All Reading and Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

This course examines representations of animals and animality in Italian literature, considering the ways that humans are defined both as the opposite of animals and as animals themselves. Through our analysis of bestial depictions and animal metaphors in Italian narratives, we will explore how animals and animality relate to norms of the human body and behavior, as they have shifted over time, place, and genre. Beginning with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we will read stories where people turn into animals, poems about hybrid human-animal creatures, fairy tales where animals are protagonists, and even stories in which humans desire animals. We will look at the use of animal metaphors in Dante’s Inferno and political treatises like Machiavelli’s The Prince. We will also consider the ways that marginalized populations are represented through comparisons with animals in order to reflect their dehumanization, such as in Giovanni Verga’s “She-wolf,” Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and Cesare Lombroso’s racist science. Throughout the course, we will draw from a wide range of narrative forms – from novels and short stories to poetry, film, and theater – and will learn tools for the analysis of each. Drawing as well from a variety of secondary sources, we will discuss the many ways scholars and theorists have sought to delineate and define the boundaries of the human, as well as more recent theories that seek to decentralize the human subject in favor of animal-centric perspectives.

This course fulfills the second part of the Reading and Composition requirement. We will continue to work on writing analytical, argumentative papers but with an added emphasis on research, both doing research – from generating research topics to locating and evaluating sources – and writing research papers which will integrate and correctly cite sources in support of your own original and provocative claims.

Students will be expected to attend class regularly and should be prepared to discuss the assigned readings. Each student will be responsible for writing a total of three papers: a short diagnostic essay and two longer essays, both of which will require substantial revisions. The final paper will incorporate independent research. In addition, there will be a number of short assignments and online discussions designed to hone your skills as critical readers and writers.

Required Texts:

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz [translated by Stuart Woolf, Simon & Schuster, 1996, ISBN: 0684826801]

Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo [translated by William Weaver, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1983, ISBN: 9780156572040]

 A course reader will also be made available with excerpts from: Ovid’s Metamorphoses; Dante’s Inferno; Boccaccio’s Decameron; Petrarch; Machiavelli; Pico della Mirandola; Ariosto; Carlo Gozzi; Giacomo Leopardi; Giovanni Verga; Italo Svevo; Cesare Lombroso; Grazia Deledda; Anna Maria Ortese; and others.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading & Composition requirement or its equivalent. Students may not enroll in nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite.