Italian Language and Literature Commons^™

Codenames For Language Courses, Jeffrey Nolan Mcculley, Chloe Bennett

UTA Libraries Staff Publications - Archive

In this lesson, students deepen their proficiency in the target language by designing and implementing a foreign-language edition of the game Codenames. Drawing on their understanding of vocabulary, semantics, and cultural nuance, students adapt game components and rules to account for language-specific challenges such as word ambiguity, cognates, homophones, and idiomatic meaning. Through collaborative gameplay, students actively apply linguistic knowledge in a communicative, problem-solving context that emphasizes precision and strategic language use. The lesson promotes critical thinking, intercultural competence, and authentic language practice while reinforcing vocabulary acquisition and comprehension in an engaging, student-centered format.

Syllabus Itl 112: Basic Italian I, Chiara Caputi

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for Basic Italian I (ITL 112) taught at the College of Staten Island during the Fall 2026 semester. This course teaches students about reading, writing, speaking and listening in Italian.

The Favela Blossoms: Voices Of Favelas In São Paulo, Brazil, Vasti Cruz

Scripps Senior Theses

This project spotlights improvised housing in the peripheral areas of São Paulo, Brazil, better known as favelas. For over a century, the favela has been known as a place of death, violence, crime, and oppression. Paradoxically, the first favelas in Rio de Janeiro were named after a plant that produces flowers. However, today, these communities are rarely compared to their beautiful, symbolic-of-life namesake. Instead, this prejudgement is rampant not only globally, but also within the proper city– which perpetuates social division. When favelas are discussed in the media, they often reference those in Rio de Janeiro; however, favelas are present …

Made In Italy: Gli Effetti Della Musica Italiana (T)Rap Sulla Società E Sulla Lingua, Paraskevi Z. Gkana-Alberico

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores the history of Italian (t)rap music, and uses the lyrics of famous songs in an attempt to examine the effects the sometimes vulgar and explicit themes, which are usually accompanied by the use of foreign languages, could have on society and the Italian language.

Gender Inclusivity In Italian: Can Gender Neutrality Be Reached In A Gendered Language? Difficulties, Proposals And Public Perception Of The Phenomenon, Gaia Prunotto

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Italian is a gendered language in which reference to grammatical gender has been constant and inevitable. As language reflects and shapes society, grammatical gender reinforces binary views of social gender and the invizibilization of non-binary identities. Movements for social justice have inspired gender-fair linguistic innovations, such as the feminization of job titles and gender-neutral markers, to promote gender equity and challenge hierarchies of power and dominance in society. This research aimed to explore gender-neutral forms in the Italian grammatical system and public perceptions of these innovations through two studies with two groups of participants.

The first group of participants (n=27) …

Maurice Scève Avant La Délie (1535–1544). Une Étude Des Genres Mineurs À L’Origine D’Une Nouvelle Esthétique Poétique, Elizaveta Lyulekina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse propose d’étudier l’influence du poète lyonnais Maurice Scève, actif entre 1535 et 1562, sur la formation de genres littéraires et le développement de la poésie française de la Renaissance. Elle explore également la contribution considérable du poète à la création de l’identité linguistique et culturelle française.

This dissertation studies the influence of the Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève, active between 1535 and 1562, on the formation of literary genres and the development of French Renaissance poetry. It also explores the poet’s considerable contribution to the creation of French linguistic and cultural identity.

The Forest, The Trees, The Bark, The Pith: An Intensive Look At The Circulation Rates Of Primary Texts In Ten Major Literature Areas At The University Of Oregon Libraries, Jeff D. Staiger

Charleston Library Conference

This poster looks at the circulation rate for literary primary texts, which constitute a unique area of collecting in academic libraries: while they do not in most cases meet immediate research needs, it is assumed that libraries ought to acquire them, for reasons including future research needs, preservation of the cultural record, and the ability of members of the intellectual community to stay current, those these remain primarily tacit. The circulation trends of contemporary literary works in ten areas of literature (English, American, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin American, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian) over the past twenty years at the …

The Ends Of Plot: Rupture And Entanglement In L’Amica Geniale, Victor X. Zarour Zarzar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation employs narrative theory to contextualize Elena Ferrante’s successful saga, L’amica geniale, within the larger tapestry of European novelistic discourses. It engages with conceptions of narrative structure put forth by critics like Ortega y Gasset, Brooks, and Winnett to understand how L’amica geniale offers cutting commentary on our exegetic practices and advances a geometry of narrative entanglement. I contend that Ferrante recuperates and italicizes nineteenth-century modes of storytelling, displaying a form of epistemological tension rooted in a movement away from a belief in plot’s semantic potentialities and into the postulation of a poetics of smarginatura or rupture. I …

Staging English Affairs In Early Modern Italy: History, Politics, Drama, Fabio Battista

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at the creation and dissemination of alternative versions of English history through the means of dramatic fiction, and contextualizes them in the panorama of the intellectual debates of seventeenth-century Italy. Staging English Affairs in Early Modern Italy studies the ways in which the reinvention of Tudor and Stuart affairs in dramatic literature mirrored the ambitions, fears, and fantasies of a century in disquieting transformation. This research documents how news and information from England entered the Italian states, how they were perceived, and what their repurposing can reveal about the potentialities of intercultural exchange. Anglo-inspired drama became a …

Ansiedades Épico-Criollas Y El Mecenazgo De Indias En El Arauco Domado De Pedro De Oña, Andrea L. Fernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Among the characteristics of epic poetry are the topic of war, love encounters, heroism of exemplary individuals, and the narration of events contemporary to the audience to reinforce a collective historical identity. Arauco domado by Pedro de Oña, born in Angol (modern Chile), reiterates these traditional expectations with its protagonist, characters, setting, and latter theatrical representations within the viceregal context. The poem was made possible by the sponsorship of García Hurtado de Mendoza y Manrique, IV Marquis of Cañete and Viceroy of Peru. If the title of “espíritu cesarino novelo” [Caesar’s new spirit] (V.76.3) corresponds to the patron, Pedro de …

The Cool Medium. The Global Pedagogy Of Eportfolio In The Foreign Language Classroom, Giulia Guarnieri

Publications and Research

The student-centered and integrative pedagogy of ePortfolio finds perfect applicability in the foreign language classroom. In contrast, textbooks for Italian language elementary courses, for the most part, implement a traditional and grammatical based methodological approach which hiders the process of ePortfolio integration which instead places greater emphasis on global and integrative pedagogy. The study discusses the implications these factors hold in preparing foreign languages instructors to use ePortfolio technology underlining its role as a cool medium which provides meaningful impact on student learning and participation

The Disperata, From Medieval Italy To Renaissance France, Gabriella Scarlatta

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Rich with morose invectives, the Italian lyric genre of the disperata builds toward a crescendo of despair, with the speakers damning and condemning their beloved, their enemy, their destiny, Fortune, Love, and often themselves. Although Petrarch and Petrarchism have been amply analyzed as fertile sources for late Renaissance poets in France, the influence of the Italian disperata in this context has yet to receive proper scholarly attention. This study explores how the language and themes of the disperata - including hopelessness, death, suicide, doomed love, collective trauma, and damnations - are creatively adopted by several generations of poets from its …

Paese Di Accoglienza: Il Successo Di Un Modello Innovativo Di Accoglienza Dei Richiedenti Asilo In Italia, Isabela Arena Secanechia

Senior Capstone Theses

This work discusses Italy's migrant reception system including its flaws and their effects. Furthermore, this work explores an alternative, sustainable model of migrant reception created in Riace, Calabria, that has been successful in varying towns across Italy. Ultimately, this work argues that this system, which is beneficial to both Italians and incoming migrants — specifically asylum seekers — can and should be implemented nationally to counter the current flawed system.

Songs Of Passage And Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’S Stories In Performance, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In this time and on this page, Spivak's island seems an apt place to begin a discussion about storytelling, resistance, and belonging. This chapter documents a conversation originating from two disciplinary perspectives-literature (Ferraro) and music (Dolp). We explore how spoken-word performance in a global context can facilitate social empowerment, craft a cultural past, and invigorate political consciousness. Although our analytical strategies and some of our conclusions differ, we share the assertion that the notion of artistic citizenship as it is defined elsewhere in this collection is considerably complicated, and even requires redefinition, in the context of non-Western cultures. Our present …

Facilitating Lexical Acquisition In Beginner Learners Of Italian Through Task-Induced Involvement Load, Vanessa J. Natale Rukholm

The Coastal Review

This empirical study explores the facilitation of lexical acquisition and retention through an incidental experiment examining the effect of Involvement Load on Italian vocabulary growth among beginner learners. The experiment, with a pre-test/post-test design investigates the facilitative effects of elaborate processing on L2 lexical acquisition and retention. Participants in sections of the same first-year Italian course were divided into one of five groups consisting of a Control Group and four Treatment groups. Treatment groups were divided based on level of Involvement (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) such that some groups processed target words elaborately (Craik, 2002; Lockhart, 2002) through vocabulary exercises …

Casting Sound: Modality And Poetics In Gabriella Ghermandi’S Regina Di Fiori E Di Perle, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first considers music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi’s characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the …

Beating The Odds: Teaching Italian Online In The Community College Environment, Giulia Guarnieri

Publications and Research

This study analyzes data collected from Italian language online classes during the course of four consecutive semesters at Bronx Community College in order to measure the impact that distance learning has on students’ retention and success rates in elementary courses. The results reveal that reconfiguring the online meetings to a lower percentage and implementing social pedagogies reduce course abandonment and favor the creation of strong learning communities. Furthermore, the data relative to the grade distribution shows no substantial difference between online courses and face-to-face instruction.

Lost In Translation? Found In Translation? Neither? Both?, Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck, Alyson Waters, Roger Celestin, Charles Lebel

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Translation specialists Esther Allen, Mary Ann Caws, Peter Constantine, Edith Grossman, Nancy Kline, Burton Pike, Damion Searls, Karen Van Dyck and Alyson Waters respond to the TQC question:

“Lost in translation”; “Found in translation”: Are these just useless commonplaces or are they indicative of something relevant to your own practice?

Pasqualino Settebellezze: Italian Identity Through Holocaust Tragedy, Michael Di Geronimo

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Understanding Presence, Affordance And The Time/Space Dimensions For Language Learning In Virtual Worlds, Susanna Nocchi, Françoise Blin

Articles

Notwithstanding their potential for novel approaches to language teaching and learning, Virtual Worlds (VWs) present numerous technological and pedagogical challenges that require new paradigms if the language learning experience and outcomes are to be successful. In this presentation, we argue that the notions of presence and affordance, together with the time/space dimensions of interactions in virtual worlds (e.g. Bakhtin’s (1981) chronotope, Foucault’s (1984) heteropia, and Lemke’s (2000) heterochrony), provide new insights into language learners’ trajectories as they attempt to carry out tasks that are designed to make use of virtual worlds’ characteristics and potentialities. We explore and analyse a critical …

Italianization Of Emigration To Canada: Or, What Is The Role Of The Italies Outside Of Italy?, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In Migrancy, Culture, Identity Iain Chambers observes that present-day critical thought frequently adopts metaphors of movement, migration, maps, travel, and sometimes tourism to describe and explain the encounter with people and cultures that the European rationale is no longer able to domesticate in an era of increasing globalization. Chambers himself uses the metaphor of journey to represent this encounter and, taking on Said' s reflections on exile and his idea that homes are always provisional, 1 he states that the questions we meet en route displace our terms of reference, which are the certainty of the point of departure and …

Come Si Fa?: Can Virtual Worlds Help Us Promote Intercultural Awareness, Susanna Nocchi

Conference Papers

This paper describes the author’s experience with a pilot course of Italian in SL®2. The course is part of a PhD research on Exploring the potential of virtual worlds to promote Intercultural Awareness in students learning Italian as a Foreign Language. In the paper the author will justify her choice of virtual worlds for the development of language competence and Intercultural Awareness and will present some results of her activity theoretical analysis of the data. Problematic areas and potential moments for the development of Intercultural Awareness were highlighted during the analysis.

Cinematic Space In Rome’S Disabitato: Between Metropolis And Terrain Vague In The Films Of Fellini, Antonioni, And Pasolini, Patrick Barron

English Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Microblogging On Twitter: Social Networking In Intermediate Italian Classes, Enza Antenos

Department of World Languages and Cultures Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Second language acquisition (SLA) research has explored the significance of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in educational models for second language (L2) pedagogy. Recently, the proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies has become the focus of many teachers and researchers who study the impact of Web 2.0 innovations on L2 teaching and learning. The majority of students enrolled in language courses in postsecondary institutions, too, are “digital natives”—a generation of “‘native speakers’ of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet”(Prensky, 2001, p. 1)—who desire obtaining information in new ways. Web 2.0 provides the core for an internet experience that is …

Grammamia!: Esercizi E Giochi Per Imparare Il Lessico: Chapter Eight, Tiziana Chiappelli, Susanna Nocchi

Books/Book Chapters

GrammaMia! è una grammatica italiana con esercizi rivolta a studenti stranieri dagli 11 ai 14 anni. Il testo costituisce un primo contatto con la grammatica italiana. Attraverso schede chiare ed essenziali, vengono spiegate tutte le principali regole della lingua. A ciò vanno aggiunti moltissimi esercizi, quiz, giochi, che consentono di esercitarsi nell’italiano e di ricavare al contempo informazioni sulla vita, la società, la cultura, la geografia e la storia italiana. Particolare attenzione è stata rivolta agli ambiti lessicali più frequentati dai giovani, fornendo quindi agli studenti strumenti non solo linguistici ma anche comunicativi. Il libro è adatto per studenti di …