Courses in Arezzo—2009
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- Comparative Literature
- History
- Art History
- Italian Language & Culture
General Program Requirement
Class and course-related trip attendance is mandatory. All students are expected to observe the guidelines laid out in the Code of Conduct for University of Rochester Study Abroad Students, available from the Center for Study Abroad.
Comparative Literature
CLT 207B/IT276
Italy: A Cultural Mosaic in an Intercultural Context (4 credits)
Instructors: A. Basu, F. Siniscalco, D. Stocchi-Perucchio, D. Walsh
This course consists of two segments with two units each, taught by visiting faculty from the University of Rochester and the University of Siena/Arezzo. Study-related visits enhance classroom instruction.
Segment A: (2 credits)
Science and Society in Italy through Archeology and Geology
The fall semester of 2009 offers a conjunction of disciplines and an overlap of lectures in geology, archaeology, and architectural history. Rome is famous for its monumental stone architecture; to understand the exploitation of natural resources and their creative use, students will study aspects of the geology of Italy. While all sites will be seen in their specialized use of stone, the two cities of the South, Pompeii and Herculaneum, will be studied in relation to their destruction in 79 CE by Mount Vesuvius. Issues of the settlement in the area, ancient and modern, are considered. The nature of the destruction, somewhat different in these two sites, will be examined as the agent of the remarkable subsequent preservation. A subtext for this semester will be the way science and humanities may be brought together as an academic enterprise.
Unit 1: Archeology and Architecture: Tuscany, Rome, and the South
Unit 2: Volcanos and the Environment: Rome, Vesuvius, and Tuscany
Segment B: (2 credits)
Experience Medieval and Modern Italy
Unit 3: In Terra d’Arezzo on Dante’s Footsteps
Unit 4: Representing Italy
Unit 1: Archeology and Architecture: Tuscany, Rome, and the South
Instructor: David Walsh
Dept. of Art and Art History
University of Rochester
Course Description
Lectures in Arezzo. Students will be introduced to architectural form using buildings from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and post-Renaissance in and around Arezzo. The objective is to develop a vocabulary of terms that forms the basis for architectural analysis and interpretation. The relation of the physical structure and its articulation in decoration will be the central theme, so that a building can be seen as a coherent whole which conveys meaning for its period and ours. This experience prepares students for the extended analysis of Roman buildings examined on the field trips to Rome and Pompeii.
Lectures in Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum. Work on the field trip will consist of on-site lectures and discussions of Roman architecture. In Rome, we will look at the early history of the city and its culture with a special view toward the origins and development of architecture that is reflective of the uses, customs, and values of the Romans. Here, we can see the inventiveness and expressiveness of an architecture of spaces by means of the layout of plans and articulation of architectural forms. The central themes in the architecture of Rome will be its public buildings and spaces. At Pompeii and Herculaneum, the level of preservation allows the closest analysis of ancient public and domestic spaces; houses, often standing to their full height can be seen, for instance, with some original furniture and wall decoration. So much archaeological evidence allows us to experience something of Roman daily life.
Unit 2. Volcanos and the Environment: Rome, Vesuvius, and Tuscany
Instructor: Asish Basu
Dept. of Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Rochester
Volcanic Fields and Features
Course Description
In this part of the mosaic course, the students at the Arezzo program will learn aspects of volcanology, its environmental impact and the geodyamics of the Mediterranean region that caused, for example, the birth of the Roman Volcanic Province, extending from southern Tuscany to the city of Rome and farther south, parallel to the margin of the Tyrrhenean Sea. The general connection between the history of ancient settlement of this region and its geological environment is intriguing. For example, for Pompeii and Herculaneum, the volcanic deposits on which they were built and the ash and the “volcanic mud” under which they were buried are the results of the activity of Vesuvius.
Thick sheets of lithified (indurated) pyroclastic volcanic rocks, so common in this region, are interesting for geological, archaeological and historical view-points, as they tend to form small plateaus surrounded by steep cliffs upon which several historical towns , such as Pitigliano, Bagnoregio, and Orvieto, that we will visit, were constructed. We will also visit the Bolsena volcanic crater, part of the Roman Volcanic Province, and the largest such crater in Europe. Moderate degrees of welding make these volcanic rocks, called tuffs , excellent building and monument material which have been used since Etruscan and Roman times.
We will visit museums and laboratories in Florence to examine various types of volcanic and indigenous rocks important in architecture and archaeology of the region. The “ micro-architectural make-up “of these rocks will be the focus of our laboratory study under the polarizing light microscopy, to observe the constituent minerals and their textures and structures that are important for understanding the material properties of these stones. In field excursions, we will see the active fury of a shallow, dormant volcano in Solfatara, part of the Campi Flegrei volcanic area, in its jet steams and sulfur-rich fumes, as well as the frozen lavas and the lithified rocks from the historical eruptions of Vesuvius. In another trip from Arezzo, we will observe how the important architectural stone travertine, that was used to build the Colosseum in Rome, is found in its natural occurrence and formed in thermal springs.
Unit 3. In Terra d’Arezzo on Dante’s Footsteps
Instructor: Donatella Stocchi-Perucchio
Dept. of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of Rochester
Death of Bonconte da Montefeltro
by Luca Ferrotti
Course Description
The unit aims at an exploration of the Aretine territory along the historical and imaginative trajectories delineated in Dante’s own poem, The Divine Comedy, in Dante’s biographies, in the testimonies of those travelers who choose Dante as their guide to the discovery of Italy, and in popular culture.
Along these trajectories we will concentrate on particularly significant points of intersection of history, literature, spirituality, and art, both medieval and Renaissance, One is the Church of Saint Francis in Arezzo with the fresco cycle on the Legend of the Cross by Piero della Francesca. Another is the Casentino Valley, with its medieval castles, its historical and legendary vestiges of Dante’s times, and its famous characters immortalized in the Comedy. A third is and the Sanctuary of La Verna which, along with Assisi, is celebrated by Dante in his hagiography of Saint Francis.
Together with Christian legends codified by tradition, Piero della Francesca’s cycle evokes crucial turning points in the history of Christianity such as the reign of the Emperor Constantine, which is a steady object of Dante’s critical reflection.
The Casentino Valley is one of the most relevant places in the life of Dante first as a Florentine citizen with a prominent status in the city political and military life and then as a Florentine exile who found hospitality in the Castle of Poppi, strongholds of the Counts Guidi. Casentino is also, if not more, relevant for the stories that Dante’s literary imagination consecrated to posterity: among them the invective against the inhabitants of the Valley marked by the course of the Arno River, the story of Master Adam, the falsifier of Florentine currency at the Castle of Romena, and the death of Bonconte da Montefeltro at Campaldino. It is plausible to envision the exile Dante right there, in the castle of Poppi overlooking that very battlefield, writing about the momentous battle of 1289 that saw him as a protagonist on the side of Guelph Florence, and the mysterious disappearance of one of his major opponents, the Ghibelline leader Bonconte, whose soul he encounters in Purgatory.
In addition to maintaining alive the lore of these medieval times, the Castle of Poppi, one of the best preserved medieval castles of Tuscany, houses a rich library with a precious collection of medieval manuscripts and early printed texts. Visiting this library and learning abut its history, intertwined as it is with the history of Tuscany and of the Italian Unification in the XIX Century, provides an opportunity to reflect on both the transmission of culture from antiquity, though the Middle Ages, to modernity, and on Italian history.
After the descent in the Casentino Valley, depicted by Dante as a land of bloody conflicts and populated by evildoers, the ascent to the mountain of La Verna, one of the highest peaks of Tuscany, allows a refreshing and a thought provoking encounter with Franciscan spirituality and message. That encounter will be facilitated by both Dante’s text and the conversations with Franciscans friars about the meaning of such message at the time of Francis and now. Another vehicle of understanding will be art. While the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi contains treasures of medieval art that visually narrate the hagiography of the Saint, the Basilica of La Verna contains a magnificent collection of Della Robbia plates that interpret Franciscan theology in the artistic language of the Renaissance.
The unit instructor, Donatella Stocchi Perucchio, is native of Arezzo, and maintains both affective and intellectual ties with her territory of origin. In the course of these visits, she will introduce students to various people who are both personal friends and collaborators and who are willing to share their multiple expertise in the interest of intercultural exchange and understanding.
Unit 4. Representing Italy
Instructor: Federico Siniscalco
Dip. Letterature Moderne e Scienze dei Linguaggi
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia di Arezzo
Course Description
Since the very beginning of travel, and especially during the period of the “Grand Tour” in the 18th Century, Northern European and American travelers have come to Italy to study the arts and the customs of this ancient land. Artists and writers kept careful diaries and sketchbooks of what they saw, and often made Italy the subject of their creative works. Today, mass tourists shoot endless numbers of photos and videos, but barely have the time to really see what surrounds them. Study abroad students, potentially the real heirs of the grand tourists, have more time to study the local culture and artworks, but seldom attempt to register their observations in an organized fashion so that others may partake in them. The aim of this mosaic section is to offer students an introduction to some of the theories of cultural representations and to examine representative examples taken from literary texts, travel journals, paintings, photographs, and films, so that they may better document their experience while in Italy.
As a final assignment the students will be asked to submit, at their own choice, a journal entry, a short story, a photographic essay, or a short video commenting on their Italian experience.
Prior to the beginning of the course the students should read Tuscany in Mind, by Alice Leccese Powers (Vintage Books, 2005). Supplemental reading material will be distributed in class.
History
HIS 228/IT 228/CLT 207 C
Italy from Napoleon to the First Republic (1796-1948) (4 credits)
Instructor: Gregory Conti
University of Perugia, Italy
Course Description
The peninsula of Italy has a history that goes back at least 2500 years. But the state of Italy, founded in 1861, is younger than the United States. At the intersection of these two facts lies the main theme of our journey from the Napoleonic invasion of Italy to the approval of the constitution of the Republic of Italy: the difficulty faced by the political leaders of united Italy in getting its citizens to identify with the Italian state.
Our main source of information and analysis on the journey will be the recently published history of united Italy, The Force of Destiny by the British historian Christopher Duggan. But Duggan’s book takes its title from the opera by Giuseppe Verdi and we will follow his lead in drawing on literary and artistic sources to broaden and deepen our view of the evolving conflict between the ancient Italian culture and the young Italian state. Our examination of the Risorgimento and the legacy of unification will be enriched by reading of the novel, The Leopard¸ and the viewing of some scenes from the film version. We will also study and listen to another Risorgimento opera by Verdi, Nabucco, and visit the seat of the papal government of Umbria, which was overthrown by popular revolt and plebiscite in favor of annexation to Italy. Finally, our view of the Risorgimento will also benefit from eyewitness accounts of two American writers, Margaret Fuller and John Greenleaf Whittier, who were on the scene of the Roman Republic of 1849 and the Perugia uprising of 1859.
In the second half of the semester we will turn our attention to the rise and fall of the fascist regime and the birth of the republic. Here again we will supplement Duggan’s account with a look at the Futurist manifesto and paintings and sculpture produced by the movement, film footage of the Duce’s speeches to the masses of his cheering supporters, and two accounts (one fictional and one historical, one by an Italian Jew and the other by an Italian Catholic) of the fascist regime’s persecution of the Jews. Our 150-year-long journey will end with a look at the Italian Constitution of 1948 and its uncertain attempt to construct a democratic institutional framework that would attract the allegiance of the its citizens.
Art History
AH 244/IT 244
Renaissance Art & Social Changes in Tuscany (4 credits)
Instructor: Monica Capacci
University of Rochester
Course Description
This course surveys the history of Western art from late Medieval styles to Renaissance art, focusing particularly on the social, political and religious contexts in which works of art were created. Topics will include patronage and the art market, the revival and influence of the antique, theories of perspective and design, and changes in the status of the artist and the role of women in Renaissance society. Through the examination of major monuments, artists and movements, students will gain a greater understanding of the general development of art in the Western world, as well as a familiarity with the basic vocabulary and methods of art analysis. Art will be presented as being an integral part of the lives, times and places of the artists and people who produced, commissioned and enjoyed them.
Each stylistic phase will be set in a time and a place where the arts reached their cultural climax and where the artistic productivity can provide a representative cross-section of an important period. The concept is not to present a chronologically complete history, but to select and study the major styles and works within the periods and cultures that produced them. The cities of Arezzo and Florence will be the classroom as students study the masters, explore museums, churches and public buildings analyzing their historical significance.
Italian Language and Culture
IT 111: Elementary Italian (4 credits)
Instructor: Irene Schiatti
University of Siena/Arezzo
Course Description
An intensive training in communication skills and an introduction to basic Italian grammar, with emphasis on speaking and comprehension. Language training is geared towards practical needs. The second component teaches how the language works in terms of grammatical structures and linguistic principles.
IT 153: Accelerated Italian (4 credits)
Instructor: Gloria Convertito
Accademia Britannica
Course Description
The course enhances comprehension and communication skills as well as knowledge of Italian grammar. Emphasis is on reading, vocabulary building, and perfecting oral and written skills.
IT 150: Culture in Context: A Practicum in Local Traditions, Peace Studies and Community Involvement (2 credits)
Instructor: Donna Logan
Fac. di Lettere e Filosofia di Arezzo
Course Description
Designed as a practicum in Local traditions, Peace Studies and Community involvement, this component of the program offers a unique hands-on cultural experience within the city, its surrounding territory, and its community. It brings students in direct contact with city life and traditions and takes advantage of developments on the local scene as they arise. It promotes students' involvement in a wide range of events and activities such as learning about medieval jousting, practicing tandem-speaking with local university students, participating in international workshops in Peace Studies. Other activities include visits and excursions to industrial and agricultural sites to foster understanding of the Aretine industrial and agricultural economy-such as the manufacturing of gold, design clothing, and furniture as well as the production of wine and olive oil.
