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Department of French and Italian

New Courses in French and Italian This Fall

***FRENCH 410: Studies in Medieval Literature (Bill Paden) We shall study writings by women in medieval France from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both lyric (the Occitan trobairitz and the French troveresses) and narrative (Marie de France), to the fifteenth century, with Christine de Pisan, the first French woman who was a professional writer, and Joan of Arc, who wrote in action. Some of these women have been studied since the nineteenth century, but others are more recent discoveries (the troveresses, Christine de Pisan). We shall attempt to understand their situation in medieval society and gender ideology and as they have been seen in modern perspectives.

***ITAL 103: Italian For Musicians (Alessandra Visconti) Italian for Musicians is a course that has been designed to for language study with a special focus on Italian as it is used in the operatic repertoire.  Students will be reading and discussing in class aria and recitative texts with a focus on those linguistic features that pose particular problems to the non-native singer of Italian, such as consonant and phrasal doubling, word stress and vowel purity. The recordings used in class will highlight Italian singers known for their diction and expressive style.

***ITAL 375: Topics in Italian Culture: Introduction to Italian Cinema (Domietta Torlasco) This course will serve a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, it will introduce students to the aesthetic and political dynamism of post-war Italian cinema, beginning with heyday of Neorealism (Rossellini, De Sica, and Visconti) and continuing with the remarkable output of the 1960s and 1970s (Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, and Bertolucci). On the other hand, it will provide students with the critical and methodological tools to read and write about cinema as a complex mode of textual production, a mode that relies on specific technical choices (from composition and camera movements to editing) and engages its spectator in a complex and often unconscious process of understanding. Guiding ideas for the discussion will be provided by major film theories, selected works in cultural studies, and historical surveys.