ITAL 2950 - The Cinematic Eye of Italy

(CA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Spring. 3 credits.

Prerequisite: ITAL 2090 or permission of instructor.

T. Campbell.

This course, which is at the core of the major and minor in Italian, is designed to give students a basic grounding in some of the most important facets of Italian culture, including cinema, literature, art, and food. Students will trace the development of Italian national identity in literary and cinematic texts as well as across Italian photography and cuisine. Readings will include selections from the works of Primo Levi, Roberto Saviano, and Leonardo Sciascia. Students will also view films by directors such as Rossellini, de Sica, Antonioni, Bertolucci, and Sergio Leone, becoming familiar along the way with genres in Italian national cinema. By the end of the semester, students will have a working knowledge of the effects of geographic and national fragmentation on political life in post-Risorgimento Italy, understand the so-called Southern Question and the fraught relationship between the Italian South and wealthier Northern regions, and gain difference perspectives on political life today in Italy.