Summer Sessions

Biodiversity is the remarkable variety of life on Earth, and it plays a vital role in maintaining ecosystem balance and supporting human well-being. This course explores the biodiversity and conservation efforts of Italy, with a particular focus on the Tuscany region. Over four weeks, students will examine the rich ecosystems of Tuscany, key species of flora and fauna, and the challenges posed by human activities such as urbanization, agriculture, and climate change. Students will also explore how evolution produces biodiversity, get an overview of major phyla, and study species roles and interactions within ecosystems. The course will delve into the key threats to biodiversity and emphasize conservation efforts aimed at preserving the natural world. Traditional practices, sustainable agriculture, and protected areas will also be discussed, showing their significance in Italy’s biodiversity conservation.

This course will employ a range of teaching methodologies (e.g., lectures, discussions, analysis of existing data sets, and case studies), complemented by local excursions.

This course can fulfill the Science for All core requirement.

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.

This course invites students to take on the role of a foreign correspondent in Italy with the goal of gaining a broader, global perspective and understanding of international media. Students will get real-world experience in navigating and producing multiplatform stories from one of the world’s most culturally significant cities. We’ll explore ethical, cultural and economic challenges facing international reporters. We’ll examine the changing media landscape and new business models for global information-sharing. And we’ll look at paths for launching a career in international journalism. Guest speakers based in Italy reporting for global news outlets will provide insights on covering breaking news, climate change, politics, the pope and more. Field trips will provide rich story opportunities for students with assignment formats including photojournalism, video, and social media-friendly platforms.

Journalism experience is preferred, but not necessary. This course fulfills one of the electives required for students minoring in journalism. Students in the Journalism minor will be encouraged to seek publication of their projects for completion of the minor’s experiential learning requirement.  

For nearly two thousand years, Christian theologians have spoken of their church’s liturgy as prima theologia, that is, “first theology.” In other words, the way Christians pray in a group, while using established texts and following agreed-upon rubrics, serves as the proper starting point for discovering what Christian theology really is. It follows, then, that where this prayer occurs is, as it were, the “first classroom” of theology. And there is no more beautiful classroom in the world than Florence’s Duomo.

This course will take advantage of being in Florence proper, just a short walk from the Duomo—and use one set of Christian liturgical rites, i.e., Catholic rites, and the magnificent space in which they occur, to provide an introduction to Catholicism and its seven sacraments. Topics to be covered include divine revelation, Scripture, ecclesiology, and, of course, the seven sacraments.

This course fulfills the Theology core requirement.

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 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.