The Boston College Department of Romance Languages and Literatures invites qualified students to apply to the Master of Arts program in Italian Studies. The department is committed to the professional formation of students, who graduate with broad experience in textual and cultural analysis including a strong component of visual literacy and film, and pedagogical training and practice. To maintain the low student-faculty ratio that allows individualized attention for each student we expect an incoming class of 4-5 students. All graduate students are supported by Teaching Fellowships, which include full tuition and a stipend. Comprehensive health insurance is through the Student Blue Plan.

The program welcomes both American and Italian applicants, and seeks a balance of the two. A Bachelor's degree with a major in Italian is preferred but not required. Our goal is to prepare our students for careers in academia or as secondary-school teachers of Italian. In the past several years, Masters candidates from Boston College have accepted prestigious Ph.D. fellowships at University of California, Berkeley, New York University, Johns Hopkins, and The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, among others. Some students choose to initiate careers in public and private secondary schools.

Boston is a cosmopolitan city, enriched by over forty universities and colleges as well as several institutions of Italian culture. This fall, Boston College MA candidates are contributing to the community with a public conference: "Language is Never Innocent: Roland Barthes at Boston College." There will be papers by graduate students from throughout the Northeast and a keynote address by Professor Jonathan Culler. Masters candidates have also renewed the graduate literary journal, now the Romance eReview, which offers the opportunity to publish their work, and more important, to experience peer-reviewing, editing, and overseeing the preparation of a journal.

Course offerings focus on a single author, develop a theme, or are interdisciplinary. They range from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, from Romanticism and the Twentieth-First century. There are courses on Italian Cinema, art and pedagogy.

Please inform qualified students about the program at Boston College. The deadline for all M.A. applicants is February 1, 2016. For more information:
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/romlang/gradprog.html

Cordially,
Laurie Shepard, Graduate Program Director, Romance Languages and Literatures

Faculty in Italian
Franco Mormando, Professor of Italian
Laurie Shepard, Associate Professor of Italian
Mattia Acetoso, Assistant Professor of Italian
Brian O'Connor, Adjunct Assistant Professor & Coordinator of Italian Language Instruction

ITALIAN COURSE OFFERINGS, GRADUATE

1200-1500
· Dante's Divine Comedy in Translation

· Lyric Poetry from Giacomo da Lentini to Petrarca

· Boccaccio and the Comedy of Renaissance Italy

· Fifteenth-Century Florence: The Humanists

1500-1800
· Challenging Authority: Ariosto, Machiavelli and Aretino

· Courting Power: Castiglione and Machiavelli

· Tasso and His World

· The Plague in Italy: From Boccaccio to Manzoni

· Bernini and the Baroque

· Michelangelo and His World

1800-2000s
· Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi

· To the Moon: A Portrait of Italian Romanticism

· Heroism, Tragedy and Romance in Romantic Italy

· The Cultural Production of Fascism**

· Contemporary Italian Storytellers

· Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry

· Italian Auteurist Cinema / Introduction to Italian Film **

· The Feminine Gaze**

· An Actor in the Spotlight from Dario Fo to Marco Paolini**

· Italian Eco-criticism / Literature and Sustainability**

UNDERGRADUATE

LITERATURE
· Dante's Divine Comedy in Translation

· The Genius of Machiavelli

· Italian Women Stake their Claim: Pre-modern Authors**

· Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi

· Italo Calvino's Worlds

The CULTURE of MODERN ITALY
· Twilight Zones: Italian Fantastic Short-Stories

· Immigrant Voices in Contemporary Italy

· The Mystery of the Mafia in Fiction and Film

· Murder, They Wrote: Italian Detective Fiction

· Women Voices Today in Film and Print **

Italian Culture through Popular Song: 19th to 21st Centuries**

FILM
· Masters of Italian Cinema

· New Directors, New Directions: 21st Century Italian Cinema

· Introduction to Italian Film (in English)**

LITERATURE & ART
· Michelangelo and His World

**COURSES IN PREPARATION