Summer 2003 program participants at Villa d'Este, Tivoli

 A Report on the Program's Activities

 

Summer 2003
from the Director, Antonella D. Olson
ad.olson@mail.utexas.edu
Office: HRH 2.106B; (512) 471-5531

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.

 

Program Director:

Antonella D. Olson

Assistant on UT campus:

Ruth Ortiz

Assistant in Rome:

Robert Olson

 Summer 2003

  Thirty-three students from the University of Texas at Austin enrolled in this year's program. Professor Daniela Bini taught with Antonella Olson. Students spent their class time (1 1/2 hours for each class) Mondays through Thursdays. The cost of the program was $2,750. The fee did not cover airfare, UT tuition and fees, or textbooks. It covered everything else: housing and three meals per day, classrooms in the Palazzo Antici-Mattei, transportation from the airport to Rome, bus tickets, a monthly bus pass, admissions to Tivoli's Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este, two conferences on Italian art and Italian politics, a guided visit to Cinecittà, a visit to an Italian high school, all the professional guides hired for field trips: ancient Rome, the Caravaggio tour, Tivoli, Naples, Pompeii, and several social gatherings among students, host families and faculty. The College of Liberal Arts, Daniela Bini, the Rome Study Program, and the Italian Cultural Association gave a total of $8,600 in scholarships to deserving students.

 Courses

 

ITL 312K:
Second-Year Italian Language and Culture I.

3 credit hours, taught by Antonella Olson.
(Enrollment: 12 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 in ITL 312L--the fourth semester--with the same preparation. The city of Rome is a living laboratory in which students can improve their language skills, vocabulary and immerse themselves completely into Italian culture and the Italian environment. For the first time, the textbook In viaggio was used. 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 Daniela Bini.
(Enrollment: 29 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. Analysis of historical, literary, and cinematic works was added to exploration of the artistic and architectural resources of the city itself. The study was enriched by visits to sites such as the Forum, Coliseum, a Caravaggio tour, the Galleria Borghese, etc. Students appreciated immensely the field trips and learned from Daniela how to look around themselves to discover and recognize the many treasures of Rome.

 

ITC 365:
Contemporary Italian Culture.

3 credit hours, taught by Daniela Bini and Antonella Olson.
(Enrollment: 20 students)

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, filmmakers, and cultural critics, the course examined Italy's recent past. Students read works of such authors as Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italo Calvino, G.G. Belli, and Trilussa. They also studied one short play by Dario Fo and "Ti ho sposato per allegria" by Natalia Ginzburg and presented a reading of these works in a final performance. 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 distinct environment for our students.

 Field Trips

 

Included in the program's cost:

1) Two orientation sessions in Rome;
2) two guided visits to the 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 the film studios of Cinecittà;
7) a guided visit to Tivoli (Villa Adriana, Villa D'Este)

Optional field trips organized by the Director:

1) A three-day visit to Naples, Sorrento, Capri and Pompeii;
2) A three-day visit to a beach resort near Circeo
3) A two-day visit to Florence.

 

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