This seminar explores Romance languages, literatures and cultures through the prism of translation. By comparing translations from Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian between each other and into English, we will map out the boundaries, intersections and middle grounds of this language family. Students will engage with the different traditions of translation studies in these languages and critically analyze translators' paratexts.

What is a family? Starting with Ancient Rome, familial ties have always played a strong role in Italian society. This course examines the concept of family through the centuries and through cultural, literary and historical changes. We will explore this idea from the ancient Roman family, to the Fascist family, to the modern and post-modern family, together with representations of Italian families in art, television, cinema, and advertisement.

Offers practice of colloquial and idiomatic speech patterns in Italian to emphasize correct pronunciation and intonation. Includes oral presentations as well as frequent compositions, from short reports to full-length essays. Uses newspapers, magazines, and literary texts to discuss issues and lifestyles concerning Italian society.

This course is particularly designed to create a new path for students who are taking (or have taken) Italian 101 and wish to have the necessary preparation to take Intermediate Italian (Italian 201) the following fall semester. They will be provided with the skills necessary to: understand, speak, and write Italian at the advanced beginner level, learn about contemporary Italian society, and develop the competence, interest and enthusiasm for the language that will inspire them to proceed to more advanced levels.

This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants.

This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants.

This course emphasizes understanding, speaking, and writing in a contemporary context. It also promotes creativity with presentations and original group projects. It includes Web activities, films, short stories, and frequent conversation sessions with language assistants.

This seminar explores Romance languages, literatures and cultures through the prism of translation. By comparing translations from Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian between each other and into English, we will map out the boundaries, intersections and middle grounds of this language family. Students will engage with the different traditions of translation studies in these languages and critically analyze translators' paratexts.

In this course, we will examine the interaction of film and literary texts in the context of contemporary Latin American cultural production. We will analyze what happens when a variety of short stories, novels, or plays are made into a film and how the reception changes; what are the techniques to create a dialogue between film and literary texts in their own contexts; how we view and read these texts and how the difference in the register affects our perceptions of a character, an event or a location; how words are translated into images and how adaptations re-create the stories.

This course studies the films of Pedro Almodóvar, European cinema's favorite bad boy turned acclaimed auteur. On the one hand, students learn to situate films within the context of contemporary Spanish history (the transition to democracy, the advent of globalization, etc.) in order to consider the local contours of postmodern aesthetics. On the other hand, the films provide a springboard to reflect on larger theoretical and ethical debates related to gender, sexuality, consumer culture, authenticity, and authorship.