Florence Program

About the program: Florence ... Italy as the classroom ... maps ... links

Activities & home stay

Field trips: Rome ... Venice & Siena ... other parts of Italy

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Contact: Campus program advisors ... ACM office

Sheets for the Table

Instructor: Nicholas Regiacorte
Elective course, 4 credits

This course will explore the ways in which peasant tradition, superstition, and mythology (from the field to the table, hearth to the bed) shape Italian sensibilities. Toward that end we will study Italian folklore, in order to investigate its sources, understand its means, and measure its transmission into life after Unification. We will begin with Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, treating his collection as our source material, moving on chronologically to such works as Carlo Levi’s memoiristic novel Christ Stopped at Eboli and Natalia Ginzburg’s book of essays, A Place to Live.

Above: On a program field trip. (Photo courtesy of Mary Hegel)

Through our reading, in conjunction with interviews of local Florentines, collecting proverbs and stories, students will attempt to reach some conclusions about Italianita. Wherever possible, we may volunteer for harvest, prepare meals together, or otherwise try to participate in those traditions that seem indispensable to an “Italian life.”