Florence, Italy
June 28 - August 8, 2008
Language Courses | Content Courses Conducted In English | Costs | Dates
Language Courses
Students must register for a minimum of 8 points or a maximum of 10 points.
Intensive Elementary Italian
V59.9010 - Staff - 6 points - course syllabus
Open to students with no previous training in Italian and to others on assignment by placement test. Conducted in Italian.
An intensive, highly motivating audiovisual course for beginners. Introduces students to a wide range of communication patterns and real-life situations. The beginner acquires a solid comprehension of the language and is prepared to interact in daily life, taking advantage of the city of Florence in organized outings.
Note: This is a 6-point course. This course meets for 3 hours and 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for 6 weeks. It is equivalent to V59.0001 and V59.0002, or V59.0010.
Intensive Intermediate Italian Prerequisite for NYU students: V59.0001 and V59.0002, V59.9010, or assignment by placement test. Conducted in Italian.
V59.9020 - Zambenedetti- 6 points - course syllabus
An orally oriented course taught in Italian, aiming to promote proficiency in reading and writing. Instructors emphasize conversation and interaction with the city. Students should acquire oral proficiency and master all basic grammatical principles. The course is designed to prepare students for advanced composition and conversation classes.
Note: This is a 6-point course. This course meets for 3 hours and 45 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for 6 weeks. It is equivalent to V59.0011 and V59.0012, or V59.0020.
Quattro Chiacchiere (Conversations in Italian)
V59.9101 - Staff - 4 points
Prerequisite for NYU students: V59.0030. Students entering the course should have mastered the fundamental principles of Italian grammar.
Conducted in Italian.
This course is designed to help students gain confidence and to increase their effectiveness in speaking colloquial Italian. Through discussions, oral reports, and readings, students develop vocabulary in a variety of topics, improve pronunciation, and learn an extensive range of idiomatic expressions.
Advanced Review of Modern Italian
V59.9030 - Staff - 4 points - course syllabus
Prerequisite for NYU students: V59.0012 or V59.0020. Students entering the course should have mastered the fundamental principles of Italian grammar.
Conducted in Italian.
This course is a prerequisite for other advanced courses in language, literature, and culture and society. It systematizes and reinforces the language skills presented in earlier-level courses through an intensive review of grammar and composition, lexical enrichment, improvement of speaking ability, and selected readings from contemporary Italian literature.
Content Courses Conducted in English
Masters and Monuments: Florentine Art and Architecture of the Renaissance
V43.9650.001/006 - Mussolin/Giorgi - 4 points - course syllabus
An introduction to the works of painting, sculpture, and architecture that defined the Renaissance in Florence, studied in the context of the city and its culture. The course concentrates on major masters of Florentine art in the 15th and 16th centuries. It begins with the emergence, against the background of the late Middle Ages, of the great founders of the art of the Renaissance—Donatello in sculpture, Masaccio in painting, and Brunelleschi in architecture. It moves on to artists in the second generation and later: Fra Filippo Lippi, Fra Angelico, Leon Battista Alberti, Domenico Veneziano, Andrea del Castagno, Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, and Botticelli, ending with Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto, and others. Themes such as humanism, interpretations of antiquity, patronage, urbanism, and Florentine civic ideals form a framework for understanding the works of art beyond style and iconography.
Note: This course carries a registration fee of $100.
Early Masters of Italian Renaissance Painting
V43.9306.001 - Pascuzzi - 4 points - course syllabus
Prerequisite: V43.0002, V43.0300, or permission of the instructor.
This course taught by an Art History Scholar and well-known artist includes lectures, field visits, and hands-on workshops in Renaissance techniques, including fresco and gold leafing. Achievements of the chief painters of the 15th century studied through their major artistic commissions with an eye on technique. A brief introduction to Giotto and his time provides background for the paintings of Masaccio and his artistic heirs (Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Piero della Francesca, etc.). Topics include the role of pictorial narrative, perspective, and mimesis; the major techniques of Renaissance painting and its relation to the other visual arts. In the later 15th century, social and cultural changes generated by power shifts from Medici Florence to papal Rome also affected art patronage, creating new tensions and challenges for artists and fostering the emergence of new modes of visualization.
Note: This course carries a registration fee of $100.
Gardens and Landscapes of Florence
V43.9650.002 - Piussi - 4 points - course syllabus
Florence has long been admired for its combination of buildings and gardens. The city is a fascinating complex of interior gardens (cortili), public squares, parks, and the popular loggia, the arcaded porches that sit somewhere between interior and exterior, private and public. The art and science of landscape and garden design was a serious pursuit in Renaissance Italy.
Representations of landscapes played an important role in painting and portraiture, interior decoration, and literature of the period. This interdisciplinary course investigates the history, role, and science of landscape and garden design in Renaissance Florence through extensive site visits, historical and literary accounts of real gardens, and gardens of the imagination in fiction and fine art. Our starting point is the 57 acres of historically significant landscape around NYU's La Pietra, with Renaissance-style gardens, rolling hills, and olive groves, all within the city limits of Florence. In addition to writing and researching about landscapes and gardens, we learn to look critically and to think visually through a series of drawing and/or photography exercises. No previous art experience is necessary.
Note: This course carries a registration fee of $100.
Topics in Italian Culture: Italian Opera
V59.9170 - Scarcella-Perino - 4 points - course syllabus - opera calendar
Italy is the country where opera was born. This course offers students the unique chance to study the history of Italian lyric opera with a professional composer and musician and to experience it at some of the major Italian opera seasons: the Arena of Verona season and the Giardino di Boboli season. During the course, students are introduced to the most prominent Italian opera composers (Monteverdi, Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, Mascagni, etc.), as well as to the authors of the "libretto" of several of the most significant operas. They will be also introduced to some basic musical knowledge and practice.
Calendar of Opera
Note: This course carries a registration fee of $100.
Italian Cinema and Literature
V59.9282 - Albertini - 4 points - course syllabus
This course focuses on the development of Italian cinema in the postwar period, emphasizing the much-debated relationship between literature and film as distinct but dependent modes of communication. The course material provides a unique opportunity to analyze and discuss crucial issues related to the historical, political, and cultural evolution of Italy from its unification (1860) to the present. After a general introduction to Italian cinema and to issues related to the cinematic adaptation of literary texts, we proceed to analyze, in-depth, one book and one film each week. Readings include novels by such authors as Umberto Eco, Giorgio Bassani, and Alberto Moravia. Film screenings include works by Fellini, De Sica, and Visconti.
Science and Magic in the Italian Renaissance
V29.9151 - Cipani - 4 points- course syllabus
This course explores ties between experimental science and magic practices at the birth of the modern scientific era. We will see both the scientist and the magus, sometimes one and the same, at work in a variety of different fields such as cryptology, optical illusion, the art of memory and mechanics. The course will introduce a series of engaging philosophers, artists, and writers such as Ficino, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Pico della Mirandola, Girolamo Cardano, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo. Along with textual works, ample visual material will be presented, including the numerous offerings of Florence itself.
Graduate Courses
Graduate students must register for 4 points.
Content Courses Conducted in English
Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture
G59.9589 - Staff - 4 points
This graduate level course will explore major issues in Renaissance literature and culture especially focusing on the Florentine environment of the 15th and 16th century. The primary authors of Humanism will be read in the historical context that produced them. Different critical schools will also be explored and discussed in depth. Reading knowledge of Italian is required. Course open to graduate students and terminal undergraduate upon permission of the instructor.
Costs
Undergraduate Tuition
$5,752 8 points
Undergraduate Tuition
Students enrolled in Intensive Elementary Italian and Intensive Intermediate Italian: $7,190 (10 points)
Graduate Tuition
$923 per point
Program & Activities Fee
$650
Registration Fee
For Masters and Monuments, Early Masters of Italian Renaissance Painting, and Gardens and Landscapes: $100
Housing
(including breakfast daily and dinner Mon-Thur)
- Single Room: $3,774
- Double Room: $3,323
- Triple Room: $2,954
- Quad Room: $2,831
- Multi-Room (5 or 6): $2,667
*Housing costs include $30 required Italian insurance fee.
*Students are required to live on campus for the duration of the program.
There is an additional registration and services fee of:
- $186 students registered at NYU spring 2008
- $213 students not registered at NYU spring 2008
Dates
Program Dates
June 28 - August 8
Housing Dates
June 28 - August 8
Arrival Date
June 28
Orientation Date
June 29
First Day of Classes
June 30
Last Day of Classes
August 7
Departure Date
August 8