Penn-in-Venice, Italy

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The application for Penn-in-Venice 2013 is now closed.

Bask in the beauty of Italian language, art, and culture in this ancient city on the Adriatic Sea.

Further your Italian language skills and/or study the rich art and history of Venice in English. All courses in this intensive 6-week program offer University of Pennsylvania credits. Course options include Italian language at various levels as well as courses taught in English. In order to get the most out of your time in Italy, the program is designed to promote Italian language study. Students who do not have the equivalent of Beginning Italian will take Italian 110 and one of the English courses during the program.

In addition to group excursions to cultural sites in Venice, the program includes day trips to Trieste and Padua and an optional weekend in Florence. Students live in program-arranged housing in the historic center of Venice.

Program Calendar 2013

Course Information

All students register for a total of two course units (CUs). Course registration is completed by the Penn Summer Abroad office for students who confirm their intent to enroll and submit required pre-departure documents.

Note for Visiting Students: One CU is generally considered to be equivalent to three semester hours when Penn coursework is transferred to another institution.

Courses

Beginning Italian
ITALIAN 110 (1 CU)    
Required for students who do not have the language equivalent of Italian 110 prior to the program.
Taught by Alessandra Mirra
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.

Intensive Second Year Italian
ITALIAN 134 (2 CU)                      
Prerequisite: Completion of Italian 112 or the equivalent (one year of college-level Italian).
Fulfills the Language Requirement in Italian.
Taught by Helen McFie Simone, University of Pennsylvania, Co-Director of the Italian Language Program.

Italian 134 is an intensive and accelerated two-credit course covering the first and second semester of the intermediate sequence (130 and 140). It will build on your existing skills in Italian, increase your confidence and your ability to read, write, speak and understand the language, and introduce you to more refined lexical items, more complex grammatical structures, and more challenging cultural material. You are expected to have already learned the most basic grammatical structures in elementary Italian and to review these on your own. The course will allow you to explore culturally relevant topics and to develop cross-cultural skills through the exploration of similarities and differences between your native culture and the Italian world. It is conducted in Italian.

Streets of Venice, Words of Italy 
ITALIAN 220 (1 CU)     
Prerequisite: Completion of Italian 140 or its equivalent (two years of college-level Italian).
Fulfills General Education Requirement: Cross-cultural Analysis.
Taught by Elisa Modolo

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 streets, buildings, monuments, markets and ordinary life of Venice. The course is conducted in Italian.

Survey of Italian History and Culture
ITALIAN 297 / HISTORY 180 (1 CU)  
Fulfills General Education Requirement: Cross-cultural Analysis.
Taught by Fabio Finotti, University of Pennsylvania, Director of the Center for Italian Studies

Through lectures, discussions and field trips, students will explore Italian civilization and culture. The emphasis of the course is on Italian literature, art, history, political and social institutions from the Medieval Age and Renaissance to the present. The course is conducted in English. It counts for the Major and Minor in both Italian Culture and in Italian Literature, and has no prerequisite.

On-Site: Art in Venice, Past and Present
ART HISTORY 301 / ITALIAN 300 (1 CU)    
Fulfills General Education Requirement: Cross-cultural Analysis.
Taught by Christine Poggi

This course will emphasize on-site study of art in Venice and its environs from the Byzantine period to the present.  A city with a rich history of Byzantine art and architecture, and home to the “Venetian School” of Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto and others during the Renaissance, Venice has emerged as a leading venue for the exhibition of modern and contemporary art in the last twenty years. This course will cast a wide historical net, with visits to local museums, churches, and other institutions including Saint Mark’s Cathedral and Square, the Doges Palace, the Accademia, the School of San Rocco, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Palazzo Fortuny, the Ca’ D’Oro, and the recently opened contemporary art collections at the Punta della Dogana and the Prada Foundation.  A trip to Padova will include a visit to Giotto’s famous Arena Chapel and the early Renaissance frescoes of Mantegna. Other class trips to Trieste and Florence will give students the opportunity to see major works of art and experience Italy’s regional cultures.

Housing

Students are housed in double, triple and quadruple rooms at the Hotel Cristallo in the Lido area of Venice. Breakfast is included.

Tuition & Fees

Tuition and fees are subject to the approval of the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania and may change without notice.

• Tuition for Summer 2013: $6,956
• Program Fee for Venice 2013: $3,325

  Includes accommodation with breakfast, cultural activities, excursions organized by the program to Padua and Trieste and administrative costs. 

• Download estimated cost sheet for Penn-in-Venice 2013.

Student Financial Services covers Penn-in-Venice at the same proportion as other summer programs. Since meals are not included Venice program fee, we estimate $30 per day in meals. And we provide SFS with the total estimated costs of participating in the program. SFS bases  financial aid packages off all of the costs associated with the program including: tuition, program fee, flight, meals, books, etc.

Venice A-Z Handbook

• Click here to view a PDF of Venice A-Z

Information Sessions

• Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 5:00pm -- Williams Hall 516

Apply

The application for Penn-in-Venice 2013 is now open!

• The final deadline for Penn-in-Venice is May 13th.

Contact Information

Program Director
for details about the program, courses, or location including academic advising, travel dates, housing and orientation
Fabio Finotti (profile)
Mariano DiVito Professor of Italian Studies
Director of Center for Italian Studies
University of Pennsylvania
E-mail: finotti@sas.upenn.edu
Tel: 215-898-6041

Penn Summer Abroad Office
for assistance with application, financial questions, pre-departure, or other general information
Penn Summer Abroad
College of Liberal & Professional Studies (LPS)
University of Pennsylvania
3440 Market Street, Suite 100
Philadelphia, PA 19104-3335
Tel: 215-573-7537
Fax: 215-573-2053
E-mail: summerabroad@sas.upenn.edu