Did you know that the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies offers courses in English which fulfill your literature requirement?
Term 1 courses:
FREN 349-101 (T TH 9:30-11:00 – Dr. Sima Godfrey)
The Walking Dead: Vampires, Phantoms and the Fantastic in 19th-Century French Literature
In the wake of the French Revolution, the 19th-century in France was a period of great tumult. Along with many changes came many hopes, many doubts, many desires, many fears. Nowhere are these uncertainties better expressed than in the fantastic literature where diffuse feelings take the form of seductive and terrifying apparitions whose existence challenges the boundaries of reason. In this course, we will look at phantoms, vampires, mummies and androids, all of whom have since become fixtures of popular culture.
ITST 414-101 (T TH 14:00-15:30 – Dr. Daniela Boccassini) – cross-listed w. ITAL 404, RMST 420C, and RGLA 471.
The World in the Eye of the Beloved: Love and Consciousness in the Mediterranean Middle Ages
The 11th to 13th centuries produced some of the most intense, sublime and passionate poetry to be found in the Western tradition, and beyond. Throughout the Mediterranean, love poetry became one of the privileged portals to access a holistic experience of life. In and through their yearning for the Beloved, poets addressed our inborn desire for meaning, fulfillment, perfect happiness. Who is the Beloved, then, what does s/he reveal to the lover, and where does the “learning of the heart”, which the experience of love so understood entails, lead to?
PORT 392-101 (MWF 16:00-17:00 – Dr. Alessandra Santos)
The Art of Adaptation in Brazil
“Film is a form of writing that borrows from other forms of writing,” Robert Stam observed. Brazilian cinema has produced many adaptations of literature. This course will offer a study of Brazilian literature in translation, and of films that have been adapted from those literary works. We will also study techniques of literary adaptation. We will learn about the history of Brazilian literature and cinema in relation to politics, global issues, and social issues, such as identity, class, gender, and race.
SPAN 312C-101 (MWF 15:00-16:00 – Dr. Alessandra Santos)
Intro to Latin American Literature
What is Latin America? Can we define or question an entire region through literature? This course will examine the region through an adventurous exploration of contemporary Latin American literature in English translation. Starting with the 1960s until the present, we will address social, historical, and political contexts. Themes to be explored include: identity, class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, violence, and conflict. We will read short stories and novels from a variety of countries.
Term 2 courses:
ITST 419-201 (MWF 11:00-12:00 – Dr. Gaoheng Zhang) – cross-listed w. ITAL 409
Virilities, Italian Style
This course offers an overview of diverse Italian masculinities as they are represented in modern and contemporary Italian literature and culture. What does it mean to be a man in Italy? How have diverse concepts of Italian manhood come into being? How have they been constructed and distributed in literary and other cultural texts? What do they tell us about Italian society? And how have they been challenged, or even subverted, within the Italian cultural domain?
ITST 421H-201 (MWF 14:00-15:00 – Dr. Gaoheng Zhang) – cross-listed w. ITAL 420H
Cultural Crossings Between Italy and China
Over the centuries, crossings between Italy and China have produced the most sustained, and arguably the most influential, strand of cultural texts on East-West borrowings. France and Britain also contributed significantly to European understandings and imagination of modern China. This course examines the evolution of Italian perspectives on China through significant literary, cinematic, and media texts of Italians’ real and fantastical travels in China and of Chinese immigration to Italy. French and British sources will also be studied mainly for comparative purposes.
