Spring 2002

Italian-110  Elementary Italian

See Course Offerings for times   Staff

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-120  Elementary Italian

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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

MWRF 11-12     Staff     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

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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.

Italian180  Italian Conversation in Residence

Must be resident of the Modern Language College House.

Italian-210  Italian Viva Voce-Play Production  Marini

R 2-5

The purpose of this course is to reinforce the students' command of Italian language and to improve their knowledge and understanding of Italian culture through a play production, which will be performed at the end of the semester.  Class meetings will analyze a play of a 20th century  Italian writer in lectures, discussions, and demonstrations as well as provide lab time for extended workshops in acting, directing, design and production problems.  Students will be asked to attend all the rehearsals.  The course will be conducted entirely in Italian.

Italian 222  Introd Alla Letteratura

MWF 10-11    Narducci

Study of Italian Literature.  This course will offer a panoramic view of the Italian Literature from Dante to the Futurists.  Moving through the centuries the students will read passages culled from the works of Dante, Petrarca, Boccacio, Goldoni, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni, D'Annunzio, Ungaretti, Montale and Saba.  The goal is to acquaint the students with the works of the major Italian authors in order to have a general understanding of how the Italian Literature developed through the centuries.  The course is offered in Italian.  Prerequisite Ital 202.

Italian 300  Italian History

TR 4:30-6; W 4-7   Marcus/Steinberg

Modern Italy has added to the traditional belle arti of painting, sculpture and architecture new fields like fashion, industrial design and film.  "Made in Italy" has come to stand all over the world for quality workmanship and fine design.  Yet this same country has been involved in dictatorship, violence both political and criminal and a flood of emigration.  In this course we will review that history, its triumphs and disasters, by combining film and written texts.  Both media are equally important and ought to enrich each other.  The weekly film is part of that work and you will be expected to do the assigned reading as well.  The course will be open to seniors, juniors and sophomores (with special permission).  Italian is not required.

Italian 333  Dante's Divine Comedy   Brownlee, K

TR, 10:30-12

In this course we will read the "Inferno", the "Purgatorio" and the "Paradiso", focusing on a series of interrelated problems raised by the poem: authority, fiction, history, politics and language.  Particular attention will be given to how the Commedia presents itself as Dante's autobiography, and to how the autobiographical narrative serves as a unifying thread for this supremely rich literary text.  Supplementary readings will include Virgil's "Aeneid" and selections from Ovid's "Metamorphoses."

All readings and written work will be in English.  Italian or Italian Studies credit will require reading Italian texts in their original language and writing about their themes in Italian.  This course may be taken for graduate credit, but additional work and meetings with the instructor will be required.

Italian 370  La Lingua Della Televisione

MWF, 11-12     Finotti

Corso multimediale e interdiscipllinare, supportato da registrazioni  Quali strategie communicative sono usate nella televisione italiana?  Come cambiano, a seconda del genere di trasmissione, e quali registri linguistici documentano?  Come si collega la scelta di uno stile communicativo agli orientamenti politici e culturali dei diversi programmi?  Infine, in quale misura la televisione é specchio della societa e della lingua italiana, e in quale misura contribuisce a modificarle?

The language of Television
A multimedia and interdisciplinary course, with the support of video, which offers a smorgasbord of ways of understanding Italian television and its language.  What communication strategies are used?  How do they change, considering the genre of the programme, and what rhetorical models do they pursue?  What are the relations between the language of visual entertainment and its political and cultural orientation?  In what measure does Italian television transform the language and society, even if it appears to mirror reality?

Italian 372  Italy & Anglo American Fiction

TR, 12-1:30    Brunori-Deigan

This course will examine films and novels whose English or American creators and/or fictional characters are confronted with Italian people and culture.  Films include Roberto Rossellini's Voyage in Italy (starring Ingrid Bergman), Ettore Scola's Macaroni (starring Jack Lemmon) and John Madden's Corelli's Mandolin (starring Nicholas Cage).  Readings range from Valerie Martin's Italian Fever and E.M. Forster's A Room with a View to the Italy-inspired poetry by Lord Byron and Robert Browning.  The works studied in this course are a gateway to gain knowledge of Rome, Venice, Tuscany, Naples, of their past and present.  In turn, the images of Italy and the Italians constructed by these authors shed light on the essence of their art and vision of the world.

Italian-388  Italian American Writers

MWF 12-1      Narducci

In this course we will read memoirs, essays and novels that will speak to us about the Italian immigration in the United States.  These readings will explain why the Italians wanted to leave the land they loved so much, and they will describe the struggle from humiliation to assimilation and success.  The Italians too are very much part of the American history to which they contributed much.  For this reason, this "marginal" literature deserved to be studied and appreciated as any other ethnic literature.  The students are expected to present to the class at least a book, to fully participate through questions, comments and when possible, personal or family experiences.  The course is offered in English.