Fall 2024 Preview

While this course has a set of fixed themes, our lessons will often follow the headlines. You will develop a broad understanding of contemporary Italian media culture as well as current events and politics. For example, if this course takes place during election season, we might look at campaign ads. This past spring, if you were there for our Sanremo screening and saw the infamous "ballo del qua qua," my class looked at some of the cont roversies that unfolded in Italy in the aftermath of that incident. Reading brief newspaper articles will build your reading and writing skills and they are a great way to review those Italian grammar concepts in context.

After the first few weeks, we will dive into more advanced grammatical structures. You will analyze and construct complex sentences with multiple subjects and temporalities, as well as learn to use the participles "ci" and "ne" as well pronominal verbs. This may sound boring, but pronominal verbs happen to be great for arguing — avercela, prendersela, farcela, and so on — so one of our lessons is devoted to the great catfights of Italian reality television, which I have transcribed so that we can analyze how those structures work - as well as perform them in class!