Romance Philology - 3-week, .5 unit course

Often regarded as a dusty discipline, if not entirely extinct, Romance Philology is, in fact, an exceptional opportunity to understand the linguistic, textual, and broader socio-cultural history of Europe, as well as other regions of the world (the so-called Romania nova and Romania perduta).

This course will take a historical approach to exploring the origins of the Romance languages (with a particular focus on Italian), their evolution, and their diffusion through the earliest vernacular texts. This will be done using at least two of the primary methodologies of Romance Philology: the "historical-linguistic" method and "textual criticism". As we will see, these are not merely "old approaches" but essential tools that help uncover the truth of texts and within texts. They also contribute to socio-cultural understanding through rigorous textual study - an especially relevant endeavor in an era of fake news, AI-generated content, and ideological approaches to language and literature.

After all, Romance Philology originally emerged as an academic discipline within the humanities, designed to address political and cultural issues with scientific rigor. Its core objective has always been to examine and uncover textual truth using appropriate methods, free from any ideological imposition.