Meeting #2: Meet the New Boss

....somewhat similar to the old boss. Or routine, rather.

Except for the part where it's in Rome.

The second (of 2, I believe) pre-departure meetings was yesterday. Besides turning in my travel plans, so that if I'm lost in transit the program knows where to begin, we also met our teachers for the program and talked in depth about what the academics will look like. Housing will come out in a few weeks, probably not until summer. I also learned the total number of people in the program; according to our roster, there are 26 of us, only about 5 of whom are boys.

A few days ago we got assigned to language level groups. The fact that I'm currently in Italian 203 means that in the fall I'll be in the advanced level group with one other girl. Most people are in the beginning level and there are another 3 or 4 students at the intermediate level. Beginning and intermediate students take classes with our grad student assistant, Miriam, who is native Italian and who is kind of like our on-site program coordinator. We two privileged students considered "advanced" actually take classes at Italidea, a language school in Rome (see here for more info). Allegedly the class is just us two and a "chill" instructor, and we basically talk about current issues (wars, immigration, stuff like that) in Italian to practice advanced grammar and all that good stuff. Our program coordinator, Elana, says that the advanced class always gets "rave" reviews, so I'm pretty excited to try it out.

So yeah, academics besides language. What we're actually all here for is the civilizations in Rome program, where we take three quarters of the college civilizations requirement in one quarter's worth of time. Civ, as it's called, is basically like a history-anthro-vaguely art-y thing, as far as I can tell, and we're doing the sequence called, appropriately, "Rome: Antiquity to the Baroque." A few thousand years of Roman history in ten weeks--not at all compressed or anything like that.

Anyway, we have three teachers who each teach for three or so weeks. The first three weeks are ancient Rome, up to about 400 or so, taught by a classicist named Emanuel Mayer. We don't have a syllabus yet for this, since Mayer just got back from teaching in the Athens study abroad program, but he said it will involve a lot of site visits to all the ruins. He teaches us from 9/25-10/17, and in the middle of that (from 10/6-8) we go to Napoli, to the Villa Vergiliana, from which we visit Pompeii. We'll be reading about the Romans, I'm sure, as befits such a course, and Mayer claims we'll be spending a lot of time "outside" seeing stuff, clambering around ruins, all that sort of good stuff.

The second three weeks or so (from about 10/18-11/8) are taught by Aden Kumler, who's in the art history department. She's teaching "Medieval Rome," aka Rome from about 400-1400ish or so. The main book we have to get for this part is called Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim, and there's also an artsy guide we're recommended to get about all the art (naturally) in Rome. The stuff we're reading about is persectuion/Constantine's Christian Rome,  the barbarians and Charlemagne,  Gregory the Great, Innocent III, "the Jubilee Year 1300," the Babylonian captivity of Rome from 1309-1378, and the transition out of "medieval" Rome. We have a "midterm" and a final for this section of the class. We're also doing a crapton of site visits here, which so far (according to the calendar/syllabus we have) include the Arches of Titus and Constantine, the Basilica Nova, San Giovanni in Laterano, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Santa Agnese, Santa Costanza, San Prassede, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Sancta Sanctorum, San Clemente, Sans Cosmas and Damian, and Castel Sant'Angelo.

The last three weeks (from 11/9-12/1) are taught by Niall Atkinson, also in art history. He's teaching Renaissance and Baroque Rome, basically Rome from about 1400ish-1600ish, I think. We're supposed to get books like Art in Renaissance Rome, the Life of Michelangelo, Rome of Alexander VII, that sort of thing.  Site visits galore yet again; according to the current syllabus/calendar, we are visiting the Vatican, San Pietro in Montorio, Villa Farnesina, the Capitoline and its museums, Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, the Gesu', Sant'Ignazio, Tivoli and the villas there (Hadrian's villa and the Villa d'Este), Galleria Borghese, San Maria della Vittoria, San Andrea al Quirinale, San Carlo alle 4 Fontane, San'Andrea delle Fratte, Palazzo Spada, Piazza del Popolo/Spagna/Navona, Santa Maria della Pace, the Pantheon, and Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Our course requirements for this section are basically journal entries/short writing assignments, a brief in-class presentation, and a final (which is apparently oral).

As far as how all this gets fit into ten weeks, we have class Monday-Thursday, and long weekends each weekend. Civ is Monday-Thursday, 9:30-noon each day. Language classes are Mondays and Wednesdays in the afternoon, depending on level; my advanced class meets from 2:30-3:20. It's a lot of time in class, but quite a bit of that is out of class, on site visits, I suppose. I am glad that we're doing so much and hopefully getting the maximum amount possible out of ten weeks in Rome (it's said that you could live there permanently and still not see all the things there are to see in Rome, after all.) The program also encourages us to hit the town while we're there, try all sorts of restaurants and bars and sporting events. Rome is apparently quite nice for a large city, with not too much violent crime (though lots of pickpocketing if you're not careful, allegedly).

All this has made me pretty excited to go. After the Roman era, I don't know much if anything of the history of Rome, so it will be cool to be there on site while learning about it (and getting to see a crazy lot of monuments and stuff while there). Such a huge info dump, I know, and yet so cool.

A little over 4 months until arrival in la citta' eterna....

Lull

Sorry for the dearth of news in the past two weeks or so, but there really has been nothing at all going on when it comes to Rome 2011 now that tickets are booked and whatnot. Our next pre-departure meeting is a week from tomorrow (the 16th), where we'll find out specifics about the academics we're doing and our professors and whatnot, which is cool but still several days away. Nothing is moving on the housing front, either, since I don't think they'll get around to assigning apartments and roommates until later, maybe not even until the summer; since I don't particularly know anyone else in the program, I don't even have anyone to specifically request as a roommate or apartment mate.

So: an update on how there are not really any updates! Less than stellar, I know, but after the 16th there should be academic news to report, and then it will be almost the end of the academic year here, aka time to pack. This year packing will be interesting (read: obnoxious), since I'll have to take home not only what I need for the summer but also what I'll need to bring to Rome in the fall. The rest will be sitting in storage here in Chicago until January. Wince.

Until then.