ITAL 6570b / FREN 6700b / LING 5640b / SPAN 5000b, Principles of Language Teaching and Learning  Staff

Introduction to the basic principles of second-language acquisition theory, focusing on current perspectives from applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. Topics include language teaching methodology, communicative and task-based approaches, learner variables, intercultural competence, and models of assessment.
HTBA

ITAL 7554a / CPLT 7554, Antonio Gramsci: The Prison Notebooks and Us  Serena Bassi

Antonio Gramsci is one of the most globally influential thinkers of the twentieth century. From his life and intellectual work come a set of ideas that have arguably grown more salient with time. His writing—on subjects as diverse as Marx, the opera, the social function of the modern intellectual and the politics of soccer—draws from his involvement as a militant journalist in the factory councils movement in 1919–1920 (i.e. a worker-led grassroots organization that occupied factories in Turin in a bid to seize the means of production in a key European industrial city in the aftermath of WW1) and, later, from his imprisonment for political dissent in a Fascist jail from 1926 until his untimely death in 1937. His remarkable journalistic articles and prison notes address questions that resonate throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: How does Fascism (and its twenty-first century populist revival) emerge from the multiple crises of modern capitalist society? Under what specific circumstances does “capitalist progress” take distinctively socially conservative, reactionary forms? What is the role of the intellectual in the face of reactionary modernity, old and new? Why do blocks of working-class voters seem to vote against their own class interest, at particular historical junctures? How is hegemony forged and sustained through popular culture and the shaping of common sense, such that domination comes to appear natural, inevitable and even desirable? How does Gramsci’s “open Marxism” attend to the body and its pleasures as sites where power is inscribed and lived? How can we talk about the importance of aesthetics, leisure and embodied lifestyles without reproducing stale stories about “culture wars” and polarization? Finally, and most importantly, what possibilities does Gramsci’s thought open for radical epistemologies, aesthetics, and new forms of counter-hegemony? This course introduces graduate and undergraduate students to Gramsci’s thought by reading several examples of his preprison and prison writing on politics and culture; by examining his legacy and afterlives throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century; and by placing him in conversation with contemporary fields like women’s, gender and sexuality studies; Black studies; postcolonial studies; and disability studies. We privilege Gramsci’s subtle analysis of the profound entanglements between aesthetics, everyday life, and politics. In each seminar, we collectively unpack Gramscian keywords such as “domination,” “hegemony,” “contradictory consciousness,” “common sense,” “intellectual,” “popular culture,” and “the philosophy of praxis”. We also consider Gramsci’s direct or indirect influence on postwar and contemporary intellectuals including Pierpaolo Pasolini, Lorraine Hansberry, Stuart Hall, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Julietta Singh.
M 1:30pm-3:25pm

ITAL 8550a / ENGL 6525a / FREN 8150a, Medieval Lyric  Ardis Butterfield and Heather Webb

Medieval lyric is famously mobile, whether we consider the ways it was composed and performed, or the ways in which it was transcribed or recorded, or the paths it took around the Mediterranean. This course explores the trajectories of medieval lyrics from a variety of perspectives. We journey from Al-Andalus to Occitania, to Sicily, to Tuscany, to Umbria, to Paris, to Calais, and across the Channel to East Anglia and London. Authors include Arnaut Daniel, Thibaut de Navarre, Gace Brulé, Jean Renart, Adam de la Halle, Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Jacopone da Todi, Giacomo da Lentini, Machaut, Deschamps, and many anonymous and understudied, but inventive English songs and short poems. Focusing on a selection of lyrics each week (with translations provided where appropriate), we range widely through such topics as the idea of voice, the relation between lyric and narrative, poetry and music, and song and translation, guided by the central issues of place, encounter, and (often gendered) power dynamics. Key questions include: Is there a theory of lyric in the Middle Ages? What can contemporary thinking and writing about lyric teach us about verse surviving from 600–800 years ago? What can medieval lyric contribute to contemporary debates about lyric? Our materials include lyrics that were recorded not only on parchment and paper but also on walls and in stained glass, on tombs, in tapestries, and on domestic objects, clothing, drinking cups, and rings. Through manuscripts, objects, words, images, and music we aim to uncover a sense of the inventive freedom at work in the lyric forms of the past.
T 1:30pm-3:25pm

ITAL 9691a, Directed Reading  Heather Webb

Directed Reading with Professor
HTBA

ITAL 9999a, Preparing for Doctoral Exams and Prospectus Writing  Jane Tylus

The aim of this seminar is to give third-year students the opportunity to work together on the three projects that will occupy them throughout Year 3: the oral comprehensive exam (for early November), the written exam on the three topics lists (for March–April), and the writing of the prospectus, to be defended in September of Year 4. Weekly meetings are run and coordinated by a faculty member in Italian, generally the graduate adviser. Each week of the first nine weeks is devoted to a specific topic on the comprehensive lists requested by the students themselves. Students are in conversation with each other, with the presiding faculty member, and with an additional guest lecturer who is an expert in the areas under discussion. Following the ninth week, there is a dry run of the oral exam. The remaining four weeks are devoted to discussing the composition of the topics lists and to the writing of the prospectus. Informal meetings may continue through the spring to discuss these issues as well. Prerequisite: completion of all other graduate course work (15 credits).
T 4pm-5:55pm