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Italian 001. Elementary Italian (5 units)
Course Description: Italian 001 is the first course of Elementary Italian. Students in this course will learn the basics of Italian language in a setting that stresses communicative and interactive class activities while also focusing on pertinent grammatical structures. The syllabus for Italian 001 covers the Preliminary chapter and chapters 1-4 of the textbook and the related chapters in the online Student Activities Manual (eSAM). Emphasis is placed on pronunciation, the basic structures of the language including: definite and indefinite articles, nouns and adjectives, plural formation, indicative present tense, numbers, days of the week, months, seasons, how to tell time, weather-related expressions, prepositions, and some idiomatic expressions. Students will begin to investigate Italian culture through an exploration of the various regions and cities of Italy, as well as its numerous piazze and landmarks and the daily activities of contemporary Italians. Through reading and interactive activities, students will develop basic comprehension, speaking and writing skills. Daily attendance is indispensable for this course.
Course Placement: Students who have successfully completed, with a C- or better, Italian 002 or 003 in the 10th or higher grade in high school may receive unit credit for this course on a P/NP grading basis only. Although a passing grade will be charged to the student's P/NP option, no petition is required. All other students will receive a letter grade unless a P/NP petition is filed. For more information, please directly contact instructor Jay Grossi (jgrossi@ucdavis.edu) or the Italian staff adviser, Amy Lowrey (allowrey@ucdavis.edu).
Prerequisite: None.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and World Cultures.
Format: Lecture/Discussion - 5 hours; Laboratory - 1 hour.
Textbook:
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Donatella Melucci and Elissa Tognozzi, Piazza (with iLrn Access) (Cengage Learning, 2015)
Italian 004. Intermediate Italian (5 units)
Course Description: This is the first course of Intermediate Italian. This course reviews, practices and expands upon 1st year grammar skills in a communicative and task-oriented classroom. Linguistic structures are employed to examine contemporary Italian culture and to make connections between cultures through a variety of in-class activities (oral presentations, discussions and collaborative exercises) and homework assignments (web search activities, weekly blogs and online exercises). Students will also strengthen their critical thinking skills and their understanding of written Italian through the analysis of various texts (journalistic articles, essays and excerpts from literary texts) and with regular writing assignments that reflect on important cultural themes. Italian 004 covers chapters 1-4 of the textbook and the corresponding chapters in the online Student Activities Manual (eSAM). ITA 004 reviews the following grammatical concepts: comparatives and superlatives, the gerund, the present perfect, pluperfect and imperfect tenses, the imperative mood, and object pronouns.
Prerequisite: Italian 003.
GE credit (New): World Cultures.
Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Laboratory - 3 hours.
Textbook:
- TBA
Italian 104. Italian Translation and Style (4 units)
Michael Subialka
CRN 62851
Course Description: Practice in translation from Italian to English and English to Italian, using literary and nonliterary texts of different styles. Analysis of linguistic problems and elements of style contained in the translation material.
Prerequisite: Italian 009; consent of instructor (msubialka@ucdavis.edu).
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities and World Cultures.
Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Term Paper.
Textbooks:
- TBA
Italian 145. "Love, Italian Style" (4 units)
Michael Subialka
CRN 47884
Course Description: What is love? How do we experience it? How do we talk about it and represent it? And what can the answers to these questions tell us about who we are and the culture we create and inhabit? This course examines different ways of thinking about what love is and how the experience of love was represented and understood through Italian literature and culture. Spanning from the seminal poetry of writers like Dante and Petrarch to the explosion of love – both sacred and profane – in the Italian Renaissance, we will look at how different genres (poetry and prose, literature and philosophy) and different media (including the visual arts and film) approach love in the Italian tradition. We will conclude by putting these early-modern visions of love in dialogue with recent Italian writing and films that explore how love shapes, destroys, and rebuilds our world. Taught in Italian.
Prerequisite: Italian 009 or consent of instructor (msubialka@ucdavis.edu).
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, Visual Literacy, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.
Format: Lecture/Discussion - 4 hours.
Textbooks:
- TBA
UC Davis STUDY ABROAD Courses
Italian 121S. New Italian Cinema (4 units) [cross-listed with FMS 121S]
Margherita Heyer-Caput
Course Description: This course explores the thriving Italian cinema of the twenty-first century in relationship with the deep cultural and social changes that Italy has undergone in the last two decades. This class will be particularly interesting for QA students. Immersed in the vibrant urban life of Florence, QA participants will analyze filmic representations of the Italian reality that they will experience in their daily life.
In the course of the quarter we investigate how contemporary Italian filmmakers, from Marco Tullio Giordana to Alice Rohrwacher and Ferzan Ozpetek, have overcome a paralyzing sense of “afterness” and infused Italian cinema with a new vitality. These directors-writers-producers-lead actors have successfully integrated in their works the inspiring but also challenging legacy of the great auteurs of Italian Neorealism of the ‘40s and ‘50s (Rossellini, De Sica, etc.) and of the art cinema of the ‘60s and ‘70s (Antonioni, Fellini, etc.). Moreover, contemporary Italian filmmakers have creatively overcome the disillusions suffered by the political cinema of the ‘80s and ‘90s (Rosi, Petri, the Taviani Brothers, etc.). The movies analyzed revisit classic genres of Italian cinema, from the Comedy Italian Style to historical productions, and reinvent film as a powerful art form with a social reference and a moral accountability.
Prerequisite: FMS 001 or consent of instructor (mheyercaput@ucdavis.edu).
Format: Lecture/Discussion - 3 hours; Film Viewing - 3 hours.
GE credit (New): Arts & Humanities, Oral Literacy, Visual Literacy, World Cultures, and Writing Experience.
Textbooks:
- Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film [8th Edition] (Longman, 2011)
- Ed. Margherita Heyer-Caput, New Italian Cinema, A Reader - (Available for purchase prior to departure at the Davis Copy-Maxx, 232 Third Street)