A Report on the Program's Activities -- Summer 2005

from the Director, Antonella D. Olson ad.olson@mail.utexas.edu Office: HRH 2.106B; (512) 471-5706 The Rome Study Program gives students of all majors the opportunity to spend six weeks in Rome, Italy, and to visit some of the most beautiful Italian sites on weekends. Some field trips are included in the cost of the program and others are optional. Italian families host the students, providing an in-depth experience of Italian life and language. Students can earn three or six credit hours. During the academic year preceding departure for Rome, the program offers participants seven meetings and a final orientation session on the U.T.-Austin campus.

Summer 2005

This year marked the 10th anniversary of the program. The program was honored by the presence of three guest speakers: Professor Daniela Bini (lecture on Italian opera), Professor Millicent Marcus (lecture on Italian Cinema), and the writer Clara Sereni. Thirty-four students from UT-Austin enrolled in this year's program. Douglas Biow, Professor, French and Italian, taught with Antonella Olson, Senior Lecturer, French and Italian. Students spent their class time (1 1/2 hours for each class) from Monday to Thursday in the Palazzo Antici-Mattei. The cost of the program was $3,500. The fee did not cover airfare, UT tuition and fees, or textbooks. It covered all the rest: housing and three meals per day, classrooms in the Palazzo Antici-Mattei, transportation from and to the airport, bus tickets, a monthly bus-card, admissions to Tivoli's Villa Adriana and Villa d' Este, a conference on the Sistine Chapel (Prof. Maria-Cristina Paoluzzi), admissions and guided visit to the Galleria Borghese (Prof. Maria-Cristina Paoluzzi), all the guides on the field trips: ancient Rome and Tivoli (Prof. Dustin Gish), Caravaggio's churches (Prof. Maria-Cristina Paoluzzi), Pompeii (Ms. Elena Tommasini); as well as several social gatherings among students, host families and faculty. This year, there was a remarkable increase in the scholarships assigned to deserving students participating in the program: $14,000. Our warmest gratitude to the College of Liberal Arts, the Office of the Provost, Prof. Daniela Bini, and the Italian Cultural Association.

Courses

ITL 312K: Second-Year Italian Language and Culture I. 3 credit hours, taught by Antonella Olson. (Enrollment: 18 students) 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 UT campus during a long semester, so that students are able to go on in the fall to ITL 312L, the fourth-semester course, with the same preparation. The city of Rome is a living laboratory in which students can improve their language skills and vocabulary while immersing themselves completely in Italian culture and the Italian environment. At the end of the session, the 312K students performed their interpretation of "I quattro veli di Kulala" by Stefano Benni.

ITC 349: Rome, Eternal City: Myths and Realities. 3 credit hours, taught by Douglas Biow. (Enrollment: 21 students) This is a very intense, demanding and excellent interdisciplinary course taught in English with focus on the powerful myths of Rome--political, religious, cultural--from antiquity to the present. An analysis of historical, literary, and cinematic works was added to the artistic and architectural resources of the city itself. Study was enriched by visits to sites such as the Forum, the Coliseum, the Galleria Borghese, visits to see several works by Caravaggio, etc. Students appreciated these field trips immensely and learned to look around themselves to discover and recognize the many treasures of Rome.

ITC 365: Contemporary Italian Culture. 3 credit hours, taught by Douglas Biow and Antonella Olson. (Enrollment: 14 students) This is an upper-division course taught in Italian with focus on major Italian cultural movements. Some of the students focused on writers of their choice, others analyzed selected stories by Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Clara Sereni. All of the students studied and performed two plays by Stefano Benni. The performance was impressive and the host-families--our audience-were very pleased with the final result.

School

The Palazzo Antici-Mattei has been used as classroom space since summer 1999. The Centro Studi Americani (CSA) is one of the major Italian libraries of American Studies and is situated in the majestic Palazzo Antici-Mattei, a seventeenth-century palace. Its rooms are frescoed by Tuscan and Flemish painters of the early 1600s. The CSA provided and will provide again next year a spacious, elegant and distinctive environment for our students.

Field Trips

Included in the program's cost: 1) Two orientation sessions in Rome; 2) two guided visits to ancient Roman sites; 3) a guided visit to the Museum of the Galleria Borghese; 4) a guided visit to Roman churches housing paintings by Caravaggio; 5) a visit to an Italian high school; 6) a guided visit to Tivoli (Villa Adriana, Villa D'Este) Optional field trips organized by the Director: 1) A three-day visit to Florence; 2) A three-day visit to Naples, Sorrento, Capri and Pompeii; 3) A three-day visit to a beach resort near Circeo.