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Summary of the Program's 1999
Activities
Courses
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ITL 312K Second-Year
Italian -- three
credit hours, taught by Antonella Olson.
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The focus of this course is
on a partial review of first year grammar with emphasis on listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. As in the past, it had a very
similar curriculum to the ITL 312K offered on the U.T. campus
during a long semester, so that students are able to go on in
the Fall in ITL 312L, fourth semester, with the same preparation.
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The city of Rome and Italy
are a living laboratory in which students can improve their language
skills, vocabulary and immerse themselves completely into the
Italian culture and environment. At the end of the session, the
312K students staged and performed one of the readings analyzed
in class, a short story written by Stefano Benni. The host-families
attended and were pleased to see their performance.
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ITC 349 : Rome, Eternal City: Myths and Realities
-- three credit hours, taught by Guy Raffa.
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This is an interdisciplinary
course taught in English with focus on the powerful myths of
Rome-political, religious, cultural-from antiquity to the present.
The analysis of historical, literary, and cinematic works was
added to the artistic and architectural resources of the city
itself.
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The study was enriched by
visits to sites such as the Forum, Coliseum, Vatican Museums,
Galleria Borghese, etc. Students appreciated immensely the field-trips
and learned how to look around themselves to discover and recognize
the many treasures of Rome.
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ITL 365: Contemporary Italian Culture -- three
credit hours, taught by Guy Raffa and Antonella Olson.
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This is an upper-division
course taught in Italian with focus on major Italian cultural
movements of the past three decades. Through selected works by
writers, playwrights, film makers, and cultural critics, the
course examined Italy's recent past to assess the challenges
it faces at the dawn of a new millennium. Students read works
of authors such as Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo
Pasolini, Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino.
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They also studied two short
plays by Dacia Maraini and Dario Fo and presented them in a final
performance along with three other representations created by
some of the students and based upon their reflections on the
material studied in class. As it has been in the past with students
of the '96, '97, '98 Rome Study Program, this year's student
performance was impressive and the students' commitment remarkable.
The host-families--our audience--were enthusiastic, once again.
School
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The Palazzo Antici-Mattei
was used as classroom space for the first time this year. In
fact, both the assistant and the director looked for a new school
last summer after being notified that the Teatro 20º Secolo--the
school used since 1996-would undergo a restoration. They found
the Centro Studi Americani (CSA)-one of the major Italian libraries
of American Studies--situated in the majestic Palazzo Antici-Mattei,
a distinguished baroque Roman palace. Its rooms are decorated
with frescoes by Tuscan and Flemish painters of the early seventeenth
century. The CSA provided, and will provide again next year,
a spacious, elegant and distinctive environment for our students.
Field-trips
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A . Included in the program's
cost:
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1) two orientation sessions
in Rome;
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2) a guided visit to San Peter's
(Vatican City) and surroundings;
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3) a guided visit to the Museum
Galleria Borghese where the majority of Bernini's masterpieces
are found;
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4) a visit with Italian high-school
students to Tarquina, an Etruscan town near Rome;
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5)
a guided visit to the studios of Cinecittà, the Italian
Hollywood.
B. Optional field-trips
organized by the director:
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1) a three-day visit to Venice,
where the students enjoyed, among many other things, the international
modern art exhibit, the Biennale; the Academia-with masterpieces
of the major painters of the Veneto, plus an exposition of Leonardo
da Vinci's drawings; the Peggy Guggenheim Collection-with works
of major modern artists, plus a temporary exhibit of Futurist
maestros;
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2) a three-day trip to the
Amalfi Coast with a guided tour of Pompeii, a day on the beach
in Positano, and a tour of Naples. A two-day visit to Florence
took place the last week-end of the program.
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Guests
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Dacia Maraini, the 1999 winner
of Premio Strega-the most prestigious Italian literary award-and
author of one of the plays performed by ITL 365 students, accepted
the director's invitation and came to the CSA to talk to the
students and answer their questions.
The program's participants
were invited to two lectures she gave during a series of cultural
events in Rome.
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The program was intellectually
stimulating also in view of the conferences sponsored by the
CSA such as "Cinema Americano Contemporaneo: Immagini, Cultura
e Storia degli Stati Uniti" with Paula Rabinowitz and bell
hooks among the speakers, and "The New American Writers
Series" with Fae Myenne Ng.
The program was also honored
by the visit of the Chair of the French and Italian Department,
Professor Dina Sherzer, who had meetings with the CSA's director
and president and spent time with students in and outside the
classroom.
| PHOTO
ALBUM SUMMER 1999 |
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