Study Abroad: Venice
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THE MYTHS OF VENICE: Images in Art, History, Literature and Film
Four Weeks
Tentative Dates 2009: May 18 to June 15, 2009
Program details subject to change
300 level course for Undergraduates, Graduate course for MALS
With its lacy skyline of steeples floating above sparkling waters, Venice has lured countless generations of travelers. The magic of the city defies description: there are as many responses to its magnetism as there are writers and filmmakers. The extraordinary magic of the city has defied definitive description: there are as many responses to its magnetism as there are writers and filmmakers. The artists and architects who defined this great renaissance republic left a unique environment which continues to capture the imagination. Six hundred years since the dawn of its dominance, its economic power, and its special position at the cultural and commercial crossroads of Europe and the east, Venice continues to work its magic on the thousands of tourists who wander her glittering byways and dream in her unearthly light. We know her for her canals and gondolas, her palazzi and over 400 bridges, magnificent to be sure. A small city made up of over 115 islands, it takes less than an hour to walk from one end to the other. But what has made Venice so captivating to the creative spirit? How is it that this special city holds the promise of romance, beauty and knowledge at the same time as it threatens with the risk of death and destruction?
Studying in Venice
This seminar, "The Myths of Venice", will attempt to answer these questions by enabling to students to "live like Venetians" for four weeks, truly an unforgettable experience in a location where the centuries of a dazzling past coexist vibrantly with the world of the 21st century. We will study the unique historical and artistic role of Venice, considering how this question is treated by writers such as James, Proust, Mann and Twain, painters such as Tiepolo, Canaletto, Titian and Tintoretto, and filmmakers from Woody Allen to Visconti, Mazursky to Welles. The lagoon city of Venice, "la Serenissima," has for centuries been the cultural and commercial nexus of eastern and western Europe. A carefully designed program of films, readings, and activities will bring students into the local community and promote their understanding of Venice as an extraordinary city with an environment unlike any other. Forced to slow their pace by climbing tiny bridges and wandering narrow streets along canals and through colorful markets, students will pursue projects using Venice as a case study for the coexistence of different traditions, Western and Eastern, Jewish, Moslem and Christian. Starting from Venice in its former position as the Queen of the Adriatic at the center of an empire, we will consider varying views of the city from the renaissance to the present, through literature, film, art, architecture and history.
Requirements satisfied by this course
General Education:
300 level, Topics in Arts and Humanities
Contemporary Arts:
Upper level core course
American and International Studies:
300 level: Upper Level Elective with International Focus
(International Studies Major)
300 level: Elective, Area Studies/Europe concentration
(International Studies Major)
Experiential/Study abroad requirement (International
Studies Major)
200 level: International/Comparative Western elective
(International Studies Major)
MALS: basic course distribution (requires additional
seminar and project), taken as independent study.
Our course of study
We will prepare for our four weeks in Venice by hosting several pre-departure meetings at Ramapo for an initial immersion in the unique nature of the city as an object of historical, cultural, artistic and personal reflection. Once we cross the Atlantic for our 4 week stay in Venice, we will gain a solid understanding of the story of Venice, in all its richness and variety, its dramatic evolution and special place in history. The works of filmmakers and great writers of different eras and cultures will allow us to see how they have used and envisioned Venice to understand their own history and value systems. Students will complete their final projects using library and internet facilities in Venice. Through study and our daily lives in the city, we will begin to appreciate how its varied facets can reflect and illuminate our own situation, contemporary culture and value systems, perhaps explaining its perpetual appeal to tourists through the ages. Ultimately, we will understand how, in many ways, the shifting currents of life in Venice mirror the great shifts of western culture generally over the past 500 years, including the technological revolution, globalization, and the environmental problems facing all of us.
Life in Venice and Beyond
Students will live in groups for four weeks in apartments in Venice, responsible for their own meals. Classes will meet for three mornings per week and students will be encouraged to explore the city independently. On the fourth day of each week, the group will visit the significant historical and artistic venues of the city accompanied by scholar Dr. Marina Karem, including such sites as St. Mark's Cathedral, the Doge's Palace, the Academia and Guggenheim museums, and the Palazzi Ca D'Oro and Ca Pesaro. There is much to enchant in Venice itself. But, long weekends have been preserved for further exploration: it's very easy, and not very expensive, to travel for a long weekend to Rome, only 4 1/2 hours away, and Florence, 3 hours away. It's even quicker to take the short train ride to Verona to see the grand opera in the 2000 year old Roman arena, or to the mountains of the Lake Garda district. Life in Venice is unlike life anywhere else on earth. Silent, but for the sound of feet walking on narrow streets, the periodic motor boat, muffled conversation and the occasional singing gondolier, Venice fosters contemplation and a humane pace of life- leisurely strolls through markets, 15 minute vaporetto rides to the beach at the famed Lido, easy boat excursions to the outlying islands, wonderful concerts, relaxed conversation in sidewalk cafes. No traffic jams, no fumes, no gas, no cars, no pollution… just "boat buses" and gondolas and feet and starry nights. They will certainly not be alone, but will meet tourists and students who converge on Venice from every corner of the globe- Venice has been a magnet for the young for centuries!
Program Cost: approximately $6100
Program Cost Includes:
Housing in apartments (with kitchen facilities), admission to sites in Venice, vaporetto pass for transportation within Venice, tuition (8 credits, undergraduate or graduate), administrative fees (Program cost does not include food and transportation outside Venice)
Eligibility
All Ramapo College students in good academic and judicial standing with a minimum G.P.A of 2.75 (those below will be assessed on a case by case basis) are eligible. Students of other U.S. colleges or universities, alumni,
teachers, and members of the community are also eligible.
For further information, contact
THE ROUKEMA CENTER
FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
RAMAPO COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY
505 Ramapo Valley Road, Mahwah, NJ 07430
Attn: Kathryn Godfrey
Telephone: (201) 684-7463
E-mail: kgodfrey@ramapo.edu
Faculty
Dr. Kathleen Sunshine, Professor of Literature and Communications, received her Ph.D. in Literature from Harvard University. At Ramapo, she has served as Associate Dean/Director of the School of Contemporary Arts, and Director of the International Telecommunications Center. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Sunshine has done considerable consulting on international education, particularly in Russia, China, Africa, and India. She studied in Venice with a summer Institute of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and had two Fulbright Senior Academic Specialist Grants, in Ukraine and Thailand. She was the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship and has taught at Harvard University, Queens and Brooklyn Colleges of The City University of New York, and Manhattan College, as well as several institutions abroad. At Ramapo, Dr. Sunshine teaches courses in the adaptation of literature to film, creative writing, and thematic sources, in myth and legend, of contemporary film. She is the author of "Early American Literature and the Call of the Wild: Nature and the Indian in Fiction before Cooper," and "Live Poetry," an anthology of political and socially critical poetry of the Viet Nam era. She was executive producer of "Intercultural Perspectives," a television series on New Jersey Public Television, has worked as a journalist in India, and is currently completing a novel and a documentary.
Professor Dr. Marina Del Negro Karem is a native Venetian. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Louisville, and is an expert on the uses and propagandistic contexts of the representation of the Lion of St. Mark in Venetian art. Although she has lived most of her life in the U.S., she maintains a home in Venice and returns there every summer.
Dr. Karem speaks the Venetian dialect fluently and is familiar with research facilities and procedures in the State Archive and major libraries of the city. She has taught abroad several times for the University of Louisville and the University of Georgia. For four years, she was the Director of the Study Abroad Program in Italy for the Kentucky Institute for International Studies.
Location and Contact Information
The Roukema Center for International Education is located in the Anisfield School of Business, room ASB-123. Our phone number is (201) 684-7463. E-mail - goabroad@ramapo.edu
