Italian Studies
Term:  

Fall Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
ITALIAN (F19)1A  FUNDAMENTALSSTAFF
Students are taught to conceptualize in Italian as they learn to understand, read, write, and speak. Classes are conducted entirely in Italian and meet daily.
ITALIAN (F19)1A  FUNDAMENTALSSTAFF
Students are taught to conceptualize in Italian as they learn to understand, read, write, and speak. Classes are conducted entirely in Italian and meet daily.
ITALIAN (F19)150  RENAISSANCE THEATERSHEMEK, D.
In Renaissance Italy, writers and performers laid the foundations for modern comic and tragic theater: staged comedies, they said, should depict everyday family situations and hold up a “mirror to life,” so that people could laugh at their own weaknesses, especially in love and family relations. Tragedy, on the other hand, was to be a probing experience, an opportunity for the audience to explore big questions such as power, leadership, individual ethics, human fate, and moral conflicts. For the Italians at the time, these ideas were new, fresh, innovative. But they took them largely from ancient theater, which they were just rediscovering in the revival of Classical culture that produced the Italian Renaissance. In this class, we will read Italian plays alongside some of their ancient models, studying how sixteenth-century playwrights and audiences drew new ideas from the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, and how “imitations” of previous models can produce original works suited to new audiences. We will consider how both comedy and tragedy operate as potent forms of social critique. We will also think together about how much of this legacy of comedy and tragedy remains with us today, and how our knowledge about ancient and Renaissance theatrical culture may enrich our understanding of modern drama, whether we consume that drama in the theater or in films.
ITALIAN (F19)2A  INTERMEDIATECHIAMPI, J.
Texts of contemporary literary or social interest provide the focus for more advanced conversation, reading, and composition. Classes are conducted entirely in Italian.