Semester Teaching Opportunities

Application Process

The Office of Global Education is currently accepting applications from Georgetown faculty for the position of Faculty in Residence at Georgetown in Florence: Villa Le Balze for the Academic Year 2025-2026.  The deadline to apply is January 15th, 2025.  Further information about eligibility requirements, as well as a complete list of application materials and instructions, is available below.

Anticipated Timeline for 2025-2026

• January 15, 2025 – Application deadline
• January 22, 2025 – Notification of offer
• February 1, 2025 – Commitment deadline

Eligibility

• Applicants may be full-time (tenure-line or non-tenure line) or part-time (adjunct) professors, but must have taught undergraduate courses for a minimum of 4 semesters at Georgetown (at the time of application).
• Applicants may not have served as Faculty in Residence at Villa Le Balze within the past 4 years (at the time of application).
• Preferred applicants will show a demonstrated interest and a history of involvement in programs and experiences related to undergraduate student formation, experiential learning, or global education.
• Some preference will be given to faculty who have not previously taught in residence at Villa Le Balze.

Required Application Materials

• Statement of interest outlining why you wish to serve as Faculty in Residence and what unique contributions you believe your experience or expertise will offer. Please also indicate your preferred term abroad (Fall, Spring, or no preference).
• Proposal for two courses, including a detailed description of course topics, learning outcomes, and assessment methods. Each course proposal should also indicate which academic department will assign credit for the course, and include any field-based or experiential learning components that make use of the Villa’s location and resources (1-2 pages per course). Faculty can also consider proposing one course that is currently offered at Georgetown, however, the course should still be able to draw connections to the Villa’s location and related academic themes.
• Proposed Alternative Academic Assignment (OPTIONAL). Georgetown Faculty in Residence at Villa Le Balze have the opportunity to propose a substantive project (e.g., lecture series, symposium, conference, etc.) to replace one course from their teaching load. Selected projects, to be developed in consultation with and approved by the Office of Global Education and Villa Le Balze, will contribute to the Villa’s academic profile or its living and learning community in a defined, measurable way. Proposal Narrative Guidelines.
• Full CV, including all courses taught at Georgetown.
• Letter of support from the Chair of the applicant’s department that expresses willingness to release the applicant from teaching during the requested term (if selected) and provides the contact information of the administrator with whom OGE can coordinate if the applicant is selected.

Applicants should submit their materials in one combined PDF file to the Office of Global Education (globaleducation@georgetown.edu ) with the subject line “VLB Faculty in Residence Application – LASTNAME”. 

Current & Past Faculty in Residence Courses

HIST-2104 Italy’s Muslim Empire (Spring 2024)

In the nineteenth century Italian imperialism stretched from Somalia to China to Australia. This
course considers Italy’s imperial project through a variety of vantage points, including race,
gender, class, nationalism, and international relations. Students explore how and why Italy
devised a colonial empire, and how the people under Italian colonial rule confronted and
resisted such subjugation. The course pays particular attention to Italy’s Muslim subjects in
North and East Africa, and it probes the legacies and aftermath of Italy’s Muslim Empire in
Italian politics and society today.

HIST-2602 The Mediterranean in History: from highway to barrier (Spring 2024)

This course explores the transformation of the Mediterranean Sea from a shared space of
mobility, coexistence, and interaction in the early modern period – when Venetians lived in
Constantinople – into a highly policed and militarized zone in our own day. The course
concludes with reflections on the historical echoes of Italy’s crisis of migration and detention.
Students explore the political, economic, and social history of the Mediterranean world through
works of film, fiction, and primary sources.

MUSC 2611 Audio Decameron (Fall 2023)

In the mid-14th century, a group of ten young storytellers climbed the hills of Fiesole.
They were seven women and three men, all trying to escape the pandemic ravaging
their home city, Florence. Living in quarantine just steps from where our classes will
meet, they took turns telling stories. Boccaccio set down their tales in The Decameron.
In “Audio Decameron,” we’ll explore Florence and Fiesole through a series of storytelling
challenges rooted in the sonic environments of this place. How might the sounds of the streets,
markets, gardens and chapels have reverberated in the minds of artists through the centuries?
Like Boccaccio’s storytellers, students will be challenged throughout the semester to rely upon
their wit, and their ears, as they work together to create a growing series of short, vivid,
sound-rich stories. These stories will be delivered live in class over soundscapes that students
find and record locally.

ITAL-383 Dante’s Afterlife in Popular Culture (2022)

This course has a twofold goal: reading selected cantos from Dante’s Divine Comedy and exploring its rewritings and adaptations in popular culture including literature, comics, cinema, rock/pop songs, television and the visual arts. The course entertains the question of why and how Dante’s Divine Comedy, written seven-hundred years ago, still continues to inspire creative artists in all fields of the arts and beyond. From Milton to Dan Brown and Matthew Pearl, from Salvador Dali to Sandow Birk and Go Nagai, and from Chaucer to David Fincher, artists have adapted and referenced the Divine Comedy as the most relevant text depicting afterlife in all ages and cultures. This course combines close readings of selected passages from Dante’s masterpiece with their analyses vis-à-vis with the many texts, songs, video games, traditional and graphic novels and movies which it has inspired. Some of the course’s investigative questions include: how does the original text address issues that are still relevant to today’s society and individuals? How do adaptations and rewritings of Dante’s Commedia address issues current to our own world that were not addressed or were addressed differently in the original text? How is Dante still good for you today?

GERM-043 Witches in History, Literature, and Film (2021)

The course investigates what is clearly one of the most disturbing and inexplicable occurrences in human history. Unlike the Holocaust, to which the witch hunts are frequently compared, the persecution of witches cannot be viewed as a relatively brief and unusually violent historical anomaly, since it continued over several hundred years; they cannot be explained in the context of national specificity since they spanned almost the entire European continent and migrated to early America; nor can these events be blamed on any single “madman”. As such then, witch persecution defies simplistic explanations and thus lends itself particularly well to the kinds of investigation this course intends.

CPLT-180 Lure of Italy: Italy in European Travel Literature (2021)

This course explores the unique attraction that Italy has held for those hailing from lands north of the Alps over the past centuries. In particular, the course focuses on how this “spell of Italy” is reflected in travel writing by German, British, and French writers, with an emphasis on the German tradition. Travel literature, in this context, is understood broadly to encompass a variety of genres from letters, travel accounts, and guidebooks to fictional works such as novels, novellas, and poems. Given that travel writing is inherently transcultural and transnational, the course lends itself to comparative analyses of such central issues as national identity, cultural practices, gender, and class in European travel literature.

 ECON-230 From Emigration to Immigration: the Italian Case (2020)

In this course students will examine economic theories on the determinants and impacts of international and internal migration. They will explore these issues from the view of an origin country and of a destination country, with an emphasis on the political economy implications of emigration and immigration.

ENGL-273 Humanities Encounters (2019)

This course explores the value and future of the humanities, asking questions both about their intrinsic value and their value for approaching global and local problems. How does the study of the humanities in college courses relate to what is called “the engaged humanities” or to the “public humanities”? The course confronts such issues head-on, offering students a grounding in approaches, both old and new, to the humanities and to the way humanities-trained students can contribute towards solving the real-world problems that accompany climate change, cultural conflict, and the development of artificial intelligence. We begin with Petrarch (“the first great humanist”) and end with Primo Levi and Elena Ferrante, supplemented by portions of A Cyborg Manifesto (1991) by Donna Haraway and The Posthuman (2013) by Rosi Braidotti, among other readings. Does the study of the humanities create better human beings? Are there specific humanities methodologies that can better the world? Who are the humanities meant for? Why are the humanities believed essential to democracy? Is there room for the humanities in a posthuman world in which technology divides the haves from the have-nots, the initiates from the uninitiated? And, finally, how does the study of the humanities encourage us to explore our own encounters with difference, with new readings, and with new ideas?

IPOL-210 Borders and Security Concerns (2019)

This is an innovative on-line course that will utilize a multidisciplinary approach to explore the meaning and experience of borders and related security concerns throughout the world.  We will analyze historical and modern forces that shape borders, and then study how borders affect the economic, social, and political fabric of countries. This class will focus on border issues in the EU, but we will also look at borders throughout the world.

ITAL-350 The Other Renaissance. Women Writers & Artists (2019)

“Did women have a Renaissance?” Joan Kelly polemically asked in 1977, only to answer in the negative: “there was no ‘renaissance’ for women, at least not during the Renaissance.” The extraordinary amount of scholarship conducted in last forty years, however, allows us to provide a more nuanced answer. While women’s status did not improve dramatically during the Renaissance, it is now clear that many factors—from the development of the printed press to the rediscovery of Plato—led to a more positive view of women’s role in society and of their very nature. One particularly fascinating aspect of this phenomenon is the unprecedented emergence of women writers, a distinctive Italian feature. Women also explored other forms of creativity and affirmed themselves as composers, painters, and actresses.

In this course you will explore some of the protagonists of this extraordinary season, from the humanists of the late fifteenth century—such as Isotta Nogarola and Cassandra Fedele—to Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia who in 1678 became the first woman in the world to receive a university degree.

THEO-142 The Papacy (2018)

In this course, you will examine the papacy’s relation to the church and the world and explore its influence in Italy. You will discover ecclesial politics inside and outside of Italy, the papacy’s international reach and influence, its checkered history, and its relevance today. Studying the papacy involves theology, history, sociology, and politics. The relationship between Italy and the papacy has a long history, even though the pope was not always located in Rome. During some periods, the pope was a minor player in church affairs but for most of its history, the papacy has played a key role in culture, religion, the arts, and politics. The pope leads the Roman Catholic Church, but also commands attention and respect from the rest of the world, religious or not. The course will include studying the Holy See’s political and diplomatic structure, its relation to world affairs, its influence on national church communities, in particular, the United States, and the figures who have occupied the papal office, beginning with Saint Peter until Pope Francis today.

GOVT-282 Italian Politics in Comparative Perspective Since 1796 (2018)

The history of Italy since 1796 provides fascinating examples of a diverse set of issues and phenomena at the heart of politics, including state formation, revolution, war, fascism, empire, democracy, political parties and coalitions, welfare capitalism, and social movements. This course will explore Italian history from the perspective of comparative political science, using the case of Italy to help students understand more general political dynamics. The course will alternate sessions discussing readings on general political phenomena with sessions exploring the corresponding periods or events in Italian history. The course would not attempt any systematic integration of Italian political history with Italian cultural or intellectual history, but it will give students flexibility to write papers on how these or other dimensions of history relate to Italian politics. The major course assignment, in addition to readings, discussions, and short papers on the weekly readings, will be a 15-page research paper on Italian politics, whether contemporary or historical.

ENGL-119 Shakespeare in Italy (2017)

The course will focus on five plays by Shakespeare set in Italy.  While it will consider the degree to which the setting in Italy (or Rome) impacts our understanding of the play, it will also acknowledge that these plays were written not to portray the history and culture of Italy, but to be performed on a stage for an audience in Shakespeare’s London.

Students will be asked to read and discuss the plays carefully, to write four papers on assigned topics, and to perform excerpts from them during the semester.  The course will conclude with a performance by the students of a longer extract from a play by Shakespeare for the faculty, the staff, and their classmates at the Villa.

IPOL-316 The Italian Wars: Causes, Conduct, and Consequences (2017)

The change from medieval to modern methods in the art of war is closely related to the general transformation of European civilization during the Renaissance. The revival of interest in ancient history and literature had a distinct effect on military theory and practice. This course focuses on the events, trends, and personalities of the Italian Wars (such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia, Caterina Sforza) to illustrate the broader theoretical and conceptual approaches designed to understand war in all of its manifestations. Utilized as an extended case study, the Italian Wars will be examined through an interdisciplinary prism. A recurrent point of discussion will be the extent to which these Renaissance wars provide insight into contemporary conflicts and issues.

ITAL-372 Dante and the Medieval Mind in Florence (2016)

This course covers Dante’s works from his early Rime and Vita Nuova to the Divine Comedy. Dante wrote his youthful lyrics in Florence, dialoguing with other local poets such as Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi and Cino da Pistoia, while he composed his masterpiece during his exile from his native city of Florence. In his poetry he discusses topics of love, philosophy and politics within a Florentine, Italian and European scope. This course will devote special attention to the history, art and politics of Florence and Tuscany in its medieval European context. A journey of self-discovery, Dante’s Divine Comedy offers a remarkable panorama of the late Middle Ages through one man’s poetic vision of the afterlife. However, we continue to read and study the poem not only to learn about the thought and culture of medieval and early modern Europe but also because many of the philosophical and moral issues confronting Dante and his age are no less important to individuals and societies today. Personal and civic responsibilities, governmental accountability, church-state relations, economics and social justice, literary and artistic influences, benefits and limitations of interdisciplinarity ‐‐ these are some of the themes that will frame our discussion of the Divine Comedy. This course, specifically refashioned for the students at Villa Le Balze, represents a unique opportunity for a study of Dante’s poetry in and around the places where it was set.

ITAL-373 Italian Actors and Actresses (2016)

Italian actors and actresses: art, profession and migration. From the 16th to the 18th century many Italian actors and actresses (both theater and opera performers) traveled, or migrated to different European countries (and royal courts). This is an important phenomenon, not very well known or studied, of migration for work and cultural cross-­pollination that will provide our students a deeper understanding of the migration phenomenon. The course will also focus on an historic and sociological overview of many European countries and royal courts of the time.

An examination of the role of travel in our lives and culture will thus provide yet another critical frame for the understanding of the complexity of experience in the early modern period. This part of the course will be supported by images of maps, routes, postal services etc. of Renaissance and the Baroque Europe. The development of modern ways of communication is one of the keys to understand the cultural movements in Europe between the 16th and the 18th century. A collateral benefit will be  that our students, who will themselves be “travelers” to and in Italy, will be able to examine and critique their own travel experience during the course of the semester.

The course will also explore how these professional skills migrated into texts, and how texts, in the absence of films or recordings, represent sometimes the only source we have to rediscover the professional skills of the early modern performers. The course will include the travel books written by several travelers on the so called Grand Tour.

ANTH-212 Food and Culture (2015)

Looking at cross-cultural examples, Food and Culture focuses on the link between culture and food–the practices, beliefs, and mythologies that surround the production, exchange and consumption of food now and in the past. The first part centers on what we eat, how we eat, and with whom we eat. The course examines the social and symbolic uses of food and introduces key anthropological concepts such as the meal; regional, national and haute cuisine; and the circulation, sharing, and refusal of food. We study the connection of food to class structures and social reproduction as well as the political economy of food in global markets. The second part of the course focuses on the history of food in Italy and Tuscany from the Renaissance to the present and chronicles the emergence of distinctively “Italian” foods such as pasta, olive oil, and pizza. The third part centers on regional food styles and links changes in family structures and gender relations to evolving food practices in Tuscany. It considers current food markets, consumer movements, and the politics of cultural heritage. Assigned readings include three books and a number of articles. Class readings are supplemented with a Renaissance meal in Florence, a visit to a Florentine chocolatier, a day trip to Perugia, and a guest lecture on the slow food movement in Italy and France.

THEO-013 Martin Luther and the Roost of Reformation (2015)

The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to some of the fundamental, cultural, moral, and theological issues that gave rise to the Protestant Reformation and, in particular, the concerns that were central to the reforming thought of Martin Luther. The course begins with an examination of the cultural factors that shaped the Reformation movement, including the impact of Renaissance humanism, and individualism, the nationalistic fervor that was moving across Europe, the moral and spiritual corruption of the Roman Catholic Church which was well chronicled by friend and foe alike, the rise in education and the use of print to promulgate dissent, and the theological misgivings that arose with the respect to the practice of indulgences, the efficacy of the Sacraments, the breakdown of Thomas Aquinas’s medieval synthesis, and the widespread desire to “restore” the Church.

Next the course turns to the reforming work of Martin Luther. It explores his early trials of faith and his objections to the theology and practice of the Roman Catholic Church that ultimately resulted in his excommunication. The Church’s response to Luther is also analyzed in detail, highlighting its objections to his insistence on sola fide, sola gratia, and sola scriptura, which represented the foundations of his theological reform.

LING-283 Language and Society (2014)

In this course, we will investigate how language shapes and is shaped by society. We will range over many levels of social organization (from nation to neighborhood to individual) as well as many levels of language organization (from pronunciations to conversations to entire languages). We will also consider how sociolinguistic knowledge can be applied to areas such as language policy and planning (including issues pertaining to societal bi- and multilingualism and language endangerment), languages and dialects in education (e.g. the use of students’ home dialects in the classroom), and language and the law (e.g. conducting forensic linguistic analysis of language evidence such as ransom notes, threatening emails and text messages). Throughout the course, we will discuss sociolinguistic issues that are relevant in the Italian context, for example, language and dialect variation (and homogenization), ethnicity based language use (including code-switching), and the interrelation between linguistic and cultural identity.

ENGL-275 Italy in Anglo-American Literature and Culture (2013)

As anyone familiar with Shakespeare knows, Italy has long occupied a privileged place in the work of Anglophone writers. This course will examine the particular cultural fascination with Italy—a fascination that has, at once, aesthetic, religious/spiritual, erotic, and political dimensions—during the last two centuries. As many have noted, with the rise of the Grand Tour as coming-of-age ritual for wealthy British and American travelers, and especially with the emergence of Romanticism, Italy came to figure in a number of important works by British and American writers as resonant setting and as site of aesthetic, emotional, spiritual, and/or erotic “awakening” and transformation. In particular, for Anglo-American writers from largely Protestant and increasingly urban, industrial societies, Italy came to be associated with a number of qualities—“unspoiled” natural beauty and the pastoral ideal, aesthetic grandeur and experience, aristocratic leisure, emotional warmth and romantic passion, unrestrained sensuality and eroticism—that were understood as threatened and/or proscribed due to the dictates of economic and historical “progress.” For these writers, Italy was especially evocative as literary setting because of the existence of physical sites and landmarks–ruins, monuments, churches, as well as aesthetic artifacts–from the Classical era to the Renaissance and beyond; it was seen to preserve, both architecturally and culturally, the presence of the past. At the same time, and for some Anglo-American writers in particular, Italy evoked specific political aspirations, fantasies, and fears: about republicanism, empire (and the possibility of imperial decline), and (especially during and after the Risorgimento) revolution.

In tracing these complex meanings, we will examine representations of Italy and Italians in a variety of poems, novels, travel narratives, autobiographical texts, and films; we will supplement those works with selected critical and historical essays by important scholars in order to help us identify the different aspects of what scholars have called the “Italy myth.” We will conclude by contrasting Anglo-American representations of Italy with depictions of Italian-Americans in the early-20th-C (during the great wave of Italian immigration to the U. S.) and a discussion of an Italian-American immigrant text, a kind of reverse-migration narrative that will enrich students’ understanding of both “Italy” and “travel” during the period in question.