Italian

This course provides students with a sound basis for communicating effectively and accurately in oral and written Italian. In this course, students continue to practice recognizing and using complex Italian grammatical and syntactic structures, such as verbs in all tenses and moods, connective words, and all uses of the subjunctive mood in hypothetical sentences, conjunctions, or indirect speech. Authentic materials (songs, videos, advertisements, and film clips) are used in a communicative-based approach, and emphasis is placed on the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students participate in several sessions of language exchange with Italian university students, and field trips take them outside the classroom to engage with the city and Romans to reinforce the grammatical skills learned in class. The course is conducted entirely in Italian.

This course offers an introductory study of Italian. Topics include: phonetics and spelling of contemporary Italian; gender and language in contemporary Italian; forms and syntax of the definite article; possessive adjectives and pronouns; demonstrative adjectives and pronouns; indefinite article; present indicative and subject pronouns; past tense; direct object pronouns; pronominal verbs in present and past tense; imperfect indicative.

The course focuses on 20th century Italian literature with special attention to sociological, anthropological, and philosophical questions. The course highlights general notions in critical theory and textual analysis including formal, structural, and compositional elements as well as the question of reception. Special attention is placed on a selection of modern and contemporary literary texts related to Italian and European traditions. The course topics varies each term, review the University of Bologna Course Catalog for the specific topic for each term.

This course explores love and sexuality in Italian culture from circa 1350 to 1650. From the verses of Petrarch, to the writings of Ficino, Leone Ebreo, Aretino, and poems by Marino, love and sexuality were theorized and represented in the treatises, poetry, paintings, and sculptures of this period. Mainly on-site in the churches, palaces, and museums of Rome, this course considers the poetic, social, and visual aspects of the topic in an interdisciplinary study that examines both word and image. The course begins with Michelangelo's SISTINE CEILING and its reflection on the fall of Adam and Eve with their subsequent awareness of their sexuality. Following Leo Steinberg's theory about the sexuality of Christ, students explore the theology of nudity in Christian art as well as the “amor dei” (love for God) or mystic marriage through Baroque sculptures such as Bernini's SAINTS IN ECSTASY. The second part of the course focuses on the more secular, sensuous, and even lascivious aspects by considering the revival of ancient classical culture. Central to this evolution is the METAMORPHOSES by Ovid and the themes deriving from the many commentaries on it such as, unrequited love through Bernini's APOLLO AND DAPHNE, rape though Bernini's ABDUCTION OF PERSEPHONE, and love for the self through Caravaggio's NARCISSUS. The course concludes with exploring socio-historical, gendered topics such as marriage, courtesans, male virility, female chastity, homosexuality, androgyny, and hermaphroditism through a variety of art objects.

This course is for students who studied Italian for a short period and can express themselves using basic structures, can introduce themselves, and can talk about themselves and their daily routines. It runs at the A1/A2 level according to the CEFR level. This communicative course develops oral skills in Italian.

This intensive language and culture course is conducted in Italian and is designed for students who have generally completed 1 year of Italian or have an entrance test that places them at the A2.1 or A2.2 level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The course is designed to help students perfect their language skills by reviewing and deepening their knowledge of vocabulary and grammar structures and focuses on the history and culture of the city of Bologna - from antiquity to the present - as a microcosm for Italian history and culture itself. Emphasis is placed on four historical periods: Antiquity (Etruscans and Romans), the Middle Ages (Guelphs and Ghibellines), the Renaissance (Bologna and the Papal State), and Modern times: Fascism, the Resistance, Neo-fascisms, and left and right-wing terrorism. Students continue to build on knowledge acquired in previous courses striving for a higher level of fluency especially in oral production in light of the goal of reaching a sophisticated level of communication with Italian university students and local residents. At the end of the course, students are able to talk about the city of Bologna, its history, and culture, and to offer their ideas and opinions using the subjunctive tense in both present and past forms. Readings are from per le vie e le piazza di Bologna as well as other sources including newspapers, novels, weekly magazines, comics, songs, and poems. The course includes a major field trip. Students select the number of quarter units from a minimum of 3 to a maximum of 6.

This course offers an introduction to the history of medieval art in Italy, focusing on selected case studies which are investigated with a multidisciplinary approach and with specific regard to the visual arts. The course consists of three topics. The first topic discusses the Italian Middle Ages, and covers periodization and terminology; artists, patrons, publics, and projects of the arts; and iconographies, techniques, media and materials, and style. The second topic discuss Giotto and the city, Padua in the first half of the 14th century, and the Scrovegni chapel. The third topic discusses the Signorie, Communes, and the art of power in Padua, Milan, Florence, and Siena. This course is taught in a degree program which introduces students to knowledge of Italian language throughout the degree. The first year of instruction in this degree begins in English and then gradually shifts to Italian by the third year. Because this course is taught in the first semester of the first year of the degree, the course is mostly taught in English with some Italian and is appropriate for students who do not speak Italian.

The course focuses on twentieth century Italian literature. This course examines wide areas of twentieth-century literary history, with special emphasis on the relation between literature and historical, social, anthropological, and more broadly cultural phenomena. Study is assisted by secondary literature and face-to-face instruction and covers close reading of the text as well as problems of form, structure, composition, and reception. Specific course topics vary from year to year. There are three different sections of the course offered each year, taught by three different professors, each course with different topics, reading lists, and syllabi. UNIBO students are assigned to sections based on their last name: A-D, E-M, N-Z; however, UCEAP students are free to choose the section they prefer. Refer to the UNIBO website for the course description for each section.

This is a graduate level course that is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. This course is based on the sociological analysis of a selection of films produced in Italy from the end of World War II to the ‘80s with the aim of using Italian movies as telescopes on the past and to reflect on the present of Italian culture, from both the historical and social point of view. At the end of the course, students have knowledge about: Italian cinema from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1980s; political and social transformations from the early 1900s to the 1980s; elements of Italian history from 1900 to post-war period; notions regarding sociological and anthropological models, necessary to interpret social transformations in Italy in the period under analysis. Some of the most important movies of Italian film history are screened such as 900, ROME OPEN CITY, LA DOLCE VITA, BREAD AND CHOCOLATE. This is a sociology course on Italian culture, in which movies are used as data as well as a stimulus for the debate. In addition, another level of analysis concerns the styles, the schools and the directors of the films selected, and the technical and social contexts that influence the different styles. In this light, students consider mass communication linguistic techniques (figures of speech, metaphors, analogies), to identify both clear and hidden messages in movies. The course includes traditional lectures, film screenings, and audiovisual materials.