From medieval classics to contemporary films, our undergraduate courses offer a broad range of topics to deepen your understanding of the cultures of Italy, France, and French-speaking regions of the world, both in English and in French or Italian. We look at literature and cultural production in a broad context, considering comparisons with and influences on contemporary culture in the U.S. Exploring film, literature, history, linguistic study, and cultural phenomena in French or Italian presents an immersive experience that leads you to greater fluency and language comprehension.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused French society to question its fundamental values: liberty, equality, and fraternity at all levels of society and culture. Ultimately, this course will allow us to examine how, in the French context, beliefs, worldviews, and institutions in some cases resist change but also manage to adapt creatively to this moment in its national and global history.
This course will center on Francesco Petrarch’s groundbreaking 14th-century collection of lyric poetry, the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments of vernacular things). Engaging in a holistic reading of the collection, we’ll explore the world of conflict that Petrarch creates between secular love and spiritual impulses and how his obsessive structuring of his collection captures his metaphysical musings on time and mortality.
Dans ce cours nous lirons et analyserons plusieurs œuvres, appartenant à des genres et à des époques différentes, et comprenant, en plus des textes mentionnés, une traduction de quelques contes des Mille et Une Nuits, un choix de poèmes des Orientales de Victor Hugo, et le roman de L’Étranger de Camus. L’objectif principal du cours est d’étudier le thème de l’orientalisme dans la littérature afin d’examiner l’imaginaire qu’il nourrit ainsi que les préjugés qu’il véhicule.
This course offers students different lenses through which to analyze the phenomenon of migration to Italy and a set of tools for understanding representations of foreigners in Italy on screen.
This course examines various genres of Francophone literature, film, and other media with a focus on works from West Africa.
Explore the themes of trauma and resilience in Italian literature from medieval times to 1800.
We offer beginning and intermediate language courses online.
Permission is required before you can register for the accelerated French language classes, the X490 individual readings class, or in our online language classes.
Please complete the online French Course Authorization Form for permission to register for the following:
No permission is required for the summer.
For permission to enroll in online Italian language courses, please email Dr. Karolina Serafin. You do not need permission to register for the Italian M100 online course. No permission is needed for M110, M115, or M215 Accelerated Italian courses. No permission is required for the summer.
Please download and complete the Permission for Individual Readings Form for permission to register for the following:
Online permission is required before you can register in the accelerated French language classes, in the X490 individual readings class, or in our online language classes.
The College of Arts