Courses in Florence
Note: For students participating in the Florence winter quarter/trimester, course credits should be equivalent to those of a full quarter/trimester. Please contact ACM and/or the Registrar at your college for any questions about the distribution of quarter/trimester credits.
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Singing and dancing to an Italian song during Italian language class
Video courtesy of Clarissa Thiessen |
Italian Language
Instructor: Linguaviva staff
Required course
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2 semester credits (15- week students)
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5 semester credits (10 and 18- week students)
Instruction emphasizes spoken colloquial Italian so that students may quickly acquire conversational ability. Classes are taught in Italian at Linguaviva, an Italian language institute in Florence. Linguaviva has been honored with multiple Star Awards from Language Travel Magazine and has received the Excellence Award in numerous years from LanguageCourse S.L. Students who have previosuly studied Italian will be placed in language classes appropriate to their levels of proficiency. The Linguaviva instructors are not just language teachers but also rich sources of information about Italian culture, and they help students solve the daily problems which Italians and foreigners share.
The Medici as Patrons of the Arts
Instructor: Josephine Rogers Mariotti, Program Director
Elective course, 3 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
The Medici family is arguably the single most important family in Florentine history, generation after generation, all active patrons of the arts during centuries in which the city experienced its greatest cultural and artistic flourishing. This course will trace the family’s history as art patrons during the course of the 15th and early 16th century, examining the relations between specific members of the dynasty and the art produced under their auspices. Beginning with the late 14th century, at the debut of the rise in wealth and power of the family, we will explore the history and profiles of various members of the family from Giovanni di Bicci, Cosimo the Elder, Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo il Magnifico to the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII; our studies will also include other Florentine families and patrons who share a common culture with the leading family. On site experience of the art they promoted will allow us to explore: how each patron relates to the artists employed; how the patron’s choice of artist reflects personal philosophy and persona; how patronage relates and contributes to contemporary culture and philosophy; how the art produced under their auspices fits within the cultural, political and social make-up of the city. We will also see the significant role the Medici played in the complex game of art and politics with regard to other centers in Italy, some of which we will have the opportunity to visit during the course of the term. Thus, this course will focus on the major personalities of the early branch of the Medici, concluding with the initial stages of the Cinquecento (1500's) and the early life of Michelangelo, one of the Medici’s most beloved artists.
Collaboration in Early Florentine Renaissance Art
Instructor: Gail Solberg
Elective course, 3 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
Collaboration, or working together, is the guiding concept of this course, which treats Florentine art from 1250 to 1450. Working together is conceived first as the way various components of multipart monuments collaborate to produce an overall effect greater than the sum of parts. The cathedral square in Florence is a prime example, but other instructive cases include the decoration of mendicant complexes at Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, San Marco, of family chapels in these and other churches, and of the shrines of the city’s miracle working paintings at Orsanmichele and Santissima Annunziata. Collaboration is also understood to mean the working relationship between artist, patron, and destination site. This opens the way to a study of the prime movers in what we conceive of as the cultural life of Renaissance Florence, but what for citizens of the time was the way to express their sense of world order. Order in the world involves the Florentines’ notion of history and of who governed, but also the ambitions of their commune, their sense of self, their hopes, and their fears. Patrons collaborated with artists to give these notions visual form, and they were keenly sensitive to the placement of their works. Our effort will be to decode material remains to understand early Renaissance Florence. The course is conducted primarily on location at places including the cathedral, the churches and houses of the religious orders, civic buildings, and cult sites. Visits to the city’s key museums are essential to imaginatively reconstructing collaborative monuments which have been disrupted over time. No requirements, yet background in Renaissance art or history will be useful.
The Sight-Size Tradition: Drawing and Portraiture
Instructor: Staff of the Charles H. Cecil Studios
Elective course (Spring 2013), 3 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
This Studio Art course will teach a historic technique for drawing from a live model, from casts of famous statues, and from the city itself. Live models will be used for full figure drawing and casts for portraiture. Classroom instruction will take place in the Charles H. Cecil Studios, the most historic Florentine atelier still in active use. At the end of the semester, there will be an exhibit of the student work and a final critique.
Florence Through the Eyes of the Victorians
Elective course (Spring 2013), 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
Just as the artists of the Renaissance drew on the works of the Classical era, artists in Victorian England drew heavily on the works of the Renaissance. In each case the artists felt that the works of the earlier period represented a view of humanity that was more harmonious, balanced, and desirable than the art of their own time. This course will use the writings and drawings of John Ruskin, the artwork, illustrations, and poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the writings of art critic Walter Pater as lenses through which to view Renaissance Florence. Through this examination we will be able to understand how the Victorians were influenced by the Italians and apply our own cultural perspective to that relationship. The course will be structured around readings by Victorian artists and art critics and around visits to Florentine locations that are important in those texts. Students will complete formal and informal writing assignments as well as sketchbook work where the students follow the example of the Victorians and create visual studies of the artwork in Florence.
The Writer as Traveler in Florence
Elective course (Spring 2014), 4 semester credits
Click here to see a course syllabus
In this course we read and write about travel and explore how writers are travelers. We draw on critical studies and popular narratives about travel, as well as class members’ own experiences as travelers within and beyond Florence to inspire and improve our own writing. This writing practice, in turn, enables us to engage more fully with both the artistic and cultural legacy of Florence and its contemporary conditions and contexts. In this sense, writing, not unlike travel, is a skill we develop and a tool by which we can accomplish a variety of other purposes. The course explores the city as a text we read and write about through materials about Florence, as well as more general analyses of the urban explorer (and city tourist); the role of museums in their social and historical context (especially in relation to tourism); the meaning of maps and photographs as modes of representation, instruction, and documentation; cultural studies about patterns of travel and tourism; and the connections between travel and writing as modes of encounter and discovery.
Class readings provide prompts for students’ activities in the city of Florence and their own writing practice. Exercises and assignments are formal and informal, creative and critical, experiential and researched, and text- and image-based (such photographs and maps). Students develop a range of writing strategies related to all aspects of the writing process. In addition to individual tutorials with the instructor, class sessions and online exchanges include extensive peer workshop of student writing.
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The Beloit College Florence Program is registered with the Italian Ministry for Universities and Research and recognized as a private non-profit institution of higher education in Italy. Beloit College is a founding affiliate of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) and a member of the American Association of College and University Programs in Italy (AACUPI). The Beloit College Florence Program is facilitated in the U.S. by the ACM on behalf of Beloit College and the other ACM affiliates. |
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