Spring Quarter 2024
- For day, time, room, and TA information, see our PDF Schedule or the class search tool https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm.
- For all courses not described here, please refer to the General Catalog course descriptions: https://catalog.ucdavis.edu/courses-subject-code/ita/
Language Courses
ITA 003: Elementary Italian
For instructor information, see https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm
In this third term elementary course, students continue to build on the foundations they learned in ITA 001 & 002 learning to communicate effectively and accurately in the language. They will learn how to express personal opinions and how to make comparisons. Students will also continue to expand their cultural knowledge about Italy and refine their intercultural competence to negotiate between your identities and backgrounds and Italy’s cultures. Some of the cultural topics include: the Italian health system, Immigration, and multiculturalism in contemporary Italy.
ITA 023: Intermediate Italian
This intermediate course continues to expand upon the linguistic and cultural foundations built in your prior study of Italian through grammar exercises, novel excerpts, essays, short and feature films, and film dubbing. In Italian 023, students continue to refine their writing skills while they also tackle questions like: how do you form hypothetical statements in Italian? Why is film dubbing so popular in Italy? What is a mestiere? We do so by simulating in class the real-life conversations and debates happening in Italy and among Italians right now.
ITA 032: Beginning Italian for Spanish Speakers
In this follow-up to ITA 031 we continue to bridge the gap between previous and/or inherited knowledge of Spanish and/or other Romance languages and the fundamentals of the Italian language in order to communicate effectively and accurately in Italian. We will discover together the geography, history, art, society, and cultural norms of Italy while studying the structure of Italian language and recognizing connections between Romance languages and cultures and Italy.
Undergraduate Courses
ITA 114: Boccaccio, Decameron, & the Renaissance Novella
Grace Delmolino
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH, OPEN TO ALL!
This spring, read the Decameron: a masterpiece of world literature, an inspiration to Chaucer, Petrarch, and Shakespeare, and an object of censorship for its realistic depiction of medieval sexuality. We will close-read Boccaccio's short stories in translation and analyze the Decameron's treatment of ethics, consent, gender roles, and religion in 1300s Italy. Knowledge of Italian is welcome but not required. Counts toward the Italian major
ITA 145: Topics in Italian Culture - Rome in Literature and Film
Michael Subialka
Few cities have had the power to capture our imagination the way Rome has. It is the Eternal City, a city of popes and kings – but also of modernity’s conflicted attempt to respond to a sense of collapse and disorder. This course will examine literature and films that focus on Rome as a chief protagonist, using these as a window into the modern experience of an ancient city. From the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth centuries we get a view of a city that is rapidly changing, caught halfway between a glorious ancient past and an uncertain modern future. This tension runs through all the texts we will consider, from works by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Luigi Pirandello all the way to a contemporary novel like Luigi Malerba’s story of betrayal, sickness, and bourgeois decline, Fantasmi romani (2006), as well contemporary writers including Igiaba Scego and Lakhous Amara who re-view the city in relation to its contentious history of race and migration. In these and other cases, we will look at a variety of representations that dig underneath the seemingly glamorous surface of the city. These readings will be paired with some of the most important films set in Rome, including by world-famous directors like Federico Fellini, Pierpaolo Pasolini, and Roberto Rossellini. Spectacular, enchanting, and haunted, Rome represents the extremes of both grandeur and decadence for the modern imagination.
