Winter Quarter 2025
- 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 002: Elementary Italian
ITA 002 is designed for beginners who have completed ITA 001 or its equivalent. This course provides students the opportunity to develop and expand their speaking and listening comprehension, as well as their reading/writing proficiency in Italian. Throughout the semester you will practice through the study of a wide range of communication patterns and real-life situations. By the end of Italian 002, you will be able to use Italian to talk about the present and the past, and well as your daily routines. You will be able to read and understand short texts, conversations, audio/video clips, and to write short dialogues/stories. In addition to our language courses, the Department offers an array of events and co-curricular activities such as weekly conversation/practice hours, films, cultural events, C.I.A.O. club activities, and free peer tutoring.
For instructor information, see https://registrar-apps.ucdavis.edu/courses/search/index.cfm
ITA 022: Intermediate Italian
ITA 022 is for students who have completed ITA 021 or its equivalent (if in doubt, please take the placement exam). This second-year course will continue to provide students the review and refinement of the communication skills learned in your first four quarters of Italian. It will also introduce students to more advanced grammar. While the principal objective of the course is to further develop language abilities, students will gain further appreciation for Italian culture and be able to communicate both orally, and in writing, on a wide variety of topics. Students will improve their reading and comprehension skills through a series of short stories and other literary excerpts.
ITA 031: Beginning Italian for Spanish Speakers
Undergraduate Courses
ITA 120B: Italian Literature of the 20th Century: Poetry & Drama
Michael Subialka
20th-Century Theater: Breaking the Fourth Wall, from Futurism to Pirandello to Fo
Winter 2025, T Th 3:10-4:30, Wellman 203
Modern theater shocked audiences and revolutionized the stage, in large part by finding new ways to break down the barrier between the performance and the world of the spectator – by breaking the so-called “fourth wall.” This course will examine some of the most important figures in Italy from this period, examining how they contributed to this transformation. From the radical avant-garde provocations of the Futurists, who sought to instill a violent spirit of rebellion in their audience, to the works of Italy’s two Nobel Prize playwrights, Luigi Pirandello and Dario Fo, we will move across different moments of the twentieth century and consider the different goals and techniques of each. These plays will raise important questions that remain with us today – questions about the nature of identity, the possibility of really knowing one another and the world, and how to critique and respond to social and political reality through art. Looking at these works together, we will ask: how can theater challenge and transform our way of seeing and being in the world? What role might breaking the fourth wall play in this challenge?
ITA 131: Autobiography in Italy
T/R 1:40 – 3:00pm, Winter 2025
Prof. Grace Delmolino
What does it mean to write a literary account of one’s own life? This course explores self-narration in Italian literature, from Dante Alighieri’s love story with Beatrice in the Vita nuova to Igiaba Scego’s reckoning with Italian and Somalian identities in La mia casa è dove sono. We'll use our texts to think about autobiography as a personal practice and a literary genre, how autobiography relates to fiction and poetry, and the relationship between self and society.
