History
Italian was first taught at the University of New England in 1974.
The following year it began its operations in Distance Education. As there had been a demand for Italian, the Italian section of the then Department of Romance Languages grew quickly to become a principal centre for Italian studies and, moreover, the principal provider in the distance education mode in Australia, a position which it still holds today.
By 1983 the Division was teaching a total of 215 students and this demand has continued over the years to reach about 300 in 2001.
The core Units of the Italian discipline of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics cover all the main periods of Italian literature, from the big trio of Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch of the 14th century, to the Renaissance, where the poetry of Michelangelo and the political and theatrical writings of Machiavelli are studied in detail, and to the works of such modern writers as Pirandello, Calvino and Umberto Eco.
In the first year the principal focus is on language, with different aspects of this becoming more important in the following two years. As for the literature component, the texts studied are intended as much to introduce students to aspects of contemporary Italian culture and thought as to particular writers.
Nor is it Italy alone that we are concerned with. To allow students to experience the significant presence of Italian culture in Australia, the literature program also includes a selection of Italo-Australian writers.
Italian is one of the richest cultures, in terms of the arts, of the modern world, and its roots go back to the culture of Rome and beyond. But the Italian language and culture are also of importance in Australia today. It has been calculated that there are over a million Australian citizens of Italian origin and, not surprisingly, Italian is the second most widely spoken language, after English, in this country. The Italian presence in Australia has created a demand for the study of Italian in the universities: a significant number of our students are and have been of Italian origin. But the presence of Italian culture in Australia has also quickened the interest of Australians of non Italian descent to familiarise themselves with a culture that has become increasingly important in the multicultural Australia of today.