Teaching

Introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy

Dante’s Divine Comedy is one of the foundational texts of the Italian canon, and, indeed, of the Italian nation. It is impossible to overestimate the Comedy’s pervasiveness in Italian culture. The year 2015 marks the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth, and conferences, events, and exhibitions have sprung up all over Italy to commemorate the Poet’s legacy, demonstrating how current and relevant his work is to contemporary Italians. 

This class will provide students with an introduction to Dante, his times, and his cultural milieu through a critical reading of The Divine Comedy and other selected works (such as the Rime, Vita Nuova, Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, and the Epistle to Cangrande). We will investigate Dante’s relationship with authority, tradition, and faith, and explore his particular understanding of love as a path to knowledge and of literature as a way to salvation. Students will be challenged to find Dante’s lasting influence on contemporary culture in the works of modern authors, both in the Italian-speaking and English-speaking worlds. All lectures and class materials will be in English. One additional weekly hour of discussion in Italian will be open to Italian minors and all who are interested.

F is for Fake: Forgery, Fiction, and the Art of Lying

This course traces the evolution and explores the meaning of fakes, fiction, and hoaxes in Western art and literature. We will examine counterfeited documents, literary forgeries, plagiarism, art reproductions, and eccentric interpretations in order to call into question conventional ideas of authorship, readership, and text. The seminar will begin by defining core terms such as forgery, parody, hoax, and fiction. We will see how each of these terms is defined by a particular author/audience relation. We will then consider the relatively simple concept of document fabrications, followed by increasingly more sophisticated examples of “fake” texts belonging to the canon of modern and post-modern art. Subsequently, we will be looking at a series of “case studies” containing historical examples from each of the terms, supplemented with a selection of critical readings that will enhance students’ appreciation of the aesthetic and epistemological implications of the texts at issue.

Italian Food in Practice: A Hands-on Cultural History

This is a challenging course on one of the best-loved cuisines in the world. We will trace the historical evolution of Italian food culture in the geographical and cultural context of the Mediterranean from classical times to today. The focus will be on understanding the extraordinary significance of food for the definition of Italian national identity, by exploring its evolution through various historical, cross-cultural, and theoretical perspectives, drawing from history, anthropology, and sociology, as well as from the history of art and literature. 

Each class will be based on a set of readings that will be discussed and analyzed. Occasionally, brief lectures will provide historical and theoretical context. Lectures and class discussions will be supplemented by special food workshops in which we will explore the history, culture and taste of some Italian key products: bread, wine, olive oil, coffee, etc. 

Once a week, students will meet for a practical lab, during which we will familiarize ourselves with specific ingredients, we will practice basic cooking techniques, learn fundamental preparations, and prepare classic Italian recipes. 

This class is offered in Italian. 

A Practical Introduction to the Translation of Literary Texts

A hands-on introduction to the subtle and most rewarding craft of literary translation. This Humanities Lab is open to students interested in translating from Italian, Latin, Spanish, and French into English. Students will choose the vast majority of texts they will work on (and, naturally, the language from which they will translate, provided it is one of the four listed above). The course is open to all students, but foreign language majors and minors are particularly encouraged to enroll. 

Prof. Michael Heim, an outstanding translator and mentor to a whole generation of translators in the United States, used to say: “A translator is the closest reader a text will ever find.” This course will teach students to listen to a text that has been written in a different language (Latin, Spanish, Italian, or French) and to recreate in English the complex rhetorical strategies it deploys. 

We will begin with a few key theoretical essays that will help us focus on the salient differences that set literary texts apart from other kinds of texts. Then we will dedicate the majority of the semester to honing our translating skills. As a final project, students will produce a portfolio that will showcase the skills they will have developed, as well as reflect on the journey they took over the course of the semester. 

The ultimate goal is to develop a new appreciation for the endless marvels contained in these beautiful languages, and for the skills with which a variety of authors exploit such linguistic wealth for expressive and introspective purposes.

Modern Classics, Italian Style

Il corso offrirà una panoramica della cultura italiana del ventesimo secolo attraverso l’analisi di alcuni testi fondamentali presi dall’ambito della letteratura, del cinema, della storia dell’arte e della musica. Allo stesso tempo, gli studenti faranno pratica della lingua, rafforzando le loro abilità di produzione orale, lettura, scrittura e comprensione. Cominceremo dall’opera lirica, a cavallo fra l’ottocento e il novecento, per poi dedicarci al Futurismo, la prima delle avanguardie europee che dopo essere nata in Italia ha influenzato la cultura occidentale nelle più diverse sfere, dalla musica alla cucina, dalla letteratura al cinema. Quasi ogni settimana gli studenti affronteranno un testo nuovo, e impareranno a conoscerlo e apprezzarlo, collocandolo nel contesto della storia del secolo scorso e di quello attuale.

Human/Nature: Arts and Humanities Lab

How are the terms “human” and “nature” interrelated and how is their relationship changing?  We like to think of the interaction as a peaceful one, as one of balance and mutually beneficial coexistence, but the word “slash” can help us remember that more often than not violence is the mode of interaction. This Arts and Humanities laboratory and public lecture series features visiting scholars and Colby faculty from a variety of fields, including history, art, and philosophy, addressing fundamental aspects of human experiences, such as food, architecture, war, and planetary futures. Who is ultimately in charge? Students will discuss weekly topics on a course weblog.  Nongraded. One credit hour. 

Renaissance Heroes: Knights, Giants, and Thieves

This class will provide an introduction to Renaissance Italian epic poetry. 

Beginning with the Chanson de Roland, late medieval and Renaissance poetry has told the stories of mighty knights, their loves, their deeds, and their arms. This class will introduce students to this remarkable corpus of literature, tracing its evolution across different centuries and different languages, with a particular focus on its comic components. Reading assignments will include passages from Boiardo, Ariosto, Pulci, Folengo, Rabelais, and Cervantes.

Courtly romance is the first truly European artistic expression to emerge after the fall of the Roman Empire. Students will learn to follow the evolution of stories, plot devices, and characters across different cultures and languages, and will learn to appreciate how Western national literatures are strictly inter-connected. Finally, students will investigate the influence this literary genre on contemporary popular culture. 

Zine! A Practical Introduction to Contemporary Poetry

The origins of contemporary poetry can be found in a letter Arthur Rimabud sent to his former teacher, Georges Izambard; this letter is commonly referred to as the “letter of the seer.” Therein, Rimbaud alludes for the first time to the possibility of an “objective” poetry, focused outside of the poets’ individuality. Instead of poetry steeped in lyricism and the expression of an authorial subject, the new kind of poetry called for the exploration of other modes of compositions that exploit chance, the subconscious, and the ironic and subversive re-appropriation and juxtaposition of bits and pieces of popular culture. Over the past century, many have employed these new techniques: all the avant-gardes experimented with them, as well as some of the most influential voices in contemporary poetry. The relentless diffusion of digital media has made them only more present and more sophisticated. 

This newer brand of poetry was often the bearer of a radical and revolutionary political message; for this very reason, it was crucial for writers to reach their audience directly. The most immediate way of doing that was through low-budget self-publication: a whole universe of underground zines, independent magazines, and literary journals was thus born.

This class aims at achieving two goals: first, retracing the fascinating history of objective poetry, from its origins to today’s practitioners; second, to encourage students to try their hand at the techniques we will be studying, and collect their work in a zine (a minimalist paper journal), one of the most common medium through which objective poetry has been disseminated over the past 50 years.