ITAL

Italian

Italian Culture in Practice

ITAL
0119

The aim of this course is to provide students with the means to better understand Italy, its history and culture, while experiencing Italian everyday life first-hand, in one of its major cities and regions. The course is designed to improve, in particular, students, oral proficiency and sociolinguistic competence through immersion; it consists of various sections focused on different, but complementary social and linguistic skills pertaining to getting to know people and places, learning and discussing current Italian events, making cultural comparisons, and argue one's opinions. All the while, students will get acquainted with the city and its territory, their influential past as well as their vibrant present. Emphasis is on acquiring the authentic oral communication skills necessary to navigate expertly Italian-speaking environments, and acquiring cultural knowledge through daily, immersive and exclusive practice of the Italian language.

Italian for the Professions

ITAL
0100

Italian for the Professions is an elementary Italian 1 course for students whose schedules only allow for a 3-credit survival class as opposed to a more in-depth traditional 5-credit class. The primary goal of our course is to guide you in the development of speaking and literacy skills in Italian through the communicative acts of reading, writing, listening, and creating discourse around texts of all types. We will be developing a competency in comprehending and producing both spoken and written Italian, as well as sociocultural competency in communicating with people who speak it. By the end of your semester abroad, you should be able describe the world around you, your current and past experiences, and your everyday activities and habits. In addition, we will be studying basics of Italian geography, culture, and society.
 

Medieval and Renaissance Literature - Florence

ITAL
1085
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Literature General Education Requirement
 
The course will introduce students to the history of Italian Literature, focusing on great masterpieces (in English translation) from the 14th to the 16th century. A multidisciplinary approach, dealing with social, political, historical and philosophical implications will provide further understanding by placing literary works in a comprehensive cultural context. Special emphasis will be placed on the impact of Italian literature in European culture in pre-modern age, stressing the broad influence of Dante's Comedy, Boccaccio's Decameron and Ariosto's Orlando Enraged. Students will be provided with the basic operational tools to help them recognize different literary genres and understand why certain forms of artistic expression are peculiar to certain ages, at times to the exclusion of others. Literary issues such as the great divide between high and low literature, the question of language, the relation between classical, Christian and chivalric epics, the concept of originality in the Middle Ages, the circulation of books and the development of a reading public will be thoroughly investigated. Students will be able to follow the formation and the evolution of the mainstream literary tradition, and appreciate the innovative charge, both in form and content, of the works selected. They will also learn to practice a close reading of the texts, and will be encouraged to form their own critical opinion on the writings analyzed for their oral presentations. The first lessons will be devoted to a general overview of the 13th and the 14th centuries both from a historical and a more specifically literary perspective. Then the focus will shift onto the role of Dante in shaping the vernacular literature as a means to bridge the gap between academic and popular culture, to Boccaccio's ground-breaking work in restyling storytelling into an art of conversation and therefore a collective enterprise, and finally to Ariostol's humorous contemplation of human vanity and foolishness. Each lecture introducing a new author will be preceded by a brief outline of his life and literary output, and will then proceed with the description and analysis of his major work.

 

General Education Requirements: 
Literature

Contemporary Italian Cinema

ITAL
0086
The objective of this course is to give students the opportunity to comprehend contemporary Italian society through the screen images that Italian filmmakers have presented of the cultural, political and working environment they live in. Using a multidisciplinary approach for history, film theory, and social contextualization, this course will explore how contemporary Italian cinema has followed, mirrored, and sometimes even anticipated cultural and social transformations in Italian society. Up to twenty Italian films released between the late '90s to the present will be examined from the point of view of 20th and 21st Century Italian social, political, and cultural history in order to understand the various social and ethical concerns exemplified by the movies.

 

Modern Italy: Firenze Popolare

ITAL
0110

This course, taught in Italian, is designed for students who are beyond the ITAL 0103 level.

In this course, students will continue to build on socio-linguistic competencies through the lens of the People’s Florence. We will immerse ourselves in mass culture and non-elite knowledge by studying a variety of Florentine expression: stories, songs, flyers, menus, websites, social media pages and YouTube videos. Class will be held at times in the circoli and case del popolo, with visits to other spaces important to the Florentine community. Avanti popolo!

Depending upon enrollment, students in this course may be combined with students in ITAL 0103 with differentiated instruction. Generally, though, class sizes are very small. 

Italian

ITAL
XXXX

These courses can be fulfilled through Pitt-Recognized or Exchanges. 

General Education Requirements: 
Foreign Language

Reading (in) Italy

ITAL
1111

This course aims to guide students in the close reading, interpretation and discussion of literary and non-literary Italian texts that feature various aspects of the past and present life and cultural history of the place where they have come to study.

Finding (your way to) Italy

ITAL
0058

The aim of this fifth semester Italian course is to provide students with the means to better understand Italy, its history and culture, while experiencing Italian everyday life first-hand, in one of its major cities and regions.  The course is designed to improve, in particular, students’ oral proficiency and sociolinguistic competence through immersion. In the classroom, shared with other peer Italian-language learners, the immersion will be contextualized and simulated; however, the students will be asked to perform discreet tasks outside of the classroom, involving communication with native Italian speakers, and to discuss the outcomes during class meetings. The course consists of various sections focused on different, but complementary social and linguistic skills pertaining to getting to know people and places, learning and discussing current Italian events, making cultural comparisons, and argue one’s opinions on the topics at hand. All the while, students will get acquainted with the city and its territory, their influential past as well as their vibrant present. Emphasis is on acquiring the authentic oral communication skills necessary to navigate expertly Italian-speaking environments, and acquiring cultural knowledge through daily, immersive and exclusive practice of the Italian language.