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This course is ambitious in its aim and scope. It has two main objectives. One, to analyze and discuss Italian cinema and its history; two, to develop your skills in cinematic formal analysis and in film theory. We will start with the cinema in the Fascist years (1922-1945), we will then focus on the revolutionary and heavily politicized practice by the Neorealists (Zavattini, Rossellini, De Sica), in the aftermath of WWII (1945-1949). We will turn to the great Italian auteurs such as Federico Fellini; Michelangelo Antonioni, and Bernardo Bertolucci. Further, we will analyze the so called "comedy Italian style," the "spaghetti westerns" as well as the politically committed films of the 1980s and 90s. Finally, we will explore the "new Italian cinema," with its many and sometimes contradictory forms. Studying and enjoying Italian cinema will help us to uncover the socio-political, economic and cultural developments in Italian life during the 20th and 21st century (the family, otherness, gender roles, politics, etc.).

Refine language skills and develop insight into Italian culture using authentic materials. Group work and individual meetings with instructor. Minimum enrollment required. Prerequisite: ITALLANG 22A, 23 or placement.

In this class we explore Italy's long-standing, intimate, and often contradictory ties to the Middle East. The course is divided into three parts, the first of which begins with the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century and extends through the Second World War. Here, we examine the role played by North African countries and the Ottoman Empire in the creation of modern Italy, give an overview of Italy's (mostly failed) colonial ventures, and study the role of imperialism in the rise of Italian fascism in the 1920s. The second section of the course focuses on the region during the Cold War, and we devote particular attention to the economic and political alliances which grew between Italy and Middle Eastern countries. We will see how the former frequently sought to balance its own economic interests with the political aims of its allies in the Western Bloc. The last part of the course shifts the focus to the contemporary period by taking up issues of immigration, geopolitical conflicts in the Mediterranean, and minority communities in Italy today. During the course, we will be engaged in an ongoing discussion regarding the benefits and drawbacks of the notions of "Europe" and "the Middle East" in relation to Italy. How can we productively use these terms given their historical and political connotations, and what can Italy's relations with its Middle Eastern neighbors teach us about these simplistic geopolitical categories?

This course will examine Italian art history from the perspectives of an anatomy and physics. Students will learn how humans and animals produce movement through study of anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics. We will see how knowledge of anatomy and physics gained during the Renaissance changed the way the human form and human movement were depicted in art. This will make it clear why masters of the time were driven to discover how the body works so that they could bring vitality and reality to their art. A course project will allow students to pursue one element of the course in depth through a project.

Against the persistent myth of a triumphant Renaissance and the teleological interpretations of a supposedly optimistic period, this course focuses on the artistic production of fifteenth to sixteenth-century Florence as paradigmatic of the tensions, anxieties, and eccentric trends that emerged in Europe's visual culture during the Early Modern Age. If traditional conceptualizations of the Florentine Renaissance described it as the rebirth of naturalism, which set the canon of Western classicism, recent critical voices have revealed the tensions, ruptures, and erosions that were active underneath that surface, with profound consequences on artmaking and the world of images. Building on such debate, through direct experience and close observation of the context, these classes will propose a different narrative of mainstream Renaissance Florence. By looking with fresh eyes to painted, sculpted, and architectural works, they will reframe early modern Florentine art as a profoundly polyphonic one, which sheds light on many unsettling aspects of modernity: materialism, and the germs of historical pessimism; technology and capitalist modes of production; the fragility of nature; sensuality, tactility, and the private life of objects; the otherness of uncanny bodies; religious tensions as the expression of the individual's anxiety; the colonial appropriation of a newly expanded world. With an interest for the contaminated and the intermediate, by privileging continuities over oppositions, the course will thus offer a new understanding of the period in order to deconstruct any elitist interpretation and instead reveal its lively, diverse nature.

This class will provide students with knowledge on the complex and evolving nature of sustainability as implemented in two industries: fashion and tourism. In both industries the last decade has witnessed a growing awareness of the need for business models and approaches to production and consumption that are ethically, economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. Their motivation to "go green" stems from ethical, social, and legal questions and also represents an opportunity to increase competitiveness and profitability. The course will discuss contemporary perspectives on sustainability with a specific (but not exclusive) focus on Italian cases.