I have now completed my first full week of classes at the Sant’Anna Institute in Sorrento! I arrived here by train a little more than a week ago and am enthusiastic about the opportunity to fully dedicate myself to achieving a greater degree of fluency in Italian. Over the next five weeks, I will take two courses: Contemporary Italian Literature with Professor Domenico Palumbo as well as History of Italian Cinema with Professor Marco Marino. My literature class involves several readings each week as well as weekly compositions of varying length. So far, we have read works by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Aldo Palazzeschi, Italo Svevo, and today Luigi Pirandello. It has been incredibly interesting to learn about these early 20th century authors, the literary movements that they helped to create, and their unique historical contexts in Europe with such significant events taking place as the recent unification of the nation of Italy, the First World War, and the rise of Fascism in Italy and its corresponding cultural and literary influences and counter-movements. Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello have been particularly interesting because of the way they consider memory in an almost Proustian yet completely unique and provocative way. In my film class, we watch a new movie at each class meeting. The course is a broad examination of Italian film beginning with the Neorealist movement directly after World War II and continuing into the current day. So far, we’ve watched Roma, città aperta, Ladri di biciclette, and Umberto D., all of which are important films that, with the exception of Ladri di biciclette, I had not seen before this course. Over the next week or so, we will transition from neorealist films to some of the most important Italian comedies.
Outside of class, I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring the town of Sorrento as well as some of the surrounding area. I navigated the Neapolitan train station as well as the Circumvesuviana line to arrive here last week, and this past weekend, I had the opportunity to see both Positano on the Amalfi Coast and the island of Capri, both of which are extraordinarily beautiful places. I’m looking forward to getting to know the culture of Sorrento much better over the next several weeks as I continue to practice speaking, reading, writing, and listening to Italian.
Positano, Italy
View of Mt. Vesuvius from the terrace of the Sant’Anna Institute – Sorrento, Italy