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Courses for Spring 2025

	Title	Instructors	Location	Time	Description	Cross listings	Fulfills	Registration notes	Syllabus	Syllabus URL
FIGS 5000-301	M.A. Exam Preparation	Eva Del Soldato	WILL 217	M 5:15 PM-7:14 PM	This course will provide a forum for collective preparation for the Master's exam across the three section in FIGS. Faculty will guide students in their work with their M.A. reading list(s)
FIGS 5550-401	Queer European Cinema	Ian Fleishman Filippo Trentin	BENN 139	M 1:45 PM-3:44 PM	This graduate seminar will explore the intertwined histories of queer European cinemas, focusing on French, German, and Italian films. From the inherent queerness of early cinema's attractions (e.g., Meliès, the Lumière brothers, the Skladanowsky brothers) to the gender-bending comedies of the Weimar Republic; from the queer auteurism of new wave cinema (Visconti, Fassbinder, Pasolini, Démy) to the fluid, boundary-pushing sensibilities of more recent works by filmmakers like Akerman, Ozon, Guadagnino and Rohrwacher, this course will examine how representations of gender and sexuality emerge and evolve across different national contexts. In doing so, we will also take a transnational perspective, tracing connections and influences those cross borders and complicate traditional cinematic narratives. The seminar provides an introduction to both film history and queer studies, open to graduate students and qualified undergraduates by permission of the instructors. No prior knowledge of film or queer theory is required.	CIMS5555401, GSWS5555401
ITAL 0097-401	First-Year Seminar: Italian Foods and Cultures			CANCELED	Topics vary. See the Department's website at https://www.sas.upenn.edu/italians/courses for a description of current offerings.	CIMS0097401, GSWS0097401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
ITAL 0100-301	Elementary Italian I	Alessandra Fumagalli	WILL 301	MTWR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM	A first-semester elementary language course for students who have never studied Italian or who have had very little exposure to the language. Students who have previously studied Italian are required to take the placement test. Class work emphasizes the development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0200-301	Elementary Italian II	Marcus Jerome Papandrea	WILL 319	MTWR 10:15 AM-11:14 AM	This course is the continuation of the elementary-level sequence designed to develop functional competence in the four skills. Class work emphasizes the further development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0200-302	Elementary Italian II			CANCELED	This course is the continuation of the elementary-level sequence designed to develop functional competence in the four skills. Class work emphasizes the further development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0200-303	Elementary Italian II	Julia Heim	DRLB 2C6	MTWR 12:00 PM-12:59 PM	This course is the continuation of the elementary-level sequence designed to develop functional competence in the four skills. Class work emphasizes the further development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0200-304	Elementary Italian II	Julia Heim	36MK 111	MTWR 1:45 PM-2:44 PM	This course is the continuation of the elementary-level sequence designed to develop functional competence in the four skills. Class work emphasizes the further development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0200-305	Elementary Italian II	Lorella Prichett	36MK 111	MTWR 3:30 PM-4:29 PM	This course is the continuation of the elementary-level sequence designed to develop functional competence in the four skills. Class work emphasizes the further development of spontaneous discourse skills and interactional competence. Out-of-class homework required.
ITAL 0300-301	Intermediate Italian I	Lourdes Contreras	WILL 843	MWF 12:00 PM-12:59 PM	Italian 0300 is the first half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of proficiency that will allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. The course will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. You are expected to have already learned the most basic grammatical structures in elementary Italian and to review these. The course materials will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics and to develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of similarities and differences between your native culture and the Italian world.
ITAL 0340-301	Accelerated Intermediate Italian	Arianna Fognani	36MK 112	MTWR 1:45 PM-2:44 PM	This course is the intensive and accelerated course that combines in one semester the intermediate sequence (0300 and 0400). It will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. The course will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics and to develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of similarities and differences between your native culture and the Italian world.
ITAL 0400-301	Intermediate Italian II	Arianna Fognani	WILL 24	MWR 3:30 PM-4:29 PM	This course is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of proficiency that will allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. The course will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. The course will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics and to develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of analogies and differences between your native culture and the Italian world. The course will move beyond stereotypical presentations of Italy and its people to concentrate on specific social issues together with cultural topics.
ITAL 0400-302	Intermediate Italian II	Juliette C Bellacosa	WILL 27	MWF 12:00 PM-12:59 PM	This course is the second half of a two-semester intermediate sequence designed to help you attain a level of proficiency that will allow you to function comfortably in an Italian-speaking environment. The course will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. The course will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics and to develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of analogies and differences between your native culture and the Italian world. The course will move beyond stereotypical presentations of Italy and its people to concentrate on specific social issues together with cultural topics.
ITAL 0800-301	Italian Conversation	Juliette C Bellacosa	WILL 302	R 5:15 PM-7:14 PM	The course materials and nature of assignments and projects complement the Italian Studies curriculum by supporting the cultural content, linguistic functions, and types of assignments students may have already been exposed to in other Italian courses. This course will serve not only as a gateway to inspire students to take Italian Studies courses in the future, but will also accompany classes they may be taking simultaneously. The learning objectives of the works studied in this course will mirror and support the goals of the Italian Studies Curriculum while paying particular attention to oral expression, communication, and fostering a community of students of Italian both inside and outside the classroom.
ITAL 1200-301	Advanced Italian II	Rossella Di Rosa	MEYH B2	TR 12:00 PM-1:29 PM	In this course, students will strengthen their communication skills, while continuing to explore significant aspects of contemporary Italian culture and history. Students will take further steps towards being able to understand in depth and to contextualize authentic Italian documents. Films, songs, and a variety of readings, will be used as windows on particular historical periods, cultural movements, political issues, and social customs. They will serve as a tool to investigate the many facets of Italian identity and, at the same time, as a way to prepare those students who will continue their study of Italian literature and culture in higher-level courses. Students are expected to participate in conversations and all other class activities in order to improve their oral and written ability to narrate, express opinion, hypothesize, and discuss a variety of topics, using rich, appropriate vocabulary and grammar, and organizing well-structured discourses, be they oral presentations, weekly compositions or the final essay. To reach these goals, speaking, listening, reading and writing activities -- role plays, discussions, oral presentations, journals, grammar reviews -- will be based on audio-visual material and written texts and/or proposed by the students themselves, based on their independent explorations and research.		Cross Cultural Analysis
ITAL 1900-401	Italian History on Screen: How Movies Tell the Story of Italy	Mario Alexis Javier Hernando Cubas Filippo Trentin	MCNB 410	MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM	How has our image of Italy arrived to us? Where does the story begin and who has recounted, rewritten, and rearranged it over the centuries? In this course, we will study Italy's rich and complex past and present. We will carefully read literary and historical texts and thoughtfully watch films in order to attain an understanding of Italy that is as varied and multifacted as the country itself. Group work, discussions and readings will allow us to examine the problems and trends in the political, cultural and social history from ancient Rome to today. We will focus on: the Roman Empire, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Unification, Turn of the Century, Fascist era, World War II, post-war and contemporary Italy. Lectures and readings are in English.	CIMS1900401	Arts & Letters Sector Cross Cultural Analysis
ITAL 2320-401	Medium Matters: How to Make Books, Cuneiform to Kindle	Francesco Marco Aresu	VANP 623	MW 1:45 PM-3:14 PM	This course is a hands-on historical and theoretical investigation into diverse media of textual and literary expression from clay tablets to digital texts. Through the direct examination of rare books and various textual oddities from ������Ƶ’s Special Collections and Archives and the ������Ƶ Museum, we will inquire into the history of the book and the history of writing. We will focus on different textual technologies and modes of composition, circulation, transmission, and reception of texts (from antiquity to the present day). By engaging in such topics as the transition from manuscript to print, from scroll to codex, and from book to Kindle, we will consider the history of literacy and literature in relation to other forms of expression (oral, visual, networked) and analyze different practices of organizing textual materials (from punctuation to annotation). We will examine paratextual elements (titles, forewords, afterwords) and various forms of verbal and visual accretion (from commentaries to illustrations). We will survey shifting notions of authorship, intellectual property, creativity, and originality and explore different systems of storage (libraries, archives, museums). By questioning the multi-faceted, non-deterministic interplay between textual artifacts and the media by which they are formalized and materially formed, we will conduct a critical reflection on the nature of textuality, writing, literature, and media. Readings will set essays in the history of the book and media studies alongside key case studies from various periods and geographical areas. And we will engage with textual materiality through the creation of book-objects of our own.	COML2320401, ENGL0761401
ITAL 3080-401	Soccer Beyond the Field: Sport and Politics in Italian Culture	Massimiliano Lorenzon	WILL 205	TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM	In recognition of the 2026 FIFA World Cup—hosted also in Philadelphia among other cities—we will explore soccer’s centrality in Italian Culture. Italy is a country where cultural traditions run deep, and among its most compelling cultural phenomena is the nation’s fervent attachment to soccer, or “calcio” as it is known in Italian. As historian John Foot claims, “You can’t understand Italy without understanding football, and you can’t understand football without understanding Italy.” Indeed, beyond its role as a popular sport, calcio is a cultural phenomenon reflecting and influencing political discourses, national identities, social values, and local communities. This course seeks to explore the significance of soccer in and outside Italy, considering it not just as a pastime, but as a powerful cultural lens through which we can gain a deeper understanding of Italian society. We will analyze how calcio functions as a social institution that transcends regional differences, class divisions, and generational gaps, uniting diverse groups in shared experiences. At the same time, the course will investigate how soccer can also amplify differences, exclusion, and racist behaviors. Moreover, we will explore how soccer relates to design, architecture, music, and soccer icons (Maradona, Totti, Messi, Zidane, etc.). By examining the cultural, historical, and social dimensions of Italian soccer, this course will provide a rich framework for exploring how soccer intersects with broader cultural narratives and social dynamics in Italy and discussing crucial issues in Italian culture, such as multiculturalism, immigration, and anti-racist movements. Students will be exposed to a diverse array of films and visual, literary, theoretical, and historical materials, including Gramsci, Barthes, Nussbaum, Bourdieu, Pasolini, Saba, Soriano, Vázquez, Salvatores, and Sorrentino, among others. At the end of the course, students will gain a unique perspective on Italian culture and society, analyze the role of soccer in Italian culture and from a global perspective, understand how sports can be a lens for examining broader cultural issues, develop critical thinking skills to analyze complex social phenomena. Course taught in English.	COML3080401
ITAL 3250-301	Italian Ecologies and Environments: Stories and Images in the Age of the Anthropocene	Rossella Di Rosa	WILL 741	TR 3:30 PM-4:59 PM	The course investigates how Italian writers, artists, and directors have depicted, discussed, and challenged the relationship between humankind and the environment in modern and contemporary Italy. Using an environmental humanities framework and drawing upon a few theoretical texts in contemporary ecocriticism as well as material and posthuman philosophies, this course examines a selection of texts and media, including novels, poetry, essays, films, and visual art to investigate how Italian culture has responded to key environmental issues—such as industrialization, urban expansion, climate change, ecological disasters, and environmental justice—which have shaped Italy’s histories and landscapes. The central questions that this course will ask are: in which forms and modalities do Italian authors define nature, human beings, and their relationships with the earth and nonhuman animals? What are the most pressing ecological challenges that Italy is facing? Are these works, and literature in general, able to help us to interpret the world, raise awareness, and more importantly, encourage us to adopt strategies that help us to be environmentally and ethically responsible for our planet? At the end of the course, students will develop a deeper understanding of literary ecology and will be more conversant in the most recent discussions about ecocriticism; analyze different genres and formats; gain awareness of their role within the broader global discussion and explore the latest literary works addressing the climate crisis; understand the key issues surrounding the Anthropocene and will be capable of analyzing artistic works from this specific perspective.
ITAL 3330-401	Dante's Divine Comedy	Francesco Marco Aresu	MEYH B7	MW 12:00 PM-1:29 PM	In this course we will read the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, focusing on a series of interrelated problems raised by the poem: authority, fiction, history, politics and language. Particular attention will be given to how the Commedia presents itself as Dante's autobiography, and to how the autobiographical narrative serves as a unifying thread for this supremely rich literary text. Supplementary readings will include Virgil's Aeneid and selections from Ovid's Metamorphoses. All readings and written work will be in English. Italian or Italian Studies credit will require reading Italian texts in their original language and writing about their themes in Italian. This course may be taken for graduate credit, but additional work and meetings with the instructor will be required.	COML3330401, ENGL0509401	Cross Cultural Analysis
ITAL 4000-011	Honors Thesis	Eva Del Soldato	NRN 00		Honors thesis in Italian Studies. This course is open to undergraduate
ITAL 4301-401	Seminar in Music History	Mauro P. Calcagno	LERN CONF	F 1:45 PM-4:44 PM	This is an advanced seminar, primarily for juniors and seniors who are prepared to engage deeply and critically with a specialized research topic. The topic of the seminar focuses on a particular genre or body of repertoire, music-maker or composer, or the cultural and social dynamics of a period in music and Italian or American history. Among the topics that we will explore are: opera and its literary and figurative sources 1600-1900; opera performance 1600-today; music and rhetoric ca. 1500-1800; text, music, and image ca. 1500-1750.	MUSC4301401
ITAL 5384-401	Plato and Aristotle in the Early Modern Period	Eva Del Soldato	VANP 625	W 3:30 PM-5:59 PM	In one of the most evocative frescoes of the Renaissance, Raphael juxtaposes Plato and Aristotle. The pairing would seem obvious, since the two thinkers had been for centuries symbols of philosophy and wisdom. But only the recent revival of Plato, begun in the mid-fifteenth century, had allowed the Latin world to gain a better understanding of Platonic philosophy and, therefore, to compare Plato's doctrines directly to those of Aristotle. Were master and disciple in harmony? And if not, which of the two should be favored? Such questions were less innocent than one might think, and the answers to them had implications for philosophy, theology, speculation on the natural world, and even politics. The course will offer an overview of Renaissance philosophy and culture by focusing on the different ways in which Plato and Aristotle were read, interpreted, and exploited between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The course will be conducted in English; a basic knowledge of Latin is desirable but not required.	COML5384401
ITAL 9999-021	Independent Study	Rossella Di Rosa	NRN 00		Independent research under the supervision of a department faculty member. Research topic is determined in consultation with the supervising faculty member.