Penn Summer Abroad
Locales Penn-in-Florence
Main | Description | Curriculum
All students are expected to register either for one 2 CU or two 1 CU courses.
Italian 110 is a first-semester elementary language course for students who have never studied Italian before or who have taken the placement test and received a score below 380. All students who have studied Italian previously are required to take the placement test. Class work emphasizes the development of listening comprehension and speaking, with training in reading and writing. The course is conducted in Italian. (1 CU)
Prerequisite: Completion of Italian 112 or the equivalent (one year of college-level Italian).
Italian 134 is a two-semester course which provides for intensive study of the structure of the Italian language at the intermediate level, emphasizing the development of all communication skills. The course will be conducted in Italian. (2 CU)
Fulfills Distribution Requirement III: Arts & Letters (Class of 2009 & Prior).
Pre-requisite: Completion of Italian 140 or its equivalent (two years of college-level Italian).
The purpose of this course is to enable students to achieve fluency in Italian language and facilitate their transition into more advanced Italian studies. Frequent lessons on site, will draw information and inspiration from the roads, buildings, monuments, markets and ordinary life of Florence. The students will be also exposed to the living and picturesque Florentine Italian language. The course will be conducted in Italian. (1 CU)
Fulfills Distribution Requirement III: Arts & Letters (Class of 2009 & Prior).
Note: This course has a lab fee of $200 per student.
This course is designed as an investigation of the artistic riches of late medieval and Renaissance Florence. The course is taught in large part on site, so students will see and study the works of Florentine artists in the churches and palaces for which they were created. The class will walk in the footsteps of those artists and their patrons in the places where they lived and worked. Primary sources such as letters by artists and patrons, theoretical treatises and Giorgio Vasari’s sixteenth century Lives of the Artists comprise a significant component of the course readings and will be examined in relation to the actual works they discuss. By the time they leave Florence, students will possess a deep knowledge of Florentine visual culture in its proper historical perspective. More generally they will master the tools to look at works of art and architecture critically. This course will be conducted in English. It will be counted for the Major and Minor in both Italian Culture and in Italian Literature, and does require any prerequisite. It may also be counted as a course taught in Italian for the Major and Minor in both Italian Culture and Italian Literature if: 1. Students do their coursework (readings, written work and exams) in Italian. 2. Students have already completed Ital. 202, or taken and completed Ital. 220 in Florence. No auditors. (1 CU)
For centuries, the city of Florence was one of Europe’s great economic and cultural centers. The city was at the heart of the humanist movement of the Renaissance. Florentines excelled in art, in business and banking. They were also highly literate keepers of records. Thanks to their archives, historians know more about medieval and Renaissance Florentines than about any other Europeans. In this course, we will follow Florence’s rise from its medieval governments through the era of the Renaissance. Readings will include both modern scholarship and primary sources from the period, and we will incorporate visits to a number of important sites in both Florence and Tuscany. The course is conducted in English. (1CU)