Social Studies Degrees

Department of French and Italian

The Colby Department of French and Italian offers a major in French Studies and a minor in Italian. Course schedules and links to online course materials are on the current course listings page. Resources contains links to recommended Colby-based and external websites. The major in French, which emphasizes language skills, offers interdisciplinary studies in the areas of specialization of the faculty: French literature and civilization; the evolution of Western thought in France; the cultures and literatures of Francophone Canada and the U.S. and of Francophone countries in northern and sub-saharan Africa and the Caribbean; stylistics and translation.
Paganucci Assistant Professor of Italian Language and Literature

Allison Cooper, Ph.D. UCLA, is the Paul D. and Marilyn Paganucci Assistant Professor of Italian Language and Literature. Her research is concerned principally with Italian modernism, and focuses in particular on literature and art in the aftermath of the Great War. Her manuscript in progress, entitled Disanimate Modernism: Literature, Painting and Aesthetics in Wartime and Post World War One Italy, examines the works of such diverse figures as Giuseppe Ungaretti, Felice Casorati, Massimo Bontempelli and Paola Masino in light of the multiple crises generated by the Great War, the futurist avant-garde and the modernist crisis of consciousness. Her chapter on Paola Masino appeared as an essay in the volume Italian Modernism: Italian Culture between Decadentism and the Avant-Garde (University of Toronto Press, 2004). In addition to her research on Italian modernism and the avant-garde, Professor Cooper works on contemporary Italian cinema and is a contributor to the forthcoming anthology Mafia Movies (University of Toronto Press, anticipated 2009) with an essay entitled “Growing Up Camorrista: Antonio and Andrea Frazzi’s Certi Bambini.” Professor Cooper teaches courses at all levels of the Italian Studies program, from elementary language courses to upper division courses on literature and culture.