The Universal Items widget uses this I think: class="widget_core_coll_item_list"

Then on the widget itself, you have the option to put a:
CSS Class: and DOM ID:

You can start from there without opening any .php files.
Try to target your anchor links for the titles in CSS, that should do the trick, something like:
.widget_core_coll_item_list > a { }

Or if you entered a CSS Class or DOM ID, then you can use that.

Hope that helps!

Unfortunately that doesn't do anything to isolate the title from the body post.

The way around it is to style the title and the block itself using <li> and then style the content with the widget-supplied class "item_content". That's sort of like rowing upstream, but it works all right.

Also, widget doesn't automatically render a "Read More" or permalink at the bottom of each post.

see more here: http://mostmodernist.com

The middle column is the widget set to other posts from the same blog. As you can see there, the widget also duplicates the main post. Is there a way to have it skip that?

.colItem2 a{
color:#f00;
}

.colItem2 .item_content a{
color:#0f0;
}

Non-duplication is a smidge of a bitch, you'd need to feed the widget "page=1? 2 else 1" ... ish

¥