Italy (August)

ANT396Y0 Italian Regional Foodways and Culture 

This participatory seminar course introduces students to the central place occupied by food, agriculture, cooking and eating in Italian culture. The goal of the course is to foster a deep and sensitive understanding of the historical development of Italian cuisine and to instill an appreciation of the critical importance of local climate and geography to Italian cuisine through comparison of various regional foodways. We’ll be looking at the scholarly literature on la cucina italiana and will enhance our readings with opportunities to engage personally with Italian food culture through field trips to food producers tailored for this course, and through tastings of Italian foods.

Prerequisite: None 
Recommended Preparation: ANT100Y1 or ANT204H1 or ANT207H1 or ANT200Y1 or ANT203Y1 
Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1) + Society and Its Institutions (category 3)
Note: Not all food allergies can be accommodated for this course. 

2024 COURSE OUTLINE (preliminary)

Field Trips

This course includes a four-day trip visiting various food producers in the Matera area and Bari. Students will also participate in a workshop at the Espresso Academy of Mokaflor in Florence, visit Perugina Chocolate Factory in Perugia, a pottery workshop in Deruta and tour local wineries and food producers. 

Instructor

Anne Urbancic is the Mary Rowell Jackman Professor of Humanities at Victoria College. An award-winning instructor, she has often taught in the Siena Summer Abroad Program. Her courses include ANT396Y0 Italian Regional Foodways and Culture, and previously, courses in Italian language and culture. Her studies focus on Italian food history, on Italian Tuscan author Mario Pratesi (1842-1921) and on the works of Annie Vivanti. She has published widely in North American and European journals including Mario Pratesi’s lost manuscript, All’ombra dei cipressi (SEF, 2018) and articles in several Proceedings of the Oxford Food Symposium. She always loves teaching ANT396Y0 and looks forward to exploring Italy’s dynamic and fascinating (and delicious) foods and foodways with you in Siena in 2024.

BMS312Y0 The Rise of the Modern Book in Renaissance Italy

A decade following Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in the mid-1400s, Italy emerged as the cradle of the European printing revolution. With Venice serving as the Silicon Valley of the Renaissance, dozens of early printing startups transformed the concept of the book. A community of entrepreneurs, inventors, and humanists introduced a number of typographical innovations and editorial ideas that were crucial to the rise of the modern book. 
This summer course will equip students with a comprehensive understanding of early Italian printing history, portraying Renaissance Italy as an innovative ecosystem of print culture in the humanistic tradition, from the incunable to the hand-press period, analyzing all components of the life cycle of the book, from paper making to typography and bookbinding.

This course will provide students with the opportunity to visit some of the iconic locations of the Italian print culture tradition. From Bassiano to Venice, following the footsteps of Aldus Manutius, the “Prince of Renaissance Printers,” guided by his motto “Festina Lente” (make haste slowly), students will be involved in experiential learning activities and workshops held by scholars, experts, and conservationists in these historical places.

Course highlights from the 2023 program can be viewed here: BMS312Y0 Video 2023

Prerequisite

Prerequisite: None. Recommended preparation: BMS100H/BMS200Y/BMS201H
Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1)

2024 COURSE OUTLINE

Field Trips

Field trips include site visits to: Vatican Library, Rome; Museo Aldo Manuzio, Bassiano (LT); Museum of Print, Subiaco (RM); Malleus Castle Calligraphy Workshop, Recanati (MC); Scriptorium Fonte Avellana, Serra Sant'Abbondio (PU); Monastero di San Silvestro in Montefano (AN); Fabriano’s historic papermakers factory (AN); Fabriano Paper and Watermark Museum (AN); Fondazione Fedrigoni Fabriano (AN); Biblioteca Gambalunga, Rimini (RN); Biblioteca Malatestiana, Forlì (FC); Biblioteca Archiginnasio, Bologna; Palazzo Pio, Carpi (MO); Abbazia di Praglia (PD): Biblioteca Antoniana, Padova; Stamperia d'Arte Busato, Vicenza; Tipoteca, Museum of Typography (TV); Museo Stampa Remondini in Bassano del Grappa (VI); House of Aldus Manutius, Venice; Museum of Jewish Printing, Soncino (CR); Publishing House Enrico Tallone Alpignano (TO); Royal Library, Turin; Museo Civico della Stampa, Piazza (CN); Biblioteca degli Intronati, Siena.

Instructor

Paolo Granata is an Associate Professor in Book and Media Studies at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. Nurtured by the centuries-old tradition of his Alma Mater, the University of Bologna, his research and teaching interests lie broadly in the areas of media ecology, media ethics, semiotics, print culture, and visual studies. As an educator, an innovator, and a cross-disciplinary media scholar, his advocacy efforts are focused on digital equity and digital sustainability, to explore the potential that information and communication technologies hold for enacting positive social change. He is the founding director of the Media Ethics Lab at the University of Toronto and a member of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Since 2018, he is a board member of the Executive Committee at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.

CRI389Y0 Current Issues in International Criminology 

This course is designed to introduce students to current issues in international criminology. Students will be exposed to recent research and policy debates that are relevant in both Europe and North America. The course will explore the following topics: 1) Cross-national crime trends and patterns; 2) The mafia and the growth of international organized crime; 3) Immigration and crime; 4) Youth radicalization, street gangs and “homegrown” terrorism; 5) Human trafficking and the refugee crisis; 6) Drug prohibition; 7) Hate crime and Right Wing nationalism; 8) Corporate crime within the global economy; 9) Violence against women in the global context; and 10) International trends in crime prevention and punishment. The teaching format will consist of lectures, seminar discussions, films, student presentations, debates and field trips.  

Prerequisite = None
Breadth Requirement  = Society and Its Institutions (category 3)

2024 COURSE OUTLINE (preliminary)

Field Trips

This course includes visits to a local police station, day trips to Volterra and Florence, a three-day trip to Rome and a local wine tour. 

Instructor

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah B.A. (Carleton), M.A., Ph.D. (Toronto), is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a Senior Fellow at Massey College. He holds Affiliate ScienTst status at the Centre for AddicTon and Mental Health and serves as Race Equity Lead for the Centre on Drug Policy EvaluaTon. Prof. Owusu-Bempah’s work examines the intersecTons of race, crime, and criminal jusTce. His current research spans across criminal jusTce insTtuTons. He is also studying various aspects of drug legalizaTon in Canada and around the world. He publishes regularly in both academic and popular forums.

Prof. Owusu-Bempah began his academic career in the United States at Indiana University, Bloomington. Prior to becoming a professor, he held posiTons with Canada’s NaTonal Judicial InsTtute, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General. Prof. Owusu-Bempah is frequently sought out to provide commentary and advice to police agencies, government bodies, community organizaTons, and media outlets on maaers relaTng to policing, jusTce, and social inequality. He has consulted with a variety of private and public sector agencies, including the OECD, Canada’s Department of JusTce, The Toronto Transit Commission, and Ontario’s Ministry of the Aaorney General. Prof. Owusu-Bempah’s research and commentary has recently been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail.

His latest book is entiled Waiting to Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice (MIT Press).

FAH394Y0 Studies Abroad in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture

Italy presents a challenge: how does an artist be modern in a country that is everywhere a museum of venerated antiquity? In 1909 the very noisy Italian Futurists declared that the rejected “eternal and futile worship of the past.” That rejection of the cultural heritage of Antiquity continues into the problematic art and monuments of Italian fascism in the first half of the 20^th century, and on through the “transavantgarde” painters of the 1980’s, into the present day. Our field trips to major collections of modern art and contemporary art will offer a rich context for exploring the dynamic Italy of the past hundred years. In this course you will be given the opportunity to work on your own critical writing skills, thinking about describing works of art as a curator, critic, and, generally, creative writer.

Prerequisites: 1.0 FAH credit
Recommended Preparation:  FAH245H1/ FAH246H1/ FAH287H5/ FAH288H5/ VPHB58H3
Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1)
 

2024 COURSE OUTLINE (FINAL)

Instructor

Professor Elizabeth Legge specializes in the art of twentieth century avant-gardes - Cubism, Dada and Surrealism – and onward into the present. She has written and taught on topics including the shocking art of the “young British artists” of the 1990s, artists’ responses to the horrors of the Holocaust, the internationally famous films made by the Canadian artist Michael Snow, boredom in art, the cuteness of Jeff Koons balloon dog. She has taught courses in Siena a number of times, capitalizing on Italy’s spectacular role in modern and contemporary art.

.

ITA358/359Y0 Modern Italian Culture

Analysis of selected philosophical, artistic, musical and literary works which range from the Middle Ages to the present. The main topics of discussion include the Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Italian Unification, Theatre, Opera, Futurism, Fascism, Neorealism, Regionalism and Industrial Growth. Field trips and screening of films are included.

The course is taught in English and is open to students from other disciplines. Students who wish to obtain credit in ITA359Y0 (instead of ITA358Y0) will be required to do course readings in Italian.

Prerequisite: None.

Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (category 1) + Society and Its Institutions (category 3)
Exclusion: ITA245Y/247H/248Y

2024 COURSE OUTLINE

Field Trips

This course includes excursions to Assisi (Perugina Chocolate Factory), Pienza/Montalcino (Sant'Antimo Abbey), San Gimignano/Monteriggioni, and an overnight visit to Rome. 

Instructor

Michael Lettieri is a Professor of Italian at the University of Toronto.  He has served as Vice-Dean (Academic Experience), Chair of the Department of Language Studies, Associate Dean (Humanities) and Vice-Principal (Academic) at the Mississauga Campus, and Dean and Director of the Italian School at Middlebury College. Highlights from his extensive list of publications include articles and books on Italian literature, textual criticism, and second-language teaching and learning. Lettieri has received several academic awards, including the University of Toronto APUS-SAC Undergraduate Teaching Award, the OCUFA Teaching Award, the University of Toronto President’s Teaching Award, and the American Association of Teachers of Italian Distinguished Service Award for distinguished teaching, published research, and service in the fields of Italian language, literature, and civilization.