Course description
A study of Venice through attentive and on-site readings of the great literary and popular works from world literature associated with the city. We will read complete works or selections from the following texts, accompanied by visits relating to the themes, places, questions fore-grounded in these works: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; Casanova, Memoirs of my Life (selections); George Sand, Consuelo; Thomas Mann, Death in Venice; John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice; Henry James, The Italian Hours (selections); Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (selections), Donna Leon (Murder at La Fenice). We will include visits to the great museums and sites that figure in the texts we study.

Students should come away from the course with a deep appreciation of Venice not simply as a tourist mecca or a vaguely romantic destination, but as a city having inspired some of the world’s greatest literature and art and having enabled the arts to flourish together. At the same time, the students will have developed their critical and analytical reading skills, and improved their expository writing about ideas and questions posed by the readings and the works of art or monuments. They will have deepened their own experience and appreciation of the city.

Depending on the number of students enrolled, the course is organized mainly as a discussion course, with the professor lecturing in the beginning of the course, and individual students doing oral presentations and posing questions on the material they will have elected to present.

The grading is organized in the following way:
20% attendance and participation; 20% individual discussion with professor; 40% presentations in class; 20% final paper.

Bibliography
Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Casanova, Memoirs of my Life (selections)
George Sand, Consuelo (selections)
Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (selections)
John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (selections)
Henry James, The Italian Hours (selections)
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (selections)
Donna Leone, Murder at La Fenice.
All readings will be in English.

No prior knowledge is required, although a love of reading is a great advantage.