Download Graduate Courses Fall 2025
Italian Women Writers
Professor Andrea Baldi
Tuesdays 430-710pm
ABW 5050
16:560:647
This seminar offers graduate students in Italian a comprehensive exploration of key issues related to women’s writing within the Italian context. For a long time, these questions were neglected, repressed, or erased from literary and critical discourse, and many women writers remain excluded from the literary canon. Only in recent decades the significance and distinctiveness of these works have begun to gain recognition in both American and Italian intellectual circles, prompting rigorous and insightful critical inquiry. This growing body of scholarship has led to a reappraisal and deeper understanding of pivotal texts—works whose originality and complexity were long overlooked due to the imposition of reductive interpretive criteria aimed at silencing or neutralizing these independent and often unsettling voices. The course will investigate the specificity of women’s writing, particularly as it engages with embodied experience and critical understanding of gender and identity. Given the frequent use of autobiographical forms in the texts under scrutiny, we will also analyze the cultural and social tensions they articulate and confront. Focusing on 19th- and 20th-century works, the seminar traces the evolution of women’s writing over time, addressing diverse literary models and the increasing awareness of women’s roles as writers.
Strategies to Teach a Second Language Effectively
Professor Carmela Scala
Wednesdays 400-640pm
ABW 5050
16:560:668
This course provides an analysis of the successful strategies used to effectively teach a second language, both in the traditional face-to-face class and online (synchronous/asynchronous and remote). We will begin by exploring the different theories and approaches to second language acquisition and then move to the ‘practical application’ of those theories. Students will develop the ability to critically assess current methods, materials, and techniques for teaching a second language, including the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in language teaching and learning. All strategies and methodologies are applicable to every language, so students from various language departments are welcome.
Dante and the Revolution of Poverty
Professor Alessandro Vettori
Thursdays 430-710pm
ABW 5050
16:560:605
Why do we still read Dante? Is a poet like him still relevant for us 21st-century scholars? Is Dante still relevant for our students? Does a poem like the Comedy, which is all structured on punishment and reward in the afterlife, still make any sense for us? Is a system of thought heavily constructed on Christian doctrine still appealing to us living in a post-Christian world or even in a post-religious society? These are some of the questions and issues we will be dealing with in this course. A switch in perspective will reveal a fresh interpretation of the poeta sacro as a political activist who fights corruption, a rebellious author who chooses the vernacular (the language of the masses) over Latin (the language of intellectuals), a social dissident who condemns capitalism and the greedy culture of money and proposes poverty as a solution to social tensions.