Faculty of Modern Languages Italian/Romance Studies – Bachelor 50%

The Bachelor’s degree programme in Italian 50% encompasses the following areas: 

Literary studies

The main focus of Italian literary studies is 

• the history of Italian literature from its beginnings to the present day; from Dante to Umberto Eco, Antonio Tabucchi, Alessandro Baricco to Niccolò Ammaniti and more. 
• the three major genres, i.e. the epic, poetry and drama in their specific Italian forms, in consideration of literary epochs and movements as well as regional cultural diversity and differences between these genres  
• various approaches and models from literary theory; from hermeneutics to deconstruction theory and post-postmodernism. Theories are considered in view of current intermedial and transcultural research 
• literary studies and media (opera, film and the internet) 

Linguistics

• languages and dialects within the Italian-speaking world and their classification 
• the transition from Latin to a Romance language and the development of Italian 
• the history of the Italian language, development of a national norm 
• investigation and description of the structure of the Italian language (vocabulary, grammar, phonetics etc.) 
• language and society, language change, language contact 
• discourse analysis 

Cultural studies

• analysis of cultural phenomena in the Italian-speaking world; from artistic expression (e.g. film) to popular culture (e.g. fashion), both in the past and in the present day 
• analysis of public discourse and its presentation in the media 
• analysis of the relationships between culture and power (e.g cultural inheritance, mass media) 
• theories and methods of cultural analysis (e.g. performance, construction of space) and comparative cultural analysis (e.g. intercultural and transcultural approaches) 
• interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches 

Language practice

Courses for Italian language practice are designed to enable students to: 

• speak and write correctly and fluently 
• understand complex contemporary texts (novels, newspapers etc.) 
• discuss, both orally and in writing, aspects of Italian society, literary works and linguistic phenomena 
• obtain thorough knowledge of grammatical structures, in particular, of Italian syntax 
• understand film and radio recordings and recognise the various registers used (i.e. formal, informal and official Italian) 
• translate literary or journalistic texts into Italian

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