Fall 2004

(Course information subject to change)
(Cross-reference with Department Roster)

Italian 110
Elementary Italian
Staff
(See timetables for times)

A first-semester elementary language course for students who have never studied Italian before or who have taken the 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. Your listening skills will be developed by daily exposure to authentic language spoken at normal speed by native Italians, including short conversations, songs, and poems. As the semester progresses the conversations will be longer. Your class work 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 short compositions and building up to longer essays.

Italian 112
Elementary Italian-Accelerated
Staff
MWF 9:00-10:00; TR 9:00-10:30

Italian 112 is an intensive elementary language course covering the equivalent of Italian 110 and 120 in one semester. Students must have departmental permit to register. The course is open to students who have no previous knowledge of Italian, and who have already fulfilled the language requirement in another language. See course description of Italian 110 and 120.

Italian 120
Elementary Italian
Staff
M-F 11:00-12:00

Italian 120 is the second-semester continuation of the elementary level sequence designed to develop function competency in the four skills and gain familiarity with Italian culture. Students with a placement score of 380 - 440 should enroll in this level. 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 further developed by daily exposure to authentic language spoken at normal speed by native Italians, including 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 small group and pair work which simulate real-life situations. You will also be exposed to authentic Italian texts to develope your reading skills. 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. Your writing skills will also be improved through assignments on diverse topics.

Italian 130
Intermediate Italian
Staff
(See timetables for times)

Italian 130 is the first half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of competency that should allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. 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. 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 textbook Ponti and other material (readings, films, songs) will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics, develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of analogies and differences between your native culture and the Italian world, thus building a bridge (ponte) of cultural and linguistic awareness.

As in other Italian courses at Penn, class will be conducted entirely in Italian. Your attendance and participation is of the utmost importance, because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor towards an increased linguistic competence and a more complex understanding of Italian culture. You will be expected to read and to complete language exercises in preparation for class. Written and oral assignments will provide structured practice of the linguistic forms necessary for negotiating the concepts and questions presented through the course, while also challenging and improving your linguistic and creative skills.

Italian 134
Intermediate Italian-Accelerated
Staff
(See timetables for times)

Italian 134 is an intensive intermediate course, covering the equivalent of Italian 130 and 140 in one semester. It is primarily designed for students who have completed Italian 112, but students with a strong performance in Italian 120 are allowed to enroll with a departmental permit. See course descriptions of Italian 130 and 140.

Italian 140
Intermediate Italian
Staff
(See timetables for times)

Italian 140 is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of competency that should allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. 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. The material provided (readings, films, songs) will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics, develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of analogies and differences existing between your native culture and the Italian world, thus building a bridge of cultural and linguistic awareness. The detective story Una storia semplice, will strengthen your linguistic abilities and introduce you to the fascinating world of Italian literature.

As in other Italian courses at Penn, class will be conducted entirely in Italian. Your attendance and participation is of the utmost importance, because you will work collaboratively with your classmates and your instructor towards an increased linguistic competence and a more complex understanding of Italian culture. You will be expected to read and to complete language exercises in preparation for class. Written and oral assignments will provide structured practice of the linguistic forms necessary for negotiating the concepts and questions presented through the course, while also challenging and improving your linguistic and creative skills.

Italian 180
Italian Conversation in Residence
Staff

Must be resident of the Modern Language House

Italian 202
Advanced Italian
Staff
(See timetables for times)

This course aims at developing and deepening the language abilities which
students acquire in their first two years of study. By reading, analyzing and discussing texts—prose, poetry and theater—students will be exposed to a variety of styles and genres. They will produce their own repertoire of original writings in Italian. Movies and other audiovisual material will be used to enrich the learning experience and open windows onto aspects of Italian culture and society.
Emphasis will be placed on expanding vocabulary, reviewing advanced grammar and developing writing skills. Reading materials will be provided by the instructor.

Italian 215
Introduction to Literature
Prof. Abbona
MWF 12:00-1:00

This course will introduce students to Italy's rich literary and artistic heritage through the reading, analysis and discussion of selected primary texts. We will move from Dante's grand synthesis of medieval civilization to Petrarch's celebration of love, from the Renaissance chivalry of Ariosto's poetry to its modern retelling by Italo Calvino. We will read with an eye to the relationship between the texts and their various social, economic and political contexts. This will help us to interrogate the very notion of an Italian cultural tradition and explore its significance to European culture - past and present. The course will build students' critical vocabulary and strenghten their power of oral and written expression through presentations, short papers and a final research project on a topic chosen by the individual. All reading and class discussion will be in Italian.

Italian 232
The World of Dante
Prof. Kirkham
TR 10:30-12:00

The Divine Comedy will be read in the context of Dante Alighieri's fourteenth-century cultural world. Discussions, focussed on selected cantos of the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, will connect with such topics as: books and readers before the invention of printing (e.g, how manuscripts were made from sheepskins, transcribed, and decorated), life in a society dominated by the Catholic church (sinners vs. saints, Christian pilgrimage routes, the great Franciscan and Dominican religious orders), Dante's politics as a Florentine exile (power struggles between Pope and Emperor), his classical and Christian literary models (Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Bible), and his genius as a poet in the medieval structures of allegory, symbolism, and numerology. Illustrations of the Comedy, from early illuminated manuscripts to Renaissance printed books in the University of Pennsylvania Rare Book Collection and contemporary film will trace a history of the forms in which the poem has flourished for seven hundred years. Class conducted in English. The Divine Comedy will be available in a text with facing English and Italian versions. May be counted toward an Italian Studies major or minor.

Italian 340
Renaissance Tabloids
Prof. Cracolici
TR 10:30-12:00

The course will explore how popular reactions to landmark historical and cultural achievements generated a shared repertory of anecdotal narratives during the Renaissance. We will examine a variety of historical and intellectual phenomena from the perspective of the "rumour" and the cultural debates they provoked. Special attention will be given to those events which became the focal point of social conflicts or intellectual controversies: on one hand, more traditionally recognized issues, such as the revival and imitation of ancient authors, the rediscovery of optical perspective, the commercial impact of the printing revolution, the conquest and exploration of the Americas; on the other, less frequently explored topics, such as the origin and spread of syphilis, the cultural role of courtesans, the scandal of the nudes in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. Readings may include the following authors: Valla, Alberti, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Vasari, Tullia d'Aragona, Michelangelo, Colonna, Veronica Franco, Ariosto, and Tasso. Seminal critical interpretations of the Italian Renaissance (Burckhardt, Baron, Garin, Cantimori, and Ginzburg) will be used to support our readings and class discussions. The class will be conducted in Italian.

Italian 380
Italian Encores: Fiction into Film
Prof. Kirkham
TR 12:00-1:30, M 4-6

Against a historical background from the Risorgimento to Fascism, World War II and the post-war period of recovery, "Italian Encores" will present fiction by 19th- and 20th-century authors in six film adaptations. Selections, representing literary styles from Verismo to Neorealismo, will alternate between novels and novelle: Verga's I Malavoglia and Visconti's La terra trema; Senso by Boito and Visconti; Il gattopardo by Tomasi di Lampedusa and Visconti; Porte aperte by Sciascia and Amelio; La Ciociara by Moravia and De Sica. The course will conclude with an autobiography (1975), Padre Padrone by Ledda and the Taviani Brothers. Discussions of one to two weeks for texts, depending on length, will be followed by a week of classes devoted to each film. Films will be shown during a scheduled weekly screening time and also be available on library reserve for individual consultation. Topics to be addressed will include film in its relation with the sister arts (literature, painting, music), the directors in their identity as auteur, and Italian cultural issues, such as ideals and disillusionments of the Unification, government corruption, class structure, regional identity (Sicily, Sardinia), gender issues, and the family. Class conducted in Italian; prerequisite 5 semesters of Italian or equivalent.

Italian 383
Tales of Modernity
Prof. Marcus
TR 4:30-6:00

Modernization, and all that its advent entails-the threat to traditional agrarian ways of life, the destabilization of entrenched belief systems, the radical reshaping of the sense of self-came to Italy relatively late, and with explosive consequences. Highly sensitive to the seismic cultural shifts wrought by the onset of modernity, Italian literature underwent massive changes in form as well as in content. This course will seek to trace these changes, beginning with a sampling of Pirandello stories which portray the rural world of Sicily on the verge of transformation. Diametrically opposed to the Pirandellian portrait of archaic Sicilian peasant culture is the urbanized, high-tech euphoria of the Futurists, vividly displayed in Marinetti's "Fondazione e manifesto del Futurismo." Such drastic social changes could not help but have profound psychological effects on Italians, and these will be gauged in the hilarious psychoanalytic "confessions" of Svevo's La coscienza di Zeno, and the bourgeois malaise of Moravia's Gli indifferenti. Sicily will be the setting for our final two texts-Vittorini's mythic quest for a world of progressive human values to combat the injustice of an unnamed Fascist regime in Conversazione in Sicilia,, and Sciascia's anti-Mafia thriller, A ciascuno il suo. Wherever possible, multi-media materials will be brought to bear on our readings (film clips, paintings, music, etc). The course will be conducted in Italian.