Italy (August)

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)

2025 Preliminary Course Outline

Instructor

Dr. Scot Wortley is one of Canada’s leading criminologists.  He has been a Professor at the Centre of Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto since 1996.  His academic career began in 1993 as a researcher with the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System.  Over the past twenty-five years Professor Wortley has conducted numerous studies on various issues including youth violence and victimization, street gangs, drug trafficking and substance use, crime and violence within the Caribbean, public perceptions of the police and criminal courts, police in schools, police use of force, and racial bias within the Canadian criminal justice system.  In 2007, he was appointed by Metropolis to the position of National Priority Leader for research on Immigration, Justice, Policing and Security.  Professor Wortley has also served as Research Director for several government commissions including the Ontario Government’s Roots of Youth Violence Inquiry. In 2017 Professor Wortley worked with Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate to develop standards and guidelines for the collection and dissemination of race-based data within the public sector.  Professor Wortley is currently leading three major investigations into possible racial bias within policing for the Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia Human Rights Commissions.  He is also leading an inquiries into bias within the Toronto Transit Commission’s enforcement unit.  Professor Wortley has published in a wide variety of academic journals and edited volumes and has produced numerous report for all levels of government.  He has presented his work at conferences and workshops across the globe.  In 2015, Professor Wortley taught the first criminology course ever delivered as part of the Sienna Summer Abroad program.  

ENG297Y0 Topics in English Literature: Creative Writing in Italy

This course will be modeled on the workshops in which most successful writers participate, but with the added opportunity of inspiration from Italian culture. It will provide a structured environment for poets and prose writers to undertake new projects and to engage in a constructive critical exchange with one another on the technical points of their craft. It will also seek to energize student writing by engagement with Italian art, architecture, and culture, especially as experienced in field trips to sites of international importance. For poets, the course will emphasize the practice of ekphrasis, poetry that responds to specific works of art and seeks by that engagement to create literary work that is both beyond the self and expressive of it. For prose writers we will bear in mind the famous adage, “There are only two plots in all of literature: you go on a journey, or the stranger comes to town.” A huge proportion of the world’s great narratives are based on a journey motif – this can be seen in the works of Homer through to the most contemporary novels. The prose writers in this course will explore the connections between travel writing and fiction or memoir.

Goals: To improve the skills of students as writers of poetry or prose; to improve reading and editorial skills; and to give students a rich experience of creative writing in the context of an ancient and vibrant culture.

Field Trips (TBC): The course includes day-trips to Florence, Assisi, Volterra, and an overnight trip to Venice. 

Prerequisites: 1.0 ENG credit or any 4.0 credits

Breadth Requirement = Creative and Cultural Representations (1)

2025 Course Outline (preliminary)

Instructor

Richard Greene is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and the author of ten books. One of Canada’s leading poets, he has won both the Governor General’s Literary Award and the National Magazine Award. He is also a writer of fiction and biography. His most recent book, a biography of the British novelist Graham Greene (no relation) was reviewed in almost every major newspaper and magazine in Britain and the United States. For eight years he served as director of the University of Toronto’s graduate program in creative writing, and many of his students have gone on to publish outstanding books of their own. He is known for a dedication to his students and a gift for drawing out their hidden talents.

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)
 

2025 Preliminary Course Outline

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.

Instructor Interview