Global Education Oregon Menu

China's transition to a market economy and return to the global community has huge impacts over the lives of its people, as well as the rest of the world. While covering other fields such as anthropology, political science, gender studies and urban studies, this course mostly employs a sociological perspective to examine issues in contemporary Chinese society.

The first level course will introduce you to the Italian language, covering the basic communicative tools that are useful for everyday interaction in Italy. You will be taught the linguistic system, and given strategies and techniques that facilitate the learning process.

This course builds on the linguistic skills covered in the previous levels, introducing new, more complex structures. You will be taught the linguistic system, and given strategies and techniques that facilitate the learning process.

This course builds on the linguistic skills covered in the previous levels, introducing the most complex structures of Italian language. You will be taught not only the linguistic system, but will also be given strategies and techniques that facilitate the learning process.

Building on skills learned at prior levels, this course is designed to develop language proficiency. You will be taught the linguistic system, and given strategies and techniques that facilitate the learning process.

This course provides review, synthesis, consolidation and elaboration of linguistic knowledge gained from lower-division courses. You will also explore some aspects of Italian culture and learn the Italian way of thinking and living by reading Italian newspapers.

This course focuses on Italian films after the Second World War as a mirror through which the student can penetrate Italian culture and way of life. Starting with the years following the Second World War (“Roma città aperta”, 1946), to more recent productions such as La Vita è Bella (1997), motion pictures will allow the student to become familiar with several aspects of Italian experience in the second part of 20th century. Lectures, film viewings, discussion of films and readings, student research and presentations will be relevant parts of class sessions.

Author Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was born in Cuba to Italian parents, and grew up in Sanremo on the Via Francigena. He studied botany at Pavia University but secretly wrote fiction, and worked as a journalist, novelist, and resistance fighter in World War II. This course focuses on selections from Calvino’s writings in various genres including his stories that attempt to express scientific theories such as quantum physics in literary form. Other pieces recreate conversations between Marco Polo and Khubilai Khan.

“Like sailing, gardening, politics and poetry, journalism is a craft of place; it works by the light of local knowledge," said James Carey. The pre-structure of Italian journalism is different from that of American journalism and the journalistic tradition, as well as the state of the media of a country, has much to tell us about that culture. Media products do not necessarily mirror reality, but the media themselves, as a powerful symbolic agent that creates reality, are an important piece of the mirror image of society.

Four credits - Graded or Pass/No Pass.In this seminar, you will explore the world of architecture-in-motion. Apart from windows, doors and vertical conveyances, most buildings have few moving parts and are conceived of and built as static artifacts. Driven by issues of sustainability and the desire for adaptive control of building environments, kinetic architecture has emerged as an exciting sub-discipline in design and construction communities. Course work will include in-class presentations, site visits and field trips, and case studies.