Rome as Palimpsests: from Ruins to Virtual Reality

Italian 308 · Counts Towards: Art History · Growth and Structure of Cities · Museum Studies · Praxis Program · Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2019; Spring 2021

From the urban dream that Raphael confessed to pope Leo X in the middle of the Renaissance to the parkour on the top of the Colosseum in the Assassin's Creed videogames, Rome has always been both a memory and a vision: a place of nostalgia and endless potential. In this course we will investigate some crucial places, moments, and ideas in the modern history of this ancient capital of Western culture: XVI century Mannerist painting and the Pop Art of Piazza del Popolo, the early modern re-uses of the Colosseum and its cubic clone designed under fascism, the narrations of Romantic grand-tours and the ones of contemporary postcolonial authors. We will adopt a trans-historical and inter-disciplinary perspective, focusing on the main attempts to revive the glory of the ancient empire. We will try to understand weather Italy's capital is a museum to be preserved, an old laboratory of urban innovations, a cemetery, a sanctuary, or simply an amalgam of past and future, glory and misery, beauty and horror.

Black, Queer, Jewish Italy

Italian 322 · Gender and Sexuality 339 · Judaic Studies 327 · European Cultural Studies 322 · Princeton University, Fall 2017

Italian 312 · Cross-Listed with Africana Studies, Comparative Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies · Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2020

This seminar approaches the two most studied phases of Italian history, the Renaissance/Baroque and the Twentieth century (with some incursions in other centuries), by placing otherness at the center of the picture rather than at its margins. The main aim is to challenge traditional accounts of Italian culture, and to look at pivotal events and phenomena (the rise of Humanism, the rise of fascism, courtly culture, the two World Wars, 16th-18th century art, the avant-garde) from the point of view of non-white, non-christian, non-heterosexual witnesses, authors, and fictional characters. In class, we will adopt a trans-historical, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspective: themes and issues will be analyzed at the crossing of the two historical phases and of the three topics in exam, and the material will include historical and theoretical analyses, narrative texts of different genres, poems, films, and works of visual art.

A Gendered History of the Avant-Garde: Bodies, Objects, Emotions, Ideas

Italian 305 · Comparative Literature 375 · Gender and Sexuality 308 · Princeton University, Spring 2016

Italian 315 · cross-listed with History of Art, Comparative Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Museum Studies · Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2020

The very concept of ‘avant-garde’ is steeped in a masculine warlike imagery, and the founding manifesto of Futurism even glorifies the ‘contempt for the woman’. Yet, feminine, queer, androgynous, and non-binary perspectives on sexual identity played a central role — from Rimbaud to contemporary experimentalism — in the develop- ment of what has been called ‘the tradition of the new’. We will explore such a paradoxical anti-traditional tradition through texts, images, sounds, and videos. We will unearth the stories and works of great experimentalists who have been neglected because of their gender. We will deal with poems made up entirely of place names, of recorded noises, of typographical symbols. We will try to read texts with no words, surreal stories, performances, objects.

Introduction to Comparative Literature

Comparative Literature 200 · Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2020

This seminar explores a variety of approaches to the comparative or transnational study of literature through readings of several kinds: texts from differ- ent cultural traditions that raise questions about the nature and function of storytelling and literature; texts that comment on, respond to, and rewrite oth- er texts from different historical periods and nations; translations; and readings in critical theory.

Creating Classics: A Visual Workshop on Pasolini & Greek Drama
(co-taught with Ava Shirazi)

Classical Studies 222 · Counts Toward: Italian · Comparative Literature · Visual Studies · Film Studies · Africana Studies · Gender and Sexuality Studies · Theatre · Haverford College & Bryn Mawr Colleges, Spring 2021

Is the reception of what we call “Classical Antiquity” a passive exercise of memory, inheritance, and recurrence? Or can it be a truly creative action, a kind of reclaiming, even a subversion of inherently exclusionary ideas and media? And what happens when we try to actively take part in this dialogue with a past that was transmit- ted to us as important, foundational, original, and authoritative? Rooted in the perspectives of trans-codification, trans-historical tradition, and cultural trans-lation, this course attempts to address such questions both in theory and practice. This year, the topic of our seminar will be Pier Paolo Pasolini’s cine- matic re-writing of Greek tragedies: Medea, Oedipus Rex, and Oresteia, shot in Morocco, Turkey, Italy, Uganda, Tanzania, and Syria. Pasolini was a queer (but Catholic), communist (but conservative), poet (but mostly famous for his films) who scandalized bourgeois audiences in Postwar Europe. Trained as a philologist, art historian, and linguist, he looked at Greek literature from a (post)colonial, Marxist point of view, and played with its different traditions.

Theory in Practice: Critical Discourses in the Humanities

Italian 213 · Counts toward:  Africana Studies · Gender and Sexuality Studies · Film Studies · Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2018

What is a postcolonial subject, a queer gaze, a feminist manifesto? And how can we use (as readers of texts, art, and films) contemporary studies on animals and cyborgs, object oriented ontology, zombies, storyworlds, neuroaesthetics? In this course we will read some pivotal theoretical texts from different fields, with a focus on race&ethnicity and gender&sexuality. Each theory will be paired with a masterpiece from Italian culture (from Baroque treatises and paintings to stories written during the Unification and postwar movies). We will discuss how to apply theory to the practice of interpretation and of academic writing, and how theoretical ideas shaped what we are reading. Class conducted in English, with an additional hour in Italian for students seeking Italian credit.

Introduction to Italy Today

Italian 208 · Princeton University, Spring 2017

Italian 212, Cross-Listed with International Studies · Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2019

Who are the neo-fascists? What is the five star movement? How do ‘colf’, ‘zingaro’, ‘qualunquismo’, or ‘grillino’ translate? What does it mean to be a woman, an immigrant, or a queer person in the land of ultra-traditionalism, of the pope, and Berlusconi? This course will explore these questions through a variety of materials in Italian: stories, comic books, TV shows, poems, newspaper articles, public art, essays, videos, and songs. We will deal with issues of identity, historical memory, politics, and society. We will immerse our- selves in the culture and language of contemporary Italy through ten key-themes.

Short Stories

Emily Balch Seminar 013 · Bryn Mawr College, Fall 2019

Some of the greatest works of fiction are only a few pages long. Through those tiny windows, you can see an entire existence or just witness a fleeting, apparently insignificant moment. Some stories feel like entire novels, others are akin to poetry; some follow traditions and rules that are as old as storytelling, others shock us with their unexpected form. In this seminar, we will try to understand what makes short fiction great. We will focus on a new anthology of Italian short stories curated and in part translated by a master of the genre. We will also talk about collections of stories that are organized like catalogues, like alphabets, like arguments. We will reflect on how stories interact with each other in a book, and on how translation can enrich or jeopardize the power of fiction. We will look at the micro-cosmos of one or two stories each week, learning how to analyze, describe, and deconstruct mini-masterpieces from a strange culture.

So far, I have taught these language courses:

2018-19; 2019-20, Elementary Italian I-II, Bryn Mawr College (language coordinator)

2016-17, Introduction to Italian Language and Culture I-II, Garden State Youth Correctional Facility (coordinator, co-taught with Chiara Benetollo, Sara Teardo, Donata Panizza)

Fall 2015, Advanced Italian, Princeton University

Fall 2012, Intensive Elementary Italian, New York University