Summer Sessions

Since Maria Montessori first developed her teaching methods for disadvantaged and disabled children in Italy in the early 20th Century, Italy has promoted inclusive participatory early childhood education. In this program, you will compare and contrast early education models across the globe, beginning with two popular Italian models, Montessori and Reggio Emilia. Other early childhood education models such as the Step-by-Step model, used throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the Scandinavian models will be examined providing a comprehensive analysis. Through site visits, lecture, discussion, and participation in a UNESCO co-sponsored one-day symposium, students will develop a uniquely crafted, global understanding of the early education of disabled children.

Georgetown students receive 3 GU undergraduate credits for the following course: DBST/EDIJ 350 Educating Young Children with Disabilities- A Global Comparison. Students enrolled in the Disability Studies minor or the Education, Inquiry, and Justice minor may use this course to meet minor requirements.

This course surveys the representation of Italian Americans in films and TV series from the
silent era to the present. During the first half of the semester students will be exploring the use
of stereotypes and film genres commonly used to depict Italian Americans, During the second
half of the semester, students will focus on the Italian American experience at large, analyzing
films that deal with a wide variety of topics (from domesticity, family, and food to emigration).

This course will help students reflect upon the concept of Italian Americanness, and question
the very existence of Italian American cinema. Indeed, during the semester, students will
appreciate how Italian Americans progressively moved from being represented by others, to
finally acquiring their own authorial voice. Nonetheless, this voice will be problematized, along
with the ever-recurrence of stereotypes and labels that continue to plague the Italian American
identity and community.

This course fulfills the Humanities: Arts, Literatures, and Cultures (HALC) requirement.

With the constant blare of a 24/7 news cycle and endless pings from Instagram, Twitter and various app alerts, it is easy to become desensitized to the news, and yet it has become increasingly important to adopt a broader global perspective to discern what’s real, what’s right, and what’s truthful. Join us this summer where you will be in the role of the reporter, learning how to quickly navigate unknown places, people and points of view.

You will hear from global correspondents, interact with local Italians, and simulate the real-world experience of a foreign correspondent writing for a major news organization. You will also get to research, write, and compose articles in various different media formats, such as print, podcast, and vlogs; all culminating in a portfolio of work.

Following Machiavelli’s concept of a “discussion with the ancients” with relevance to modern issues, highlights of this 3 credit seminar include:

• In-depth study of Machiavelli’s writings and an appreciation of the Florentine environment in which he wrote them;
• Actively applying Machiavellian teachings through student involvement as decision makers in a “balance of power” laboratory created by two “Nth Power” political-military simulations. The “Nth Power” simulation is an interactive role-playing, geo-spatial simulation that has been used to brief strategic planners in the Department of Defense.

Upon successful completion of the program, students will receive credit for a 3-credit Government seminar (GOVT-486-62) that can count toward their major, minor or general education elective requirements.

Hear from the professors firsthand in this short video: Georgetown University: Florence Machiavelli Seminar

Both wine and cheese production depend on harnessing the biochemical potential of a variety of different microorganisms. This course will be a rigorous exploration into the characteristics of microbes important for the development of these foods, with an emphasis on the biochemical pathways necessary for the production of ethanol and other products that are responsible for the unique flavors and textures associated with these foods. Part of the course will involve hands-on activities comparing genes for these processes among different organisms; using tools of bioinformatics, a relatively new field that combines biology, computer science, and statistics.

This course can fulfill the Science for All core requirement.

Democracy takes many forms today, and has taken even more in history. Students will learn to appreciate these forms, and therefore better understand democracy in the United States. In addition to surveying the various ways in which democratic institutions are structured, we will take a closer look at and evaluate how democratic has governance been in various systems, including Italy and other contemporary European democracies, the European Union, the United States, the Roman Catholic Church, the Florentine Republic, the Roman Republic, Ancient Greek Democracy and others.

This class presents both micro and macro histories of plague. On the one hand, you will learn about and visit multiple plague sites in northern Italy, private and public spaces (like hospitals, foundling homes, churches) constructed to help contemporaries cope with the disease and medieval and early modern art that conveys the magnitude of the mortality Italians witnessed firsthand. Florence and Siena in particular are used as an ‘open book’ on the pre-modern plague experience. On the other hand, the Black Death is presented not as an Italian or European disaster but as an Afro-Eurasian catastrophe. You will be introduced to plausible evidence of the demographic ruin from regions as disparate as East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Greenland.

This course is thus deeply multidisciplinary. It is at once a history, biology and art history class. You will be introduced to the written and architectural sources for plague as well as to the evolutionary biology of Yersinia pestis, the bioarchaeology and detection of pre-laboratory disease, and the methods of the paleopathologic and paleogenetic sciences. In other words, they come face-to-face with the urban fabric of pre-modern public health, the written record of mass death, and the bones of medieval plague victims.

This class is premised on the orthodox and Catholic belief that “Beauty is the first name for
God.” We will trace the historical discourse on theological aesthetics in the Christian
tradition—from Augustine and Aquinas, to 20th century thinkers like Jacques Maritain and Urs
von Balthasar. The questions of this course circle around the following: How do we assess
what is beautiful? How has Christianity shaped the way we think about beauty? How is beauty
related to those other transcendental qualities of life—the Good and the True?

Designed as an interdisciplinary course that links theology with culture and its various
productions, we will discuss works of western art—literature, music, architecture, sculpture and
painting. We will use the city of Florence as our classroom, visiting
churches and museums to engage the art that has helped shape a western, Christian aesthetics
of the beautiful.

This course fulfills the intermediate-level theology elective core requirement.

This course is an introduction to some of the most famous and powerful women of the house
of the Medici (1368-1743), who through their agency, contributed to the building of the
Tuscan State. Particular emphasis will be given to their biographies and the unique role that
these women played in Florentine, Italian and European history. Students will learn about the lesser-known ways that women played important roles in medieval Italian history, engaging in site-specific experiential learning, within the specific cultural context of contemporary Italian/Tuscan culture. Students will study and come to understand the “strategies of power” by which women were able to operate and wield power, in a context of legal disfranchisement.

This course will also provide an overview of the family as a social institution where
individuals, both women and men, were legally subordinated in different ways to patriarchal
authority, and their social behavior was strictly controlled by their social environment. It will
also highlight the legal, economic, and intellectual framework which was considered the ‘rule’
for women, to understand the changes that Medici women brought in achieving their goals.