will be well for you will be exposed to daily authentic language spoken at normal speed by native Italians. Among these are conversations, both brief and lengthy, songs, letters, and poems. You will be guided through a variety of communicative activities in class which lead you from structured practice to free expression. You will be given frequent opportunity to practice your newly acquired vocabulary and grammatical structures in a small group and pair work which simulates real-life situations. Your class work will be supplemented with homework using a cassette with a workbook, to further enhance your listening skills. You will also be exposed to authentic Italian texts so that your reading skills will be developed. These texts include articles from newspapers and magazines as well as literary pieces. They will become more complex as you acquire the vocabulary necessary to read at a higher level. You will also be challenged to work on your writing skills, for you will be given ample opportunity to write about diverse topics.

Italian-120 Elementary Italian

Staff

MTWRF 11-12
MW 6:30-9

Prerequisite: Italian 110 or a score equivalent for placement in level 120 on the Italian placement exam (see Romance Languages Department). Italian 120 is the continuation of an elementary level sequence designed to develop functional proficiency in the four skills. The primary emphasis is on the development of the oral-aural skills, speaking and listening. Readings on topics in Italian culture as well as frequent writing practice are also included in the course.

Italian-130 Intermediate Italian

Staff

See Course Offerings for times
Prerequisite: Completion of Italian 120 at Penn or a score between 450 and 540 on the Placement test (Multiple Choice Test).

Italian 130 is the first half of a two semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of proficiency that should allow you to function comfortably in an Italian speaking environment. You are expected to have already learned the most basic grammatical structures in elementary Italian and to be able to review these on your own. The course will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material.

As in other Italian courses at Penn, class will be conducted entirely in Italian. In addition to structured oral practice, work in class will include frequent communicative activities such as role-plays, problem-solving tasks, discussions and debates often carried out in pairs and small groups. Through the study of authentic materials such as articles, poems, songs, films, videos and taped conversations between native speakers you will deepen your knowledge of the Italian-speaking world. Daily homework will require listening practice with audio and video cassettes, in addition to regular written exercises in the Libro degli eserci, and weekly composition practice. The course will also invite you to explore the Italophone world on the Internet.

Italian-140 Intermediate Italian

Staff

MWRF 11-12
Prerequisite: Completion of Italian 130 at Penn or a placement score between 550 and 640 on the Placement Exam (Multiple Choice Exam)

Italian 140 is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of proficiency that should allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. You are expected to have already learned the most basic grammatical structures in elementary Italian and to be able to review these on your own. The course will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material.

As in other Italian courses at Penn, class will be conducted entirely in Italian. In addition to structured oral practice, work in class will include frequent communicative activities such as role-plays, problem solving tasks, discussions and debates often carried out in pairs or small groups. Through the study of authentic materials such as articles, poems, songs, films, videos and conversations between native speakers you will deepen your knowledge of the Italian-speaking world. Daily homework will require listening practice with audio and video cassettes, in addition to regular written exercises in the Libro degli esercizi, and weekly composition practice. The course will also invite you to explore the Italophone world on the internet.

Italian-180 Italian Conversation in Residence

Staff

Must be resident of the Modern Language House.

Italian-202 Advanced Grammar and Syntax

Narducci

MWF 1-2

An advanced language course to reinforce the command of Italian, both spoken and written, through intensive conversation and frequent tests and compositions. Recognition and comparison of different modes of the language, including classical literary Italian, colloquial modern speech, and the language of contemporary media and publicity. Analysis of major current Italian events the geography of Italy, and the reading of a recent best seller will also be used to acquiring new language skills. Taught in Italian; offered fall term every year. Prerequisite: Italian 140 or Proficiency.

Italian-208 Business Italian I

Gentili

TR 1:30-3

The major purpose of the course, which is conducted entirely in Italian and therefore requires an intermediate/high to advanced level of the language, is to enable students to acquire language proficiency in the area of current Italian world, culture and social aspects. Business terminology will be placed within the framework of many different work's practices, such as: select a employment's offers, employment's application, curriculum vitae, references, interview, presentation, business appointment, reservations, business meeting, products and proceedings description and business correspondence. The course will also emphasize conversation skills which will lead students to understand the specificity of the Italian world through the analysis of the cultural and social differences between Italians and Americans in everyday practices, such as the attitude of the Italian towards money, work, leisure, and consumerism.
 

Italian-210 Viva Voce

Marini

TR 10:30-12

The purpose of this conversation course, held entirely in Italian, is to improve the use of spoken contemporary Italian is a pragmatic perspective. On the basis of inputs coming from articles, songs, pictures, short stories, and clips from movies and television, students will discuss some aspects of Italian contemporary civilization, and, at the same time, practice different forms and expand vocabulary in various communicative situations. Politics, lifestyle, fashion, literature, music and art will be the subjects of structured activities, such as role-plays, debates, discussions and short oral presentations. Differences between popular and standard, formal and colloquial speech will be emphasized.

Italian-215 "Introduction to Early Italian Literature and Its Reincarnations" (in Italian)

Luzzi

This course will introduce students to the principal works, themes, and stylistic innovations of medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature. Among the authors and themes we will consider are the Sweet New Style, the "three crowns" (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio), Renaissance

Humanism and epic, politics and theater in Machiavelli, the nature of love in medieval and Renaissance lyric (Michelangelo, Gaspara Stampa, Vittoria Colonna), and the representation of women in Renaissance treatises (Castiglione's Courtier, Lucreta Marinelli's Nobility and Excellence of Women). In discussing the formation of the early Italian "canon," we will discuss the cultural, ideological, and gender dimensions inherent in the process of choosing a literary "classic." In considering how early Italian literature became a "tradition" and a fluid category of abiding cultural constructs, we will also explore the "reincarnations" of these early Italian works in later authors and literary movements, including the spread of Petrarchism in the Renaissance lyric (Louise Labé and Shakespeare), Dante as poet-hero in European Romanticism and American transcendentalism

(Foscolo and Emerson), Tasso as prototype of the melancholic poetic genius (Goethe and Freud), the Sweet New Style of the modernist poets (Ezra Pound), and the mythologizing of Italy's early literary traditions in contemporary travel narratives throughout the world.

Italian 240 The Stages of Comedy

Pellicone

Freshman Seminar
Cross-listed with Film

This course will explore the development of comedy as a cultural, aesthetic, and political force from antiquity through the Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan England, and into modernity. We will read major theatric works of authors such as Plautus, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Wilde and Guare. We will also view film versions of these plays when possible, as well as works such as Some Like it Hot, Tootsie, Election, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Taxi Driver, which admittedly would not necessarily be classified as a comedy. In addition, discussion of these films and plays, we will consider various theoretical examinations of comedy by other such authors as Aristotle, Freud, and Bergson.

Texts:

Plautus: Pseudolus

Bibbiena: The Calandria

Machiavelli: The Mandragola

The Intronati: The Deceived

Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing

Twelfth Night

Jonson: Volpone

Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest

Innaurato: Gemini

Gaure: Six Degrees of Separation

Italian 260 Worldviews in Collision:
The Counterreformation and Scientific Revolution

Kirkham

Freshman Seminar
Cross-listed with Speaking Across the Curriculum

Our project will be both to explore the radical conflicts that developed in 16th- and 17th-century Europe when Protestant reformers and scientific discoveries challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, and to consider these developments in the light of modern parallels (Darwin, Freud, Einstein). Freedom of thought, heresy, book censorship, and Utopian ideals will be discussed in conjunction with Machiavelli's comic play Mandragola, the vitriolic polemic involving Martin Luther, Thomas More, and King Henry VIII; Tommaso Campanella's Utopian dialogue The City of the Sun, selections from the scientists Copernicus and Galileo, and from The History of the Council of Trent by the Venetian Paolo Sarpi. We shall consider how these turbulent times found expression in poetry and the visual arts, with special attention to women writers and painters (Vittoria Colonna, Laura Battiferra, Sofonisba Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana). For modern retrospectives, we shall read two historical plays from the 20th century (Osborne's Luther, Brecht's Galileo) and view the a classic Hollywood film Utopia, Frank Capra's Lost Horizon.
Requirements: 3 brief prepared oral presentations during the semester (a 5-min. statement on an assigned reading, a 5-min. reaction to an assigned reading; a 5-min. "close-up" (analysis of a chosen passage in a reading); a final oral report (10 mins.), on a topic of the student's choice, to be arranged in consultation with the professor, either in person or by e-mail. There will be a mid-term hourly and a two-hour final exam.
 

Italian 300 "The Crisis of Southern Italy in Literature, Art, and Film"

Luzzi

MWF 2-3
Possible Cross-listings: English, Film Studies, CompLit

Historically, there have been two "Italies": a wealthier and more European Italy north of Rome, and a poorer and more politically volatile Italy to Rome's south. Thus, Southern Italy -- or "il mezzogiorno" ("land of the midday sun") -- has always represented a space of crisis in the Italian imagination. This course will consider how both southern Italians (Verga, Deledda, Pirandello) and northern Italians (Gramsci, Visconti, Carlo Levi) have constructed the mezzogiorno and treated Italy's "Southern Question." We will also explore how Southern Italy figures in the work of foreign travelers (de Staël, Goethe, Shelley) and in Italian-American authors and filmmakers (including Martin Scorsese and Pietro di Donato). Employing a variety of media and disciplinary perspectives, we will seek to illuminate the ways in which the culture and history of the mezzogiorno have influenced such phenomena as the Risorgmento, the Italian language question, the forging of Italian national identity, the creation of "regional" italian literary and cultural histories, and the establishment of the Southern-Italian diaspora in the Americas. In aesthetic terms, we will examine how artists and thinkers throughout the world have transformed the mezzogiorno into female, muse, myth, utopia, and dystopia.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

* 5-pg. midterm paper

* 12-pg. final paper

* class presentation

TEXTS:

1. G. Verga, I malavoglia (selections)

2. G. Deledda (selections)

3. L. Pirandello (selections)

4. A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (selections)

5. C. Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli

6. T. Lampedusa, The Leopard

7. P. Di Donato, Christ in Concrete

8. M. de Staël, Corinne, or Italy (selections)

9. J. W. Goethe, Voyage to Italy (selections)

10. P. B. Shelley (selections)

11. L. Sciascia (novel)

12. N. Douglass, Old Calabria

13. P. Robb, Midnight in Sicily

14. F. Jovine (selections)

FILMS:

1. L. Visconti, Terra Trema

2. R. Rossellini, Voyage to Italy

3. L. Visconti, The Leopard

4. P. Germi, Divorce, Italy Style

5. F. Rosi, Christ Stopped at Eboli

6. M. Scorsese, Italian American and Godfather

BACKGROUND/CRITICISM:

1. Lumley and Morris, eds., The Mezzogiorno Revisited

2. Schneider, ed., Italy's "Southern Question"