Program in Italian Studies

Spring 2012

* ITA 306 (LA)
The Italian Renaissance: Literature and Society
Fiorenza A. Weinapple 
To introduce students to the basic trends and problems of Renaissance literature as the main source of our civilization. The major literary figures of the Italian literary revival of the 16th century (such as Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Castiglione, Cellini, etc.) will be studied in relation to their time, the courts or the cities where they lived, and their seminal contributions to modern culture.
Sample reading list:
F. Guicciardini, Ricordi
B. Castiglione, Il Cortegiano
Machiavelli, Il Principe
B. Cellini, Vita
G. Vasari, Vite

Fall 2011

* ITA 220 (LA) 
Italian Civilization Through the Centuries
Simone Marchesi
Gaetana Marrone-Puglia
This course is designed to give an overview of pivotal moments in Italian culture, such as the relationship between Church and Empire in the Middle Ages, Machiavelli's political theory during the Renaissance, and the rise and fall of Fascism in the 20th century. Through the examination of the most relevant intellectual, historic, and artistic movements and their main geographical venues, students will be able to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the development of Italian history and civilization.

Sample reading list:
Dante, Comedia (selections)
Machiavelli, Il Principe
Leopardi, Canti
Verdi, La Traviata
Morante, La storia
Levi, La tregua


* ITA 300 (LA)
Techniques of Translation and Composition
Fiorenza A. Weinapple
We will concentrate on the theory and practice of translation, focusing on the stylistic differences present in various genres and periods. An intensive grammatical and syntactical analysis of every piece translated will be conducted through class discussion. Students will be required to write original compositions following the stylistic mode of the various pieces translated. Texts to be translated will include selections from English and American writers, from the 18th (J. Austen) to the 20th century (J. Heller), and poetry as well as prose.

Sample reading list:
J. Austen, Pride & Prejudice (selections)
H. Miller, Tropic of Cancer (selections)
E. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (selections)
J. Heller, Catch 22


* ITA 302 (LA)   na, npdf
Topics in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture - Boccaccio
Simone Marchesi
Boccaccio's "Decameron" is the preeminent masterwork of early Italian prose. A complex set of stories, linked by the author's convictions about literature and love, the "Decameron" offers both a panorama of fourteenth-century European society and a point of entry into some great traditions of European literature. This seminar will concentrate on a close reading of the "Decameron" in the original language.

Sample reading list:
Boccaccio, Decameron
Picone & Mesirca, Introduzione al Decameron (selections)
Forni & Bragantini, Lessico Critico Decameroniano (selections)

* ART 210 (LA)  
Italian Renaissance Painting and Sculpture
Staff
Lectures will examine the birth, rise and flowering of Italian Renaissance art in Tuscany, Rome and Venice from about 1250 to 1600 A.D., with emphasis on the 15th and 16th centuries. Artists and works of art will be presented, whenever possible and relevant, within their cultural, political, social, technological and/or economic circumstances. Among the major artists to be studied: Giotto, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian.

* ART 303 (LA)   No Pass/D/Fail
Death in Rome
Michael Koortbojian
The course will survey the Roman monuments for the commemoration of the dead, and the social and cultural practices that inform them. Emphasis will be given to a comprehensive view of all related evidence, so as to interpret those major works of Roman art--notably, tombs and carved marble sarcophagi--in their proper historical setting.

Sample reading list:
J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World
P. Zanker, Roman Art
B. Bergmann and C. Kondoleon, The Art of Ancient Spectacle
V.M. Hope and E. Marshall, Death and Disease in the Ancient City
A. Wallace-Hadrill, Commemorating the Dead

* ART 430 / HLS 430 / MED 430 (LA)   No Audit
Seminar. Medieval Art
Jelena Trkulja
Nino Zchomelidse
The "Two Romes" addresses the idea of Rome as the center of the civilized world. We begin with the historical significance of the Roman Empire before Constantine I, explore the transfer of Roman authority to his new capital, Constantinople, and compare their parallel lives until the 15th c. How did the Roman heritage affect architecture, urbanism, and art in the two cities? As we try to reconstruct the appearance of the two cities, we discuss concepts behind political and religious leadership as they intersect with the power of the arts and the self-referential character of the cities, both obsessed with their soteriological mission.

Sample reading list:
Krautheimer, Richard, Rome, Profile of a City (Princeton, 1980)
Krautheimer, Richard, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture
Belting, Hans, Likeness and Presence (Chicago, 1994)
Kessler, Hebert L. and Zacharias, Johanna, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim, (New Haven/London...


 * ART 513 / CLA 518   No Audit
Seminar in Roman Art
Michael Koortbojian
The Late Empire: Seminar will be devoted to the transformation of Roman art and architecture in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. Among the topics to be treated will be: the so-called "Stilwandel"; the change in portraiture from the Severan period onward; the possible relationship between the absence of major public monuments after the Severan period and the plethora of surviving small-scale works; the late Roman taste for mosaics (esp. Piazza Armerina); the increasing abstraction of late Roman style(s); Riegl's opposition of the "haptic" and "optic"; etc.

Other Requirements:
Open to Graduate Students Only.

Other information:
Topics for the readings will include: Nodelman on portraits; Riegl and his commentators on style; Rodenwaldt on late Roman relief; the recent debate on the Arcus Constantini and its date; the survival of mythological subject matter into the 4th century; etc, etc. 

* ART 541   No Pass/D/Fail
Seminar in Renaissance Art
Staff
This seminar will focus on aspects of Titian's art and career, within the contexts of Renaissance Venice and Europe, the political and religious events of the sixteenth century, the traditions of European painting, and the position of the artist in the longer history of art. Topics will include the development of oil painting, the organization of pictorial production (workshops and guilds), the social and political status of the artist, the development of a language of art criticism, the altarpiece and religious imagery, historical narrative, portraiture and patronage, mythological imagery, and the question of "old-age style".

Sample reading list:
Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists
Roskill, Mark, Dolce's "Aretino" & Venetian Art Theory
Ridolfi, Carlo, The Life and Times of Titian
Humfrey, Peter, Titian
Falmoir, Miguel, Tiziano
Rosand, David, Painting in Sixteenth-Century Venice

* CLA 219 / HIS 219 (HA) 
The Roman Empire, 31 B.C. to A.D. 337
Edward J. Champlin
To study the Roman Empire at its height; to trace the transformation of government from a republican oligarchy to despotism; to study the changes wrought by multiculturalism on the old unitary society; to trace the rise of Christianity from persecution to dominance; and to assess Rome's contributions to western civilization.

Sample reading list:
Potter, Ancient Rome
Lewis & Reinhold, Roman Civilization Sourcebook II: The Empire

* CLA 345 (HA)
Ancient Greco-Roman Medicine: From Hippocrates to Galen
Brooke A. Holmes
This course is for undergraduates from all backgrounds with an interest in ancient Greco-Roman medicine and the historical roots of contemporary biomedicine. We will examine how a medical tradition forms around the body as an object of knowledge and therapy, paying close attention to socio-historical context. We also explore issues that remain relevant to medicine, such as the construction of scientific authority, pain and knowledge, error and chance in medicine, narrative and disease, the "naturalization" of cultural categories, the privileging of anatomy, and body-mind interaction. Reading from primary and secondary sources in translation.

Sample reading list:
G.E.R. Lloyd, Hippocratic Writings
J. Jouanna, Hippocrates
H. King, Hippocrates' Woman
S. Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body
V. Nutton, Ancient Medicine
M. Frede and R. Walzer, Galen: Three Treatises on the Nature of Science

CLA 503  
Survey of Selected Latin Literature - Roman Literary History
Denis Feeney
An introduction to the major genres of Latin Literature, and to the main scholarly issues involved in their study. Also offers intensive practice in reading Latin.

Sample reading list:
Virgil, Aeneid
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
Lucan, De Bello Civili
Terence, Adelphoe
Cicero, Pro Caelio
Sallust, Catiline
 

Fall 2010

Spring 2010

ITA 302
Topics in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture - Petrarch's Lyric Poetry
Simone Marchesi
Tuesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.

Explores the way in which national identity was imagined and implemented within Italian history, culture, and cinema before, during, and after the period of Italian Unification in the 19th century. Examples are drawn from a wide range of historical, literary, artistic, and cultural media.

ART 542   No Pass/D/Fail
Art and Society in Renaissance Italy - Polarities in Medieval and Renaissance Venetian Architecture
Deborah Janet Howard
Wednesday, 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

The course will be framed around a series of polarities, through which we explore the ways in which apparent opposites were reconciled in the architectural setting of medieval and Renaissance Venice. These will include: Republic and Empire; Church and State; East and West; Gothic and Classical; Military and Civil; Sound and Space; Architect and Proto; Tradition and Reform; Town and Country; Nobles and Citizens; Utopia and Reality. The architecture will be studied as a context for human activity, with special attention to its response to the amphibious site and its ideological meanings.

CLA 536 / COM 530
Ovid - Metamorphoses
Andrew M. Feldherr
Wednesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.

Reading Ovid's Metamorphoses in its entirety and an introduction to recent critical approaches to the work. Designed to be accessible to graduate students in other humanities departments, provided they have some Latin.

MUS 515 / COM 512 / ITA 557   No Audit
Topics in the History of Opera - The Italian Epic in 18th-Century Opera: Love, War and Sorcery
Pietro Frassica
Wendy Heller
Thursday, 1:30 pm - 4:20 pm

Examines Ariosto's "Orlando furioso" and Tasso's "Gerusalemme liberata" and their use in opera of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Intended for graduate students in music, literature, and art history, seminar will combine close readings of operas by such composers as Lully, Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, and Haydn with a broader consideration of the reception of the Italian epics in eighteenth-century art and literature.