Italian

This course introduces students to the grammatical structures and vocabulary necessary to understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases in Italian. Students learn to express themselves using verbs in the present tense. They introduce themselves and others and ask and answer questions about personal details such as where they live, people they know, and things they own. They engage in simple interactions as long as the other person talks slowly and clearly. They ask for or pass on personal details in written form and produce short and simple texts like postcards, greetings messages, isolated phrases, and sentences. Attention is given to the correct pronunciation of the language. All four abilities (writing, speaking, listening, reading) are developed in the class, also with the support of authentic audiovisual materials such as Italian movies, short videos, tv programs, and songs. The course uses a communication-based approach: students engage in daily role-plays, group activities, games, and class discussions. Out of class activities are designed to take advantage of the opportunities for interaction and language practice, as well as immersion in Italian culture, that the city provides.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. This course discusses specificities that characterize contemporary Italian history and in particular of the social, political, economic transformations, in addition to those related to the mentality and customs, of Italy in the twentieth century. The course examines the methodological competences necessary for reaching an adequate level of critical and interpretative awareness in the field of contemporary Italian history.

The course offers an introduction to Italian culture and history and focuses on both the city of Bologna and Italy as a nation. The course emphasizes basic knowledge of crucial aspects of the Italian cultural heritage across different disciplines and an awareness of the complexities of Italian history and society. The course is interdisciplinary in nature with weekly guest lectures on a variety of topics. The course is graded pass/no pass only.

What is the relationship between a city’s structure and the way it is represented? This course investigates this question by analyzing Florence’s urban history and its visual representation in paintings, frescoes, maps, photographs, and films from the 1200s to today. As the city has been in turn the site of a proud communal society, the main center of the Medici and then Lorraine rule, the capital of newly unified Italy and the repository of national and international cultural and ethical (and touristic) values, we examine how Florence has been both shaped by and represented according to different political and cultural agendas, and how the city’s structure and its representation have constantly affected each other. Special emphasis is devoted to the emergence of photography and cinema and the radical visual and conceptual shift that these media have produced in the city’s image. Some of the issues this course explores are: the role of linear perspective as a scientific and political tool for representing, conceptualizing, and controlling urban space; the ways in which the city has been reconfigured and portrayed by foreigners from the 1600s on; and photography’s and cinema’s potential for addressing compelling urban issues such as the contrast between memory and urban modernization, the elusive relationship of past preservation and mass tourism, and the enmeshment of notions of tourism and surveillance. 

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program. The course is intended for advanced level students only. Enrollment is by consent of the instructor. The course focuses on the theoretical skills necessary for placing twentieth-century Italian poetry within the context of European history of thought and ideas. Special attention is placed on the appropriate methodology for analyzing modern and contemporary poetry. The course emphasizes the role of rhetoric, stylistics, and linguistics and favors intertextual and interdisciplinary comparisons. The topic for the Spring 2018 semester is: Origins, Poetry, Verticality, and Perception. This course focuses on a selection of Italian poetry from the second half of the twentieth century that highlights the idea of origin, and in particular the feelings of unbridgeable distance, and loss. The idea of distance and loss is also analyzed through the formal choices that shape the texts as well as their friction and opposition to the literary codes of the time. Prerequisite for the course is basic knowledge of twentieth-century Italian literature at the undergraduate level. Poetry selections are from the following sources: ORAMAI and DICIASSETTE VARIAZIONI SU TEMI PROPOSTI PER UNA PURA IDEOLOGIA FONETICA by Emilio Villa, LA BUFERA E ALTRO and SATURA by Eugenio Montale, LABORINTUS and POSTKARTEN by Edoardo Sanguineti, IL SEME DEL PIANGERE and IL MURO DELLA TERRA by Giorgio Caproni, SU FONDAMENTI INVISIBILI and PER IL BATTESIMO DEI NOSTRI FRAMMENTI by Mario Luzi.

The course examines the notion of “Made in Italy” as an intangible asset and traces its evolution in time, starting from its creation in Florence in the 1950s up to the current global success of Tuscany-based icons such as Vespa, Gucci, Ferragamo, and Chianti. The main aim is to explore the appeal of “Made in Italy” as a global brand and the marketing of “Italian Style” throughout the world. To this purpose, students analyze important Italian companies in specific sectors – fashion, food, wine, leather, design and art – and discuss their innovative branding practices. The focus is on key Italian cultural products, their significance and symbolism, as well as the concept of “Country Branding” within the industrial, leisure, lifestyle, food, and fashion industries. An array of educational tools – lectures, class discussions, fieldtrips and visits to food and fashion retailers, corporate museums, design studios –allows students to acquire an in-depth knowledge of trendsetting communication strategies and gain first-hand experience with some iconic products commonly associated with the idea of “Italianness”, from concept to consumption.

This course covers types of comics from the 13th century to the 16th century, and poetry and theater in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first part of the course is dedicated to comic in literature and focuses on Boccaccio with in-depth studies on the DECAMERON. The second part is dedicated to the reading of Machiavelli and discusses Goldoni, Pascoli, and an in-depth study of Dante's INFERNO in the context of poetry.

This course consists of an institutional part to study some of the problematic issues in the history of Italian cinema, and a monographic part dedicated to contemporary Italian cinema and public funding. At the end of the course students are familiar with the history of national cinematography; are able to relate cinema to the history of Italian culture; and can contextualize Italian film production in relation to other forms of expression and in the wider context of the cultural industry.