The role of individuals in society, the desire to overcome human mortality, the nature of reality as we know it are recurring themes in the intellectual journey that shapes the Core Curriculum. They cross historical, cultural, and geographical borders, as well as disciplinary boundaries, as they find expression in literature, philosophy, music, and the visual arts. In what is one of its most distinctive and exciting features, the Core asks students to explore the complexity of the human experience across the full range of its linguistic and artistic manifestations. In this class, we will delve into the intertwined powers of literary fiction and musical expression. This is what happens when Literature Humanities goes to the opera.

About the professor: Giuseppe Gerbino joined the Columbia faculty in 2001. His research interests include the Italian madrigal, the relationship between music and language in the early modern period, early opera, and Renaissance theories of cognition and sense perception. He is the author of Canoni ad Enigmi: Pier Francesco Valentini e l'artificio canonico nella prima metà del Seicento (Rome, 1995), and Music and the Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2009), which won the 2010 Lewis Lockwood Award of the American Musicological Society. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Musicology, the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, The Musical Quarterly, Studi Musicali, and Il Saggiatore Musicale. He has received grants and fellowships from the American Musicological Society, the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti), the Renaissance Society of America, the Mellon Foundation (Newberry Library), the American Philosophical Society, and the Italian National Research Center (CNR). He served on the Governing Board of the Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities and the Advisory Committee of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti). He is also the co-director of the Marenzio Online Digital Edition, which has been funded by a three-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2013 Columbia honored him with the Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award. Established on a donation from trustee Gerry Lenfest (Law '58), the Lenfest award recognizes faculty who demonstrate unusual merit in scholarship, university citizenship, and professional involvement.

Prof. Gerbino chaired the Department from 2011 to 2014.