Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Bulletin of Yale University
 
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Italian Language and Literature

82–90 Wall Street, 432.0595
www.yale.edu/italian/
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Millicent Marcus

Director of Graduate Studies
Giuseppe Mazzotta (82–90 Wall, Rm 404, 432.0598, giuseppe.mazzotta@yale.edu)

Professors Millicent Marcus, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Silvano Nigro [F]

Assistant Professors Angela Capodivacca, David Lummus

Senior Lector II and Language Program Director Risa Sodi

Visiting faculty from other universities are regularly invited to teach courses in the department.

Fields of Study

The Italian department brings together several disciplines for the study of the Italian language and its literature. Although the primary emphasis is on a knowledge of the subject throughout the major historical periods, the department welcomes applicants who seek to integrate their interests in Italian with wider methodological concerns and discourses, such as history, rhetoric and critical theories, comparison with other literatures, the figurative arts, religious and philosophical studies, medieval, Renaissance, and modern studies, and the contemporary state of Italian writing. Interdepartmental work is therefore encouraged and students are accordingly given considerable freedom in planning their individual curriculum, once they have acquired a broad general knowledge of the field through course work and supplementary independent study.

Special Admissions Requirements

The department recognizes that good preparation in Italian literature is unusual at the college level and so suggests that applicants begin as soon as possible to acquire a broad general knowledge of the field through outside reading. At the end of the first and second years, students’ progress is analyzed in an evaluative colloquium. Applicants who have had little or no experience in Italy are generally urged to do some work abroad during the course of their graduate program. For all students of Italian, a reading knowledge of Latin is essential. This may be acquired during the course of the first year, but applicants are reminded that it is difficult to schedule beginning language courses in addition to a normal graduate program. Students are advised to acquire proficiency in the languages required for the doctoral program before matriculation.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree

Candidates must demonstrate a reading knowledge of a second Romance language, Latin, and a non-Romance language (German recommended). The Latin examination must be passed, usually before the beginning of the third term of study, and all language requirements must be fulfilled before the Ph.D. qualifying examination. Students are required to take two years of course work (as a rule sixteen courses), including two graduate-level term courses outside the Italian department. After consultation with the DGS, students who join the graduate program with an M.A. in hand may have up to four courses waived. The comprehensive qualifying examination must take place during the third year of residence. It is designed to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the language and acquaintance with the literature. The examination, which is both written and oral, will be devised in consultation with members of the department. In the term following the qualifying examination, the student will discuss, in a session with the departmental faculty, a prospectus describing the subject and aims of the dissertation. Students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. Admission to candidacy normally occurs by the end of the sixth term.

Teaching is considered to be an important component of the doctoral program in Italian. Students will be appointed as teaching fellows in the third and fourth years of study. Guidance in teaching is provided by the faculty of the department and specifically by the director of language instruction.

Combined Ph.D. Programs

ITALIAN AND FILM STUDIES

The Department of Italian also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Film Studies, a joint Ph.D. in Italian and Film Studies. For further details, see Film Studies. Applicants to the joint program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to Film Studies and to Italian. All documentation within the application should include this information.

ITALIAN AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES

The Department of Italian also offers, in conjunction with the Renaissance Studies Program, a combined Ph.D. in Italian and Renaissance Studies.

Master’s Degrees

Only candidates for the Ph.D. degree will be admitted to the program, but the department will, upon request, offer the M.A. and the M.Phil. degrees to students who have completed the general Graduate School requirements for those degrees (see Degree Requirements). Additionally, students in Italian are eligible to pursue a supplemental M.Phil. degree in Medieval Studies. For further details, see Medieval Studies.

Program materials are available upon request to the Director of Graduate Studies, Italian Language and Literature, Yale University, PO Box 208311, New Haven CT 06520-8311.

Courses

ITAL 590a/CPLT 916a/FILM 830a, Literature into Film Millicent Marcus
This course undertakes a series of twelve case studies of films adapted from literary works, identifying the challenges that specific texts present to filmmakers in their attempts to transform verbal fictions into mass media spectacles. W 3:30–5:20, screenings M 7–10 p.m.

ITAL 633a, Topics in the Divine Comedy Giuseppe Mazzotta
The course explores Dante’s representation of ethics (vices and virtues) in relation to politics and theology and questions of aesthetics (especially in the early lyrics, Vita nuova, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Monarchia). The discussion of the relevant texts and cantos is duly placed within a pertinent context of medieval debates on knowledge. T 3:30–5:20

ITAL 662a, Romanticism and the Baroque Silvano Nigro
This course, taught in Italian, focuses on I promessi sposi and Manzoni’s critical reading of the Baroque. It also explores the kinship between the Baroque and romanticism. M 3:30–5:20

ITAL 666b, Machiavelli and the Machiavellians Angela Capodivacca
This course involves close readings of Machiavelli’s most influential works (Selected Letters, L’asino d’oro, Selected Poems, Principe, Mandragola, Discorsi, Clizia) and considers their influence on modern thought in the works of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, De Sanctis, Benedetto Croce, Mussolini, Gramsci, Hanna Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Pocock. Th 2:30–4:20

ITAL 700b/CPLT 706b, The New Map of the World: Vico’s Poetic Philosophy Giuseppe Mazzotta
This course examines Vico’s thought globally and in the historical context of the late Renaissance and the Baroque. Starting with Vico’s Autobiography, working to his University Inaugural Orations, On the Study of Methods of Our Time, the seminar delves into his juridical-political texts and submits the second New Science (1744) to a detailed analysis. Some attention is given to Vico’s poetic production and the encomia he wrote. The overarching idea of the seminar is the definition of Vico’s new discourse for the modern age. To this end, discussion deals prominently with issues such as Baroque encyclopedic representations, the heroic imagination, the senses of “discovery,” the redefinition of “science,” the reversal of neo-Aristotelian and neo-Platonic poetics, the crisis of the Renaissance, and the role of the myth. T 3:30–5:20

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