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location and course format
· Classrooms in historical buildings
· Course Format
· Hours and Credits
· Classrooms in historical buildings
Because RILA attempts to supplement the core texts approach with the art and the historical monuments of Italy, classes will meet in a museum or building of historic significance in the center of Rome. The particular location may vary from year to year. Having such a base is intended to help students feel at home among the cultural richness of Rome, while providing an extraordinary setting for serious reflection.
This year, 2010, we are proud to announce that our undergraduate classes will be held in the very heart of Rome's historic center, in the Palazzo del Collegio Romano or Roman College Building. The Roman College is located around the corner from the Pantheon and at walking distance from virtually all the major historical or artistic sites in the city (to see a map, click the link to photos below). This beautiful Renaissance building is today a national monument in Italy.
The history of the building reflects the most important tensions in modern Italian history. The Roman College Building, built in 1582-4, originally housed the recently instituted Jesuit college envisioned by Ignatius Loyola. For centuries it was one of the most active cultural centers in Rome. Galileo was received here with great acclaim in the early 1600's, and held a series of debates. Other major scientists, mathematicians, and astronomers have studied here or used the observatory (which may still be visited), most notably the 18th century physicist Boscovich.
In 1651 Athanasius Kircher was asked to create a museum within the Roman College. This museum's collections of scientific instruments, of antiquities, and as well, of botanical, geological and zoological specimens are still on display today, although a number of its pieces have been moved into the Vatican and other museums. |
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Collegio Romano - etching by G. Vasi dated 1760
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During the unification of Italy the Roman College was used as a barracks for Italian troops, and since 1871 it has hosted a non-religious public high school, the Liceo Ginnasio E. Q. Visconti.
See photos of RILA's 2010 location at the Palazzo del Collegio Romano.
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· Course Format
RILA mixes different approaches: classroom discussions, guest lectures, and frequent excursions. We aim to enable students to experience the city and its wonders, but without letting them become passive tourists. Excursions are intended as a part of a serious reflection on the themes of the classroom discussions. Instead of trying to rush students from one site to another while stuffing them with irrelevant historical information, we hope to focus their attention on the ideas. Classes demand that the students participate and take responsibility for their learning so that they will have inner resources from which to draw on while at Rome.
Seminar and Guest Lecturers:
The seminar is intended as a place for the students to range widely in discussion with the help of a central text of sufficient weight to ensure the seriousness of the conversation. Seminars are composed of no more than eighteen students (usually far fewer than that), led by two St. John's tutors, experienced in liberal arts great books teaching.
In addition, RILA invites high profile scholars and cultural managers as guest lecturers at the very top of their disciplines who add other perspectives to the seminar.
Art, Architecture, and Historical Excursions:
Trips in Rome and around central Italy to sites of cultural interest take up at least one full day per week, usually Wednesdays. Each class will go on four formal full day excursions, three of them in Rome and one outside of Rome. The trips are designed around the topics studied in the seminar, and usually led by Italian art historians, classicists, or historians together with the seminar leaders.
In addition, the class goes on one informal, non-required excursion each week with one or both seminar leaders. Finally, there will be two optional weekend trips.
The tours of monuments and artworks, as well as trips outside of Rome, are designed in consultation with Professor Teresa Calvano, President Emeritus of the Italian National Association of Art History Teachers (Associazione Nazionale Insegnanti Storia dell'Arte or ANISA). Art historians help take the questions from the classroom out into the country at large. The involvement of seminar leaders in the historical and art historical portions of the class intend to make both parts mutually illuminating. Only by making faculty from different disciplines look together at the same material can a program be truly interdisciplinary.
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· Hours and Credits
We are currently attempting to find accreditation through an American college. For other institutions that wish to transfer credits directly, RILA's program as a whole is worth approximately 4 credit hours or 58 contact hours. Computation of credit hours is as follows: For the four weeks of instruction, seminars meet for two hours, four times per week (32 hours). Excursion days each week take up both morning and afternoon, including at least five hours of instruction per week (20 hours, does not include travel time to and from sites). Lectures meet a total of two times per month in three-hour sessions (6 hours). This totals fifty four (58) hours of instruction, or slightly over four credits hours, if 800 minutes of instruction are equal to one credit hour.
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