Upper-Level Italian: Italiano in Verde: Sustainability Issues in the Italian Classroom

ITAL 30 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

As a course in the Mindich Program in Engaged Scholarship, this course develops speaking and writing skills in Italian through sustained engagement with environmental, cultural, economic, and social questions of sustainability. By examining how these issues are represented, debated, and experienced in Italy, the course invites you to use Italian not only as an object of study, but as a means of engaging critically with questions that extend beyond the classroom and connect Italian perspectives to broader global conversations. The course may also contribute to the Certificate for Civic Engagement for students pursuing that program.

Through films, novels, short stories, newspaper articles, podcasts, maps, comics, and other contemporary media, we will explore topics such as climate change, the Slow Food movement, environmental justice, sustainable tourism, migration, and activism. These materials will expose you to a range of voices and perspectives while helping you consider how language and cultural context shape the ways communities understand and respond to environmental and social challenges. Along the way, you will expand your vocabulary, revisit grammatical structures in context, and engage with contemporary spoken and written Italian, including colloquial language.

Class discussions and assignments—including oral presentations, weekly writing, and short video recordings—are designed to foster linguistic fluency as well as curiosity, critical reflection, and openness to different perspectives. You will practice interpreting and questioning the ideas and assumptions you encounter, articulating your own positions, and communicating them thoughtfully with others.

Ultimately, the course aims to strengthen your confidence and precision as a speaker and writer of Italian while encouraging you to reflect on your own relationship to environmental and social issues. In keeping with the goals of engaged scholarship, we will consider how language learning can connect academic inquiry with communities and contemporary challenges, and how learning another language can offer new ways of understanding—and participating in—the world around us. Pronti? Terra al centro!

Course Notes

Conducted in Italian. May not be taken Pass/Fail, but may be taken Sat/Unsat by GSAS students. Not open to auditors. This course is taught by members of the Department.

Recommended Prep

Italian 20; a score of 601-680 on the SAT II test or the Harvard Placement test, or a score of 4 on the Italian AP exam; or permission of course head.