Diana Garvin

ITAL 151: Feminist Lens: Italian and French Women in Film

“Feminist Lens” focuses on films produced by Italian and French female directors, introducing you to the brilliant women behind the cameras from the 1970s to today. Activities emphasize the real-world stakes of cinema: we will analyze European receptions of Hollywood’s #metoo movement, then co-design the trigger-warning system for use in our class.

Questions of gender roles and violence from Fascism and Nazism inflect Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975) and Liliana Cavani’s German trilogy (1974-1985). Intersections of sexuality tangle former Maghreb colonies and multi-ethnic metropoles in Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999) and White Material (2010).

Ultimately, assignments like this Cinema Salon midterm provide a toolkit for analyzing cinema (angles, frames, and shots) as well as the history of Southern European feminism, from second-wave feminist groups like Rivolta Femminile to third-wave alliances like Féministes indigènes.

ITAL 305: Cuisine in Italian Art, Music, and Literature

From Dante's infernal Circle of the Gluttons to Artusi's patriotic nationalist cookbook, Italian culture is written in garlic and oil. This course, taught in Italian, provides 20-minute lectures coupled with guided art analysis on subjects like Baroque feasting through Arcimboldo’s food portraits and Enlightment caffè culture through Puccini’s lyric operas.

Close readings of historical cookbooks and recipes will show how playwrights and painters prepared their daily minestra. Final group projects emphasize the art of food. Acting as museum curators, you will lead the class through the artistic merits of three historical menus drawn from the Barilla Digital Archive.

By studying masterpieces from the Renaissance to the present day through the lively and accessible theme of food, you will conclude this course with a knowledge of modern Italian history and culture that is as memorable as it is delicious.

Winner of the UO LIFT Grant (2018-2019)

ITAL 319: Eco-Italy: Introduction to the Green Humanities

This interdisciplinary course bridges the arts and the sciences, introducing you to human-land relationships across Southern Italy and North Africa. Together, we will explore the Green Humanities in the greater Mediterranean: we will analyze activist artwork inspired by earthquakes and volcanoes.

We will read investigative reporting on the eco-mafia and discuss the meaning of their slogan, “Trash is Gold.” Materials emphasize long-form journalism and documentary film, because these forms of writing and filmmaking craft compelling stories to support sustainability across government and industry. So too do assignments: you will create an online portfolio exploring environmental themes, including a weekly photojournal, a mini-podcast series, and a YouTube video. By the end of this course, you will be able to speak about ecological phenomena in vivid, human terms.

Winner of the UO Sustainability Award (2021-2022)

The story of Italian food is a tale of global trade, revealing the historic connections between Italy and the world.  Our interdisciplinary course focuses on connecting places and people, both in content and in assignments. Each weekly seminar uses a historical lens to explore the relationship between an Italian city and a different world capital to illustrate how far-flung nations and empires have shaped Italy’s regional cuisines. Modular assignments teach applied skills to build your undergraduate research profile. You start by collaborating with local site visits, with in-person interviews at the UO Urban Farm, Craft Centers, and Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum.  Then, you practice these skills by corresponding with global institutions with Italian food history holdings.  Building better museums, our midterm project, gives you the opportunity to critically review and assess past collecting practices, then build a digital Wunderkammer: a display box where you can model more accurate and inclusive ways to present the past to the public. Your final puts these skills together, as you develop these interview materials into a UROP Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship proposal.  By the end of this course, you will have a research network and a fellowship application ready for submission, helping you to launch your professional trajectory into the wider world.

Winner of the GSL Curriculum Innovation Grant (2022-2023)

RL 407/507: Mediterranean Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism is a body of theory exploring human-land relationships. Our course centers on Mediterranean ecocriticism to highlight environmental debates that are specific to Northern Italy and France. Theorists like Serenella Iovino, Bruno Latour, and Michel Serres will guide our analysis of Slow Food activism, COP-21 performance art, and wine-making during climate change. Because this course aims to prepare you for leadership in the field, our projects teach professionalization.

You will learn the five stages of grant writing through modules with visiting experts. Public speaking labs provide practice to give a compelling talk. By the end of this course, you will have a fellowship application and a conference paper ready for submission, helping you to launch your professional trajectory into the wider world.

Supported Award-Winning Student Research by Yasmin Diaz Mendias for the UO Food Studies Graduate Research Grant (2020-2021).

RL 407/507: Fascism and Neo-Fascism

How do you study something ugly? This course teaches argumentation and empathy in tandem to counteract the divisiveness of Fascist rhetoric. Debate labs show how to appeal to your audience’s logos (head), ethos (gut), and pathos (heart). Two in-class debates give you the opportunity to practice these techniques. Annotation exercises deconstruct Fascist propaganda and speeches, revealing how dictators manipulate emotion to maintain control. Critical reading exercises then extend these lessons to Neo-Fascism, teaching you to distinguish between news entertainment and trustworthy sources. Ultimately, this course teaches how to interpret primary sources and to craft compassionate arguments. Together, these two skills will prepare you to deliver a convincing case for ethical actions in real world scenarios.

Winner of the OHC Wulf Professorship in the Humanities (2019-2020)

ITAL 491/591: Italy and East Africa (taught in Italian)

“La mia casa è dove sono,” “My home is where I am.” Italo-Somali author Igiaba Scego’s famous assertion evokes our seminar’s focus: the cultural enmeshment of Africa and Europe. This advanced seminar, taught in Italian, uses art and historiography to connect Fascist Italian imperial projects in Ethiopia and Somalia with current migration and diaspora in multi-ethnic Italy. Two projects teach strategies for listening and connection, key tools for engaging with multiple perspectives.

In the Listening Series, you will introduce recorded lectures by Igiaba Scego, Gaia Giuliani, and Achille Mbembe, then lead our discussions of their talks. For the Writing Project, you will develop writing skills for forging professional networks. By corresponding with postcolonial artists and directors, you will learn how to create connection in writing. Ultimately, this course prepares you to collaborate on scholarship across borders.

Museums and monuments serve as touchstones for our debates. For their final project, students curate a museum exhibit to examine the problematics of the colonial archive and historical memory.

Take the virtual tour of Building Better Museums, a project by Robin Okumu