Students can select Italian as one of five languages offered by the Romance Languages and Literatures department. Classes within the Italian program fall under two categories: (1) Language or (2) Literature and Culture. Completion of an Italian B.A. affords students a blend of courses that help them develop their language skills in written and oral contexts and apply their Italian by interacting with Italophone literature and culture.
Sample Language course:
- ITAL 20100-20200-20300. Language, History, and Culture I-II-III.
In this intermediate-level sequence, students review and extend their knowledge of all basic patterns (e.g., grammar, vocabulary, sociocultural norms); develop their oral and written skills in describing, narrating, and presenting arguments; and are exposed to literary and nonliterary texts and audio-visual materials that provide them with a deeper understanding of the Italian-speaking world.
Sample Literature and Culture course:
- ITAL 26918. Writing Under Fascism: Indifference, Surrealism, Satire, Allegory. 100 Units.
Unlike other totalitarian regimes, the policy of the Italian fascist regime concerning writers, artists and intellectuals was not only a matter of violence and constriction, but also and above all a search for consent, a form of seduction and corruption: there is no dictatorship without hegemony, as Gramsci said. The aim of the course is to show the thematic items and the stylistic devices employed by Italian writers under Fascism in order to produce a deterritorialization (to use Gilles Deleuze’s expression) of totalitarian discourse about subjectivity, gender, agency and national culture.
Students may also minor in Italian Languages and Literatures.
Through a program at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, UChicago students have the opportunity to study abroad at the leading university in Business and Economics in Italy. Students can expect instruction from distinguished Italian and international faculty across a wide range of subjects. Bocconi runs on a two-semester calendar; students can choose between studying at Bocconi for the autumn semester or the entire academic year.