Language Courses | R&C Courses | Courses in English | Upper-Division Courses in Italian | Graduate Courses
Language Courses
1R: Intensive Italian for Romance Language SpeakersM-F 12-1 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Annamaria Bellezza
Units: 5
Instructional Method, as of July 22, 2020:
This class will be taught remotely, per the July 21 campus announcement.
Equivalent of Italian Studies 1 and 2 combined.
For native speakers of any Romance language and for students with college level 4 proficiency (or higher) in a Romance language (exceptions made with departmental consent).
This course is designed with the needs and strengths of native or proficient speakers of any Romance language in mind, so that the similarities between the languages can be used to promote specific learning paths. This is an intensive Italian language course, which combines two semesters in one, covering all the materials usually covered in Elementary Italian 1 and 2. The course provides an accelerated introduction to Italian, allowing students who successfully complete it to enroll in Intermediate Italian 3, gaining faster access to upper division courses. The general objectives are to provide students with the basic tools for oral and written communication in Italian, but also to offer them the opportunity to learn about Italian culture, to reflect on intercultural differences and similarities, and to become more aware ‘multilingual subjects’ in our plurilingual society.
Workload: This course meets 5 times per week and regular and continued attendance is mandatory. Due to the intensive nature of this course, students should plan to study one to two hours a day and be committed to a fast-paced learning environment.
Required Texts:
Sentieri, 2nd edition, Julia Cozzarelli. 2015. ISBN 978-1-62680-803-4 NB: including access to the “Supersite Plus” Purchase textbook here: https://vistahigherlearning.com/school/ucberkeley
Section 1: MW 9-11, F 10-11 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Zhonghua Wang
Section 2: M-F 10-11 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Daisy Ament
Section 3: M-F 11-12 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Alice Fischetti
Units: 5
Italian Studies 1 is for beginners and focuses on developing basic language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in Italian. The course is taught in Italian. Italian, not English, will be spoken in class at all times.
Texts to be announced.
Prerequisites: None.
Instruction Methods:
SECTION 1:
MW 9:00-10:00/F10:00-11:00 synchronous
MW 10:00-11:00 asynchronous
SECTIONS 2 and 3:
MWF synchronous
TuTh asynchronous
M-F 9-10 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Cristina Farronato
Units: 5
This course is for students who have already a basic knowledge of Italian and want to continue the study of the language. The course is taught in Italian. Italian, not English, will be spoken in class at all times, students will be exposed to authentic Italian material from films, songs, websites, and will have the opportunity to practice their listening and speaking skills on a daily basis.
At the end of the semester, students will be able to use Italian to talk about their life, to describe present, past and future events, to give suggestions, to discuss their choices and opportunities. Students will be able to understand short dialogues, conversations, and clips from mainstream Italian films and to express their ideas both orally and in writing on a variety of topics.
Course Requirements: Five hours per week. Weekly quizzes, midterm, oral exam, final project and a final exam. Regular daily attendance is required.
Texts to be announced.
Prerequisites: Italian 1 at UCB or placement test.
Instruction Method:
MWF synchronous
TuTh asynchronous
MWF 11-12 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Annamaria Bellezza
Units: 4
Course conducted entirely in Italian
Instructional Method, as of July 22, 2020:
This class will be taught remotely, per the July 21 campus announcement.
In this course students will review and expand the grammar structures learned in the previous year. They will also be exposed to more examples of Italian culture through authentic materials such as short stories, newspaper articles, films, and plays. Students will continue to build on the skills acquired in Italian 2, striving for a higher level of sophistication and fluency in writing, reading, listening and speaking. Conducted in Italian.
Course Requirements: 3 hours per week. Weekly written assignments, a midterm, an oral presentation, and a final exam
Required texts:
Caleidoscopio, Daniela Bartalesi-Graf and Colleen Ryan, Pearson, 2015. ISBN-13: 978-0-205-25568-9
Webster’s New World Italian Dictionary Concise edition ISBN 9780139536397
Recommended texts:
English Grammar for Students of Italian, 3rd edition- S. Adorni, K Primorac. Olivia and Hill. ISBN 9780934034401
Prerequisite: Italian 2 at UCB or placement test.
Course cannot be repeated without prior consent from the language coordinator.
MWF 10-11 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Kyle Thomson
Units: 4
In this course students will hone their language skills by reviewing and deepening their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar structures learned in the previous three semesters. they will learn to appreciate Italian culture through authentic materials such as articles, interviews, shorts stories, excerpts from novels, films, and plays. Students will continue to build on the work done in Italian 3, striving for a higher level of sophistication and fluency in writing, reading, and speaking. Readings will be more complex and will cover a wider range of topics. Conducted in Italian.
Course Requirements: 3 hours per week. Weekly written assignments, 3 short essays, a midterm, an oral presentation, and a final exam
Required texts:
Caleidoscopio, Daniela Bartalesi-Graf and Colleen Ryan, Pearson, 2015. ISBN-13: 978-0-205-25568-9
Prerequisite: Italian 3 at UCB or placement test.
Course cannot be repeated without prior consent from the language coordinator.
R&C Courses
R5B, Section 1: Speak, MemoryTuTh 8-9:30 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Elisa Russian
Units: 4
This course examines twentieth- and twenty-first-century autobiographical narratives from Italy, France, and the United States. We will consider works such as Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man (1947), Nathalie Sarraute’s Childhood (1983), and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006) in light of the role that memory plays in the formation of personal and collective identities. Key theoretical questions include: In what ways do individuals construct themselves through words and images? What is the relationship between “truth” and imagination? Why are some memories vivid and distinct, while others resurface only involuntarily? Is there an ethics inherent in life-writing? What is at stake in autobiographical narratives that feature major historical and sometimes traumatic events? Do memories belong only to individuals or also to generations and social groups? What are the geographical, historical, and cultural sites of individual and collective recollections?
This course is designed to fulfill the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement. Throughout the semester, we will master the skills of critical reading and writing. In addition to closely analyzing and discussing texts and films, we will focus on all the stages involved in writing a research paper, from developing a thesis statement and supporting your argument with appropriate evidence to polishing the final draft.
Required Texts (updated 8/12/2020):
Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Boston: Mariner Books, 2007. ISBN-13: 978-0544709041
Ginzburg, Natalia. Family Lexicon, translated by Jenny McPhee. New York: New York Review Books, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-1590178386
Levi, Primo. If This Is a Man, translated by Stuart Woolf. London: Abacus, 2003. ISBN-13: 978-0349100135
Sarraute, Nathalie. Childhood, translated by Barbara Wright. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. ISBN-13: 978-0226922317
Films
Fellini, Federico. Amarcord.
Varda, Agnès. The Beaches of Agnès.
Additional Readings
Short texts by Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin, Italo Calvino, Maxine Hong Kingston, Patricia Hampl, bell hooks, and Luisa Passerini are available through the course website on bCourses.
This course satisfies the second half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.
Prerequisite: 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.
Due to the high demand for R&C courses we monitor attendance very carefully. Attendance is mandatory the first two weeks of classes, this includes all enrolled and wait listed students. If you do not attend all classes the first two weeks you may be dropped. If you are attempting to add into this class during weeks 1 and 2 and did not attend the first day, you will be expected to attend all class meetings thereafter and, if space permits, you may be enrolled from the wait list.
Courses in English
40: Italian CultureAsynchronous | Remote/Online | Instructor: Emily Rabiner
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature or Historical Studies or Social & Behavioral Sciences breadth requirement.
This interdisciplinary course is a broad-based introduction to the culture and history of the Italian peninsula, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It offers a survey of major developments in politics, music, art, architecture, cinema, literature, and various forms of popular culture. We will encounter numerous individual artists, writers and political figures, from Dante in the 1300s through Michelangelo and Verdi to Berlusconi today, placing them and their achievements in a rich social and historical context. In describing the development of Italy as a nation-state and Italians as a people, we will trace continuities and changes from the independent city-states of the medieval period through the princely courts of the Renaissance, the foreign occupations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nationalist movements of the 1800s, and the challenges faced by an autonomous Italy in the last century and a half, as it has experimented in turn with liberalism, colonialism, and totalitarianism, before settling down as the fractious Republic it is today.
Prerequisites: none.
Instruction Method:
Lecture: asynchronous
Discussion: synchronous
Asynchronous | Remote/Online | Instructor: Diana Thow
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
The idea of Italy is inextricably tied to great food and wine, and Italians are known the world
over for their excellent cooking and love of eating, recognizable in their iconic exports: Chianti,
pizza, gelato. Yet, what precisely makes food so important to “Italianità”? To understand why
Italian consciousness within and beyond the peninsula roots itself in gastronomy, our course will
train a serious critical lens on the world of Italian food, re-constructing Italian history and culture
as we de-construct the Italian meal, trying to find within it the seeds of an imagined community
and a political reality. Our goal will be to answer questions such as: what makes a national
identity and what makes a national cuisine?; how is food wielded as a tool of political power?;
what makes food important to Italy and Italians specifically, when compared with other
European nations and ethnic identities?; how has Italian cuisine changed from the birth of the
Italian vernacular in the late Middle Ages to the unification of the Italian nation state in 1861 to
today? To answer these questions we will investigate sources ranging from the lineage of Italian
cookbooks, to textual and visual representations of Italian food and eating, to models of ancient
and modern dining spaces and rituals, and more.
Preparation & Expectations:
Students should be prepared to read, listen to or watch approximately 6-7 selections from
primary and critical sources each week. In addition to preparing all required materials in advance
of lecture and participating enthusiastically in class, students will take a written, in-class exam at
the conclusion of each unit of study. Each student will also select a food item or technology to
research individually during the course of the semester, for which the student will present a final
product (creative options are available in addition to traditional final papers).
Grading Breakdown:
Attendance and participation 20%
Exams 50%
Food Research Assignment 30%
Required Texts:
All texts and materials will be provided in digital format.
TuTh 3:30-5 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Henrike C. Lange
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
This class engages with the long history of triumphs in art, architecture, music, ritual, theory, religious studies, and general political iconography. Responding to the distribution of students’ interests, the class will focus on the late medieval / early modern, nineteenth and early twentieth century, and present-day components of triumphs. We will discuss historical triumphal gestures in the form of monuments, processions, and iconographies from ancient Roman triumphs to the present day in a global framework. Stations of this cultural history investigation include the ancient Roman arches and their relief decoration, booty and spolia, the Christian medieval “triumph of humility,” triumphs in literature (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio), the imagery of Renaissance and early modern triumphs in print and painting (Mantegna, Dürer, Rubens), the Latino tradition of religious processions, later operatic adaptations, Fascist triumphal imagery, and other modern examples of triumphs and reversals in contemporary Italian cinema such as in Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella. If requested, an additional film studies component includes Monuments Men and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
Conducted in English, the class is open to majors from all fields. No previous art history or literature history preparation required. Italian and other non-English texts (such as French, Spanish,and German) will be introduced on a basic level as desired by the students. This course is designed to connect with other and further studies in broad fields including but not limited to Medieval Studies, Renaissance & Early Modern Studies, critical theory, interdisciplinary studies, and literature studies. Students from all backgrounds are welcome; please email Prof. Lange to discuss your interest in the course and potential adjustments for majors outside the arts and humanities.
Asynchronous | Remote/Online | Instructor: Diana Thow
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature or Philosophy & Values breadth requirement.
An austere ancient authority, a smitten teenage lover, a prophet, an embezzler, a national icon, an
unapologetic heretic, a mercenary, and the only truly great poet to have ever lived: Dante has
been called many things in the seven hundred years since he began writing, and he continues to
attract the interest of a wildly diverse group of readers and commentators. In his medieval
masterpiece, the Divine Comedy, Dante irreversibly transformed literary language and perhaps
even the way in which our current consciousness perceives the universe. Our course will focus
on the first canticle of the Divine Comedy, both the most famous and most infamous: Inferno.
Our goal will be to bring Dante’s Hell to life, reconstructing the terrifying landscape and
interpreting the complex poetry of a text that continues to resonate with modern audiences as
intensely as it did with its medieval public.
Preparation & Expectations:
Students should feel comfortable reading and analyzing poetry independently and have a strong
writing style and composition skills. A knowledge of Italian is not required but students who
have experience in Italian are encouraged to engage with the original text. Attendance is
mandatory and energetic participation is strongly encouraged.
Students should be prepared to read approximately 2–3 cantos and their accompanying notes
each week, as well as studying 2–3 selections from further primary and critical sources. In
addition to preparing all required readings in advance of lecture and participating enthusiastically
in class, students will be asked to prepare a comment or question each week based on the
readings to facilitate debate during lectures. There will be three exams during the course and a
final project where creative responses are encouraged.
Grading Breakdown:
Attendance 10%
Participation and Reading Responses 30%
Exams 30%
Final Assignment 30%
Required Texts:
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Edited and translated by Robert Durling. Introduction and Notes by
Robert Durling and Ronald Martinez. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. [Paperback and ebook
versions available]
All further texts and materials will be provided in digital format.
Taught in English.
Intended Italian Studies majors and minors may count this as a taught-in-Italian course
provided they complete all their written work in Italian.
TuTh 12:30-2 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Rhiannon Welch
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Arts & Literature breadth requirement.
Cross-listed with Film 145-001.
On-location shooting, shoestring budget, non-professional actors, and social commentary on the everyday struggles of the so-called ‘common man.’ These are among the hallmark elements of Italian neorealism—a body of films that emerged out of the literal and figurative rubble of fascism and World War II, and gave a nation recovering from a bombastic dictatorship a humble new self-image. Few national film movements have been as revered, mythologized, and seemingly self-evident as neorealism. And yet, since its inception, its very status—as a tradition, a school, a genre, and/or as a distinctively Italian set of films—has been fiercely contested. This course explores neorealism itself as a site of numerous transnational transactions, from its origins—in dialogue with Soviet realism and ‘escapist’ Hollywood—to its resonance in China, Senegal, Colombia, India, and beyond. Students will examine selections from the neorealist ‘canon’ (films by Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti), along with a selection of their global intertexts (films may include: Pather Panchali, 1955, dir. Satyajit Ray; Black Girl, 1966, dir. Ousmane Sembène; Still Life, 2006, dir. Jia Zhangke; Wendy and Lucy, 2008, dir. Kelly Reichardt)
Taught in English.
Upper-Division Courses in Italian
101: Advanced Writing WorkshopTuTh 9:30-11 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Giuliana Perco
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S International Studies breadth requirement.
Through this course you will strengthen and refine their writing skills in Italian by expanding your vocabulary and experimenting with more complex grammatical structures. Emphasis is given on refining writing skills through a process of writing, reviewing and re-writing.
You will be exposed to texts from a variety of different genres and writing styles (newspaper and magazine articles, essays, personal narratives, etc.) focusing on relevant topics in Italian culture and society. Grammar will be reviewed only in the context of the texts and genres analyzed.
This course is writing intensive. You will write several different types of texts of different length and purpose: letters, film reviews, personal narratives, argumentative texts, etc. You will also review your peers’ work and have your own work read and commented by your peers. Re-writing will be required for most of the texts you’ll create for this class. At the end of the semester you will have created a portfolio of about 20-30 pages in Italian.
The course is entirely taught in Italian and it is a pre-requisite to any 100- level course in Italian.
Prerequisites: Italian Studies 4 at UCB or proficiency placement /permission of the instructor
Can be repeated for credit.
Texts: to be announced.
TuTh 11-12:30 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Giuliana Perco
Units: 4 Satisfies L&S Historical Studies breadth requirement.
Taught in Italian.
In this course we will explore the Italian “giallo” (detective fiction/murder mystery), one of the most popular and successful literary genres today, particularly in Italy.
We will begin our exploration by contextualizing the genre historically and comparatively, and then focus on its development in Italian literature. We will analyze not only the inter-relationship between this popular genre and more “serious” literary fiction, but also the role of detective fiction as a mirror of social anxieties. Thus, we will for instance discuss why unsolved murder mysteries have a strong appeal on contemporary readers; why easily predictable (and often repetitive) plots keep attracting a wide and varied readership, or why this kind of escapist works can become very popular in particular historical moments.
The course is entirely in Italian. Though in a couple of cases we will have to read a short text in English (such as Edgar Allan Poe’s “Murder of the Rue Morgue”, for instance), the wide majority of the readings, all class discussion and writing assignments will be in Italian.
Texts: We will read works by, among others, Leonardo Sciascia, Marcello Fois, Gianrico Carofiglio. Specific titles will be given later.
Prerequisite: Italian 101 or placement exam.
Graduate Courses
215 : The Renaissance of FaithW 1-4pm | Remote/Online | Instructor: Albert Ascoli
Units: 4
Class conducted in English
Reading knowledge of Italian highly desirable
Description: The polysemous word-concept, “faith,” usually studied in its separate religious, moral, political, economic, textual, and other acceptations, constitutes an unusually potent means for examining the subtending ideological structures of early modern Italy, and of European culture more generally, as well as the transformative pressures on these during the sixteenth century. “Fede” is at once the name given to blind trust in unprovable truth and to blind commitment in institutional and personal relationships. It is, in other words, the name explicitly given in this period to the general principle that once shapes the social order, binding individuals to and within it, and effaces what lies, unseen and unsaid, beneath it. Drawing on recent historical scholarship, I will demonstrate the pervasiveness of “fede” as the pivotal concept in the range of key discursive domains, indicate the homologies among them, and analyze their interactions in some symptomatic texts of the period. These texts, ranging across the late medieval and early modern period from Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, to Machiavelli and Ariosto to Tasso and Guarino, with reference to such as key European figures as Luther, Rabelais, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, typically bring together multiple strands of the discourse of “fede,” at once revealing its systemic function and pointing to a pervasive crisis within it that opens on to what we are accustomed to call “modernity.”
Requirements: Attendance and active participation. Two in-class reports. Detailed paper proposal with bibliography (due in week 10). Final paper (20-25 pages text; 5000-6000 words). Papers may be developed from readings within the course and in relation to its primary topic (fides), or they may treat that topic in relation to texts not considered in the course (Italian or other), or they may consider an analogous problem using critical tools developed during the course.
Th 2-5 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Rhiannon Welch
Units: 2-4
Immunity has perhaps never before preoccupied all corners of the world, all at once, as it does today. This seminar begins with a focused introduction to some foundational texts of biopolitical thought, and then turns to a series of questions about aesthetics and representation in times of crisis. We will explore intersections between the following areas of inquiry: biopolitical theory; visual media and literature; and crisis rhetoric. A few of the questions we will consider: to what extent does biopolitics rely upon both ‘objective’ and figurative regimes? Where are the boundaries between literal and metaphorical immunity? How are visual and literary texts ensnared in biopolitical logics of capture, and to what extent can they engender alternative modes of comprehension? How does immunitary crisis both produce and foreclose certain temporalities and/or forms of life?
Prerequisite: graduate standing
M 2-5 | Remote/Online | Instructor: Mia Fuller
Units: 2-4
Discussions of Italian subjects invariably involve place. What is so essential about regions, dialects, or topography? How does location give meaning to how we read a text or understand a film? And for the purposes of our seminar, how do theories of place – explicit or implicit – form scholars’ reading approaches? Using Italy as our not-entirely-stable central focus (Where does it begin and end? How does one define it spatially, geographically, culturally?), we will read in several disciplines (Cultural Geography; Anthropology; Environmental Humanities) and along several established areas of discussion (Colonies, Migration, and the Postcolonial; the Mediterranean; the Southern Question). Specific topics are likely to include indigeneity and autochthony; ambiguous borders; cities and civiltà; and italianità as well as irredentismo. While the seminar as a group will tailor our list of sources, we are likely to read – in no particular order – Edward Said, Mark Choate, Johannes Fabian, Stephanie Hom, Marco Armiero, Alessandro Spina, Claudio Magris, Carlo Levi, Serenella Iovino, Roberta Pergher, Ilaria Giglioli, Yael Navaro-Yashin, Giorgio Bertellini.
Prerequisite: graduate standing or consent of instructor.