Italian Studies
About the Program
In addition to core courses in the language, students choose from a wide selection of offerings in Art History, Africana Studies, Classics, History, Government, and Music. Learning Italian is key to research in the fields of medicine, art history, literature, and archaeology. More than a dozen of Italy’s most prestigious and academically rigorous universities offer English-language MD/MBBS programs where students prepare for residency, research, and clinical practice at an economical cost. Italy has the eighth largest economy in the world and is part of the G7 leading industrialized countries whose employers seek people who speak both Italian and English.
A Sampling of Courses
Introduction to Italian Literature and Culture
An introductory survey course that offers students continued development of Italian grammar and conversation through literature, film and other cultural products such as music, visual arts and print media. Emphasis on oral and written work. Taught in Italian.
Explore these select courses:
This course explores the nature of silence in literature and music as a way to understand how sound, or lack thereof, came to shape modern Europe. We will discuss the history of silence as a philosophical concept, as a response to crisis, alienation and negation, gendered muteness, as well as the aesthetics of dissonance. Literary and musical selections include Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, Gaspara Stampa, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Musil, Arnold Schoenberg, Theodor Adorno, Eugenio Montale, Anna Banti, Alda Merini, Luigi Nono, Ingeborg Bachmann, George Steiner. Taught in English.
"Amor condusse noi ad una morte" (“Love led us to one death”). As Dante portrayed in the Inferno, the experience love is inseparable from death. Our journey begins with Dante’s memory of Beatrice retold and reimagined in The New Life—a work inspired as much by love as by death. When Dante reunites with Beatrice in The Divine Comedy, his understanding of love also evolved. How did this shift prompt him to twist the stories of great lovers as a near-death encounter? We will explore an array of literary variations on the theme of love and death from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world. In addition to investigating the rich literary tradition, we will also turn to works in music and the visual arts.
Meet Our Faculty
20th and 21st Century Italian literature; queer studies; gender and sexuality in modern Italy; cultural studies and Italian cultural history; Italian critical theory and Italian thought; translation studies and translation history
19th- and 20th-century German and Italian literature, literature and music, literary criticism, literary translation
history of science; early modern world; Colonial Latin America; environmental history; intellectual history; digital humanities; history of gender and sexuality; animal studies; genetics and history
Greek and Roman comedy; Greek and Roman gender and sexuality; Greek archaeology
critical human geography; race, place, and belonging in Italy, Black Europe, and the U.S.; gender and intersectionality; African Diasporic politics and identity in Italy; Blackness and anti-blackness
Explore Hamilton Stories
Meet the New Faculty: Cecily Cai, Italian Studies
Cecily Cai joined the faculty in August as a tenure-track assistant professor of Italian studies. See why she chose teaching and why Hamilton.
Study in Perugia Leads to Difo’s Geosciences Senior Project
Having spent a semester studying in Perugia, Italy, Gloribel “Glori” Difo ’20 became so captivated with the city that she decided to take what she saw and learned to create an interdisciplinary senior project: A Walking Tour of Perugia, Italy: Exploring the Building Stones Used in the City’s Construction.
Drawn in by the open curriculum, Jacob Colangelo ’20 enrolled at Hamilton and then happily followed his parents’ advice, which was to discover new interests.
Contact
Department Name
Italian Studies Department
Clinton, NY 13323
