All students take Italian Language during the whole program. Prior to the beginning of semester courses, students take two weeks of Intensive Italian classes, according to their level of language placement. After the end of the intensive language pre-session, students continue their language instruction as a semester course.
Students with no prior background in Italian are automatically placed at the Beginning level. Students with Intermediate background in Italian (1-4 semesters) are required to take a placement text and will be placed in the appropriate language class according to the text results.
ITAL 1501 NACL—Intensive Italian Language, Beginning I
ITAL 1502 NACL—Intensive Italian Language, Beginning II
ITAL 2501 NACL—Intensive Italian Language, Intermediate I
ITAL 2502 NACL—Intensive Italian Language, Intermediate II
These courses provide students with basic skills needed to communicate on a daily basis. They include grammar, conversation, listening, and reading comprehension. Students are placed according to language background.
ITAL 1002 NACL—Semester Italian Language, Beginning II
ITAL 2001 NACL—Semester Italian Language, Intermediate I
ITAL 2002 NACL—Semester Italian Language, Intermediate II
ITAL 3001 NACL—Semester Italian Language, Advanced I
In these courses, students continue their language study during the semester, after being placed in the appropriate class.
ITAL 3501 NALA
Intensive Italian Language, Advanced I
This course is specifically designed for advanced students and aims to develop all four skills (grammar, conversation, listening, and reading comprehension), with an emphasis on oral competence to help students integrate into Italian life.
ITAL 3001 NALA
Semester Italian Language, Advanced II
This course aims to develop all four skills (grammar, conversation, listening, and reading comprehension) and utilizes a variety of media for instruction (films, CDs, newspapers, magazines, and so on).
CIEE Content Courses
Language and Culture Track (Offered in English)
AHIS 3001 NALA
Art and Architecture in Naples
A quick look at textbooks on Italian art reveals the low status in which Naples has been held since the time Renaissance artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari made his negative pronouncements on the city. What many people do not know, however, is that during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Naples was the largest city of the Italian peninsula, attracting a coterie of foreign rulers, and garnered international status as an important center for artistic culture and production. It also attracted artists and architects from all over Italy and Europe. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the rich artistic and architectural heritage of Naples and its surroundings by considering its specific and unique character as well as its role within the context of the Italian peninsula. Through lectures and visits throughout the city and its surroundings, students learn about Naples and analyze the political, religious, and ideological content of its art and architecture and its role within Italy.
ANTH 3001 NALA
Anthropology: The Invention of the South
This course focuses on the construction inherent in the representation of Naples, starting from the 16th century to the present, through literature, social research, and cinema. The course aims to make visible, and deconstruct, the symbolic space that this emblematic Mediterranean city occupies in the construction of an historical, political, and anthropological difference between South and North.
CINE 3001 NALA
Italian Cinema
The history of Italian cinema is significant not only in terms of what it has been able to express on its own, but also in terms of its impact and influence on the past and the present of world cinema. This course explores Italian cinematic production, starting from the aftermath of World War II until today. Focusing on individual works, the course examines both the scholars’ habit of concentrating exclusively on the established Masters, and the ideological censorship associated with the evaluation of the movies—in terms of acting, directions taken by screenwriters and directors, the dynamics of reception by the audience, and also the moral issues underpinning the definition of both the subject and the economic investment in it.
CULA 3001 NALA
Italian and Neapolitan Cuisine: Local Food, Global Implications
This course analyzes food as a fundamental component of the social practices that characterize different cultures. Food is a marker of cultural identity both in its material existence (what products are available and why, what is prepared and consumed, etc.) and in its symbolic and ritualized forms. The course will start with a focus on Naples, its cuisine, and the role of food in Neapolitan culture, and will subsequently broaden this focus to reflect on the exportation of Neapolitan and more generally Italian food culture, and how these contribute to shape the cultural perception of both Naples and Italy from the outside.
INRE 3001 NALA
Human Rights, Multiculturalism, and Cultural Diversity: The Italian and the European Experience
This interdisciplinary course explores the significance and meaning of multiculturalism in European society—and, in particular, Italian society. After a brief introduction to the historical background, the focus will be on the distinction between the U.S. experience (the “melting pot”) and the recent experience of immigrant integration in Europe and Italy, based on the multiplication of cultures. In particular, the course tackles strategies for solving problems related to integration and avoiding the clash of cultures.
ITST 3002 NALA/POLI 3001 NALA
Environmental Politics, Economy, and Society in Campania
This course tackles the recent history of environmental politics in the Campania region, providing a national and international context for the sixteen-year long “emergency status” in dealing with waste production, disposal, and handling in the local area, while pointing to the present status of the issue, its social and economic implications, and possible future developments.
MUSI 3001 NALA
Sounding Naples: Music and the City from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
The course is meant to offer a history of Naples through its musical traditions, starting from its role as European cultural capital in the eighteenth century (with the Neapolitan school of operatic castrati) up to contemporary experimentations such as Almamegretta's dub. The syllabus will include the recent rediscovery of the Neapolitan popular tradition by Roberto De Simone in his La gattacenerentola together with other contemporary renditions of Naples as 'musical city' such as John Turturro's Passione. The aim is to give students a broad picture of the multifaceted identity of the city through a journey across its many musical languages, from popular to experimental, from high art to grass-root protest. The course will show how musical culture in Naples emerges as an expression of its ‘alternative modernity’, where tradition and innovation can never be separated.
SOCI 3001 NALA
Society, Urban Development, and Governance in Naples from the Birth of the Italian Nation-State to the Present
This course tracks social, political, and economic systems in Naples across different historical moments: from the city’s role as a capital under Bourbon rule to its “decentered” position in the new-born Italian nation-state; the “industrial” phase of the early 20th century; the city in the Mediterranean-oriented expansion of the Fascist state; the post-WWII housing-oriented economic speculation; Naples’ role in the “Southern Issue” in the 1960s and 1970s; the socioeconomic choc caused by the 1980s earthquake; the “Renaissance” of the 1990s, and the recent backlash and political questioning of this Renaissance in the early 21st century. Special attention is devoted to the interconnectedness between phenomena in the social structure and governmental choices, and to the emergence of the “parallel” criminal power of the Camorra.
Liberal Arts Track (Offered in Italian)
AHIS 3001 NALA
Art and Architecture in Naples
A quick look at textbooks on Italian art reveals the low status in which Naples has been held since the time Renaissance artist and art historian Giorgio Vasari made his negative pronouncements on the city. What many people do not know, however, is that during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Naples was the largest city of the Italian peninsula, attracting a coterie of foreign rulers, and garnered international status as an important center for artistic culture and production. It also attracted artists and architects from all over Italy and Europe. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the rich artistic and architectural heritage of Naples and its surroundings by considering its specific and unique character as well as its role within the context of the Italian peninsula. Through lectures and visits throughout the city and its surroundings, students learn about Naples and analyze the political, religious, and ideological content of its art and architecture and its role within Italy.
CINE 3001 NALA
Italian Cinema
The history of Italian cinema is significant not only in terms of what it has been able to express on its own, but also in terms of its impact and influence on the past and the present of world cinema. This course explores Italian cinematic production, starting from the aftermath of World War II until today. Focusing on individual works, the course examines both the scholars’ habit of concentrating exclusively on the established Masters, and the ideological censorship associated with the evaluation of the movies—in terms of acting, directions taken by screenwriters and directors, the dynamics of reception by the audience, and also the moral issues underpinning the definition of both the subject and the economic investment in it.
GEOG 3001 NALA
Italy and International Migrations
This course focuses on the new geography that has characterized the migratory phenomenon in Italy in the past thirty years. The course opens with an introduction to the complex network of international migrations, and subsequently explores the role of Italy from different perspectives: migrants as geopolitical actors and the role of borders; territorial transformations in Italian regions; the relation with the job market and leisure-time industry; urban politics and the transformation of the landscape; and the different uses of public spaces in major Italian urban areas. During classes, students have an opportunity to read journalistic reportspresenting life stories told by migrants who reside in Italy, and to watch films that focus on these issues.
ITAL 3002 NALA
Italian Composition
Through a detailed analysis of written samples taken from a variety of sources, this course aims at making students aware of the differences—as well as the overlaps—in register between Italian oral and written language. Simultaneously, students are requested to actively engage in writing and produce a number of composition samples in Italian, paying attention to both grammatical accuracy and stylistic diversity. Special emphasis is given to topics related to Italian culture from a Southern perspective and in a Mediterranean context.
ITST 3001 NALA
The Italian South: Contemporary Literature, Theater, and Cinema
After an introduction presenting the historical background and the literary antecedents, starting with founding fathers such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Jacopo Sannazzaro, and GiambattistaBasile, this interdisciplinary course explores the cultural life of the Italian South during the past two centuries. The focus will be on important literary, theater and cinematic figures like Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe TomasidiLampedusa, Eduardo De Filippo, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Luchino Visconti. The main themes will be: ‘questionemeridionale’ and emigration,culture and social classes, people’s life, theater and masks in Naples, and the cultural importance of folk songs.
MUSI 3001 NALA
Sounding Naples: Music and the City from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
The course is meant to offer a history of Naples through its musical traditions, starting from its role as European cultural capital in the eighteenth century (with the Neapolitan school of operatic castrati) up to contemporary experimentations such as Almamegretta's dub. The syllabus will include the recent rediscovery of the Neapolitan popular tradition by Roberto De Simone in his La gattacenerentola together with other contemporary renditions of Naples as 'musical city' such as John Turturro's Passione.The aim is to give students a broad picture of the multifaceted identity of the city through a journey across its many musical languages, from popular to experimental, from high art to grass-root protest. The course will show how musical culture in Naples emerges as an expression of its ‘alternative modernity’, where tradition and innovation can never be separated.
University of Naples “L’Orientale” Courses
The University is well known in Italy as a center for the study of a diverse range of subjects related to different geographical areas and cultures – from Western and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, to Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Facoltà (“Schools”) include Foreign Languages and Literatures, Arabic-Islamic and Mediterranean Studies, Letters and Philosophy, and Political Science. CIEE students are associated with the FacoltàdiLettere e Filosofia (“Letters and Philosophy”), but can enroll in courses from other Facoltà upon agreement with the Facoltà and the professor.*** Students must have the appropriate prerequisites for the course. While exams following regular University courses extend into January/ February and June/July, CIEE students are allowed to take early exams.
For individual courses offered at the Orientale for a specific term, please visit www.unior.it it and click on “Facoltà”. The following is a list of disciplinary areas under which individual courses are grouped:
Ancient Languages and Literatures
Anthropology
Archaeology
Architecture
Art History
Business
Comparative Literature
Cultural Studies
Economics
Ethnology
Film Studies
Gender Studies
Geography
History
Human Rights
Interethnic Relations
International Relations
Language and Culture
Law
Linguistics
Literary Criticism
Media Studies
Migration and Multiculturalism
Modern Languages and Literatures
Philology
Philosophy
Phonetics
Political Science
Semiotics
Sociology
Statistics
Theater Studies
Translation Studies
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