1 - 10 of 11 results for: ITALIAN

The literature, art, and history of the Renaissance and beyond. Readings from the 15th through 18th centuries include Moderata Fonte, Machiavelli, Ariosto, Tasso, Galileo, and Goldoni. Taught in Italian. Prerequisites: ITALLANG 22A or equivalent (2 years of Italian)

The mafia has become a global problem through its infiltration of international business, and its model of organized crime has spread all over the world from its origins in Sicily. At the same time, film and fiction remain fascinated by a romantic, heroic vision of the mafia. Compares both Italian and American fantasies of the Mafia to its history and impact on Italian and global culture. Taught in English.

This course takes students on a trip to eight capital cities, at different moments in time: Renaissance Florence, Golden Age Madrid, Colonial Mexico City, Enlightenment and Romantic Paris, Existential and Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Roaring Berlin, Modernist Vienna, and bustling Buenos Aires. While exploring each place in a particular historical moment, we will also consider the relations between culture, power, and social life. How does the cultural life of a country intersect with the political activity of a capital? How do large cities shape our everyday experience, our aesthetic preferences, and our sense of history? Why do some cities become cultural capitals? Primary materials for this course will consist of literary, visual, sociological, and historical documents (in translation); authors we will read include Boccaccio, Lope de Vega, Sor Juana, Montesquieu, Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Irmgard Keun, Freud, and Borges. Note: To be eligible for WAYS credit, you must take the course for a minimum of 3 Units and a Letter Grade.

Intensive reading of Dante's "Inferno" (the first canticle of his three canticle poem The Divine Comedy). Main objective: to learn how to read the Inferno in detail and in depth, which entails both close textual analysis as well as a systematic reconstruction of the Christian doctrines that subtend the poem. The other main objective is to understand how Dante's civic and political identity as a Florentine, and especially his exile from Florence, determined his literary career and turned him into the author of the poem. Special emphasis on Dante's moral world view and his representation of character. Taught in English. nNOTE: Enrollment requires Professor Harrison's approval. Please contact him directly at harrison@stanford.edu

How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.

How do we imagine our bodies through language, at times almost completely refashioning a physical double, be it idealized or abject? How do such body doubles intersect with our sense of self, defining or redefining sexual identity, spiritual aspirations, illness and recovery, and the senses themselves, as our window into reality? This course focuses on short stories from the late 19th- and early 20th-century fantastic genre, and science fiction stories from the following turn of the century, 100 years later: in these revealing instances, body doubles often seem to acquire a will of their own, overwhelming normal physical identity.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit. Taught in English.