Study Abroad
Culture, Art and Politics in Twenty-first Century Buenos Aires
K55.9400 4 CR SSI: May 24–June 21 Dinwiddie/McMeley
Buenos Aires, known at the "Paris of the South," is one of the mythic cities of the world. . This four-week course traces the evolution of the political theorists, educational reformers, and creative artists whose works have shaped the culture, art, and politics of Buenos Aires and Argentina. Readings will include excerpts from social theory of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and José Enrique Rodó; fiction by Jorge Luís Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar, Roberto Arlt, and Adolfo Bioy Casares; paintings by Antonio Berni and Pedro Figari; historical documents such as "Nunca Más” and the film The Afro-Argentines. Field trips encompass the rich resources of the city's museums, historical sites, fútbol games, and ethnic neighborhoods. Sessions with leading Argentine jurists, educators, and artists are an important component of this course. In addition, students will take a short trip to Montevideo, Uruguay. Classes are taught in English.
Berlin: Capital of Modernity
K55.9500 4 CR SSII: July 1–July 18 Hornick/Smole
Some of the most thrilling, momentous, and terrible events of the 1900’s occurred in Berlin, and today its streets, buildings, and cultural monuments offer tales of warning and inspiration to the present century. This three-week course will take in many of the sights and sounds of old and contemporary Berlin, but our course will focus on the involvement of twentieth-century, Berlin-based politicians, activists, artists, architects, bohemians, writers, and intellectuals with the causes, experience, and consequences of World War II. Our period of study begins just before the outbreak of World War I and ends during the astonishing building boom of the post-Wall 1990’s and early 2000’s. Readings will focus on topics ranging from the unique nature of Berlin Modernism (juxtaposing orderly Bauhaus theory with the alleged decadence of Weimar popular culture); the rise and collapse of National Socialist culture; the debates over official memory of war; the nature of everyday life in the era of the Wall; and the future of Berlin in the post-modern era. Field trips encompass the rich resources of the city’s museums, neighborhoods, historical sites, memorials and cultural monuments including sites as old as Frederick the Great’s palace Sans-Souci and as new as the still under-construction metropolitan center, Potsdamer Platz. Classes are taught in English.
Glorious Rebirth: The Art and Culture of the Italian Renaissance
K95.2060 4 CR SSI: May 31–June 21 Mirabella/Nelson
Graduate course open to undergraduate students.
Many of our modern ideas about art, literature, architecture and its uses, politics, culture, philosophy, gender and class derive from the great prolific period of the Renaissance. During a three-week, interdisciplinary program in the beautiful and glorious Florence, Italy, students are offered a total immersion and multifaceted learning experience that is an essential beginning to understanding our modern world through the lens of the Italian Renaissance. This course explores hands-on the literature, culture, art, and thought of the Renaissance from multiple perspectives. During their stay, students will develop and present an individualized project based on their academic interests and background, and the ways in which they have been inspired by the Renaissance. As a quintessential Gallatin experience, the course places emphasis on the cultural and historical contexts from which the literature and art of Renaissance Florence emerged, paying special attention to such issues as gender, class, politics, and religion. Readings might include the works of Dante, Pico Della Mirandola, Machiavelli, and selected female writers, as well as art texts such as Vasari's The Lives of the Artists. In addition, students study the art of Florentine painters such as Botticelli, Giotto, and Michelangelo in the places where these works were created. Classes, which are taught in English, meet four days a week. Throughout the course, students will visit such museums and churches as the Uffizi, The Duomo, the church of Santa Maria Novella, and the monastery of San Marco to engage fully with the art and architecture of Renaissance Italy.