Italian Summer Research

9 Credits.

Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature and Culture: The Canon and Beyond.This summer course guides graduate students in Italian (with a focus on the modern and contemporary period) through the preparation of their comprehensive doctoral exams. Students will read critically the works of canonical poets and writers from the late nineteenth through the twenty first centuries—from Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi, and Alessandro Manzoni to Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Elena Ferrante and others. In addition to the reading of primary sources, students will also familiarize themselves with major contemporary critical and theoretical works by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and others. In preparation of the oral part of the exam, students will be instructed on how to develop a syllabus on an undergraduate course in Italian Studies.