Online Pre-Baccalaureate and Undergraduate Program

Designed for high school grads in a gap year, and for rising sophomores and juniors taking time off from college

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Please visit our Rome Pre-Baccalaureate page for in person courses in Rome.

Overview

Many serious students in the US are heartbroken to miss out on the college experience for which they had been preparing.  RILA offers a program for students who want a serious and rigorous education: some who see an unexpected opportunity to prepare for further studies in the humanities when they return to college, others who see a chance to get a broader understanding of the world before the pressures and responsibilities of a college career limit them to a major and a career path.  

The Rome Pre-Bac offers rigorous online courses in the humanities oriented around the historical and artistic legacy of Rome.  Students take all live online classes that require serious reading and reflection, but at the same time use art and architecture as part of the classroom.  Tiny classes offer close attention from dedicated faculty.  RILA classes have a maximum of ten students, much smaller than what pretty much any college in the US is offering.  Big online classes are often of little use for many students: people mute their mikes, check out and just clock time.  Moreover, nearly all colleges offer pre-recorded lectures that are unstimulating and, in many cases, frankly not worth the price of tuition.  Instead, RILA has a long tradition of working only with small classes, because we consider them essential for the discussion-based method we follow. This year, RILA’s unique approach turns out to be especially important for online discussions. And all material is live, no pre-recorded lectures. Discussions will give students the chance to engage with the material through their own questions and thus have something at stake in what they learn. The program also leaves space for lectures that will offer students preparation in the history and art history that they need to understand the works they encounter.  Lectures will also be delivered live in real time, with most discussion at the end but with flexibility for addressing questions when they arise.

Courses focus on fundamental questions while reading great texts of philosophy, history, and literature, but, in the process, offering an aesthetic education. Students can choose whether to register for one or both courses.

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Courses

Ancient History from the Inside: Classics in Social and Political Thought

This course focuses around the period of the Roman republic and empire, exploring ancient history and political philosophy broadly construed, including philosophical and literary works from Greece to Rome. By discussing important texts that are still worth thinking about today, the class gives us an inside view on what motivates the history, rather than just the facts and dates. For this reason it lets us a chance to reflect on how the Roman republic is of relevance for us and our modern republic. We will explore questions about what makes a republic possible, what preserves it, and the forces that can destroy it. We will reflect further on the impact of the regime on the souls of the citizens that live under it. While these questions in Roman history are timely opportunities to reflect on the state of the republic today, they also offer windows into timeless questions about the relation between the political life and human beings.

Course meets M/W, 8:15-9:45 ET, for 13 weeks, for a total of 39 hours of instruction. The total cost for the course is $ 2,535

Readings:

• Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
• Livy, Ab Urbe Condita
• Polybius, Histories (Rise of the Roman Empire)
• Plutarch, Lives of Alexander, Caesar, Cato, Antony
• Virgil, Aeneid
• Tacitus, Annals
• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
• Augustine, City of God

CREDIT CARD PAYMENT

Please note that a 2.9% booking fee must be applied to Paypal and credit card payments. Therefore your total for this course would be $2,608. In order to avoid the booking fee, you can pay directly from your bank. Please check the Bank payment option for details.

Ancients and Moderns: A Survey of Western Art

This course uses art and architecture to focus on fundamental philosophical questions about the role of art and beauty in human life.In the process we will ask questions about the nature of art: How can we capture the world in art, and at the same time see ourselves? Is the aim of the artist the imitation of nature or a more purely creative act? We will also gain fluency and thoughtfulness about movements and terms in western art history that have significant implications for the nature of art. We will look at works of ancient sculpture and painting, medieval mosaics, and some of the most innovative and influential renaissance and baroque art Alberti, Bramante, Botticelli, Perugino, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Caravaggio, Borromini, Bernini, and others.

We will also explore the most important buildings in the history of architecture: we will look at major ancient and medieval architecture alongside foundational early modern architecture by Michelangelo, Borromini, and others. The online version of this course will also offer more time to look at modern and contemporary art outside of Rome, but always using Rome’s art to launch us.

Seminars Tu/Th, 8:15-10:15 ET, for 13 weeks, for a total of 52 hours of instruction. The total cost for the course is $ 3,120.

Short readings in art history will supplement our exploration of art, as well as selections from:

• Vitruvius, On Architecture
• Aquinas, Summa Theologica
• Dante, Divine Comedy
• Alberti, On Painting
• Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks
• Vasari, Lives of the Painters
• Hegel, Aesthetics
• Nietzsche, Advantages and Disadvantages of History
• Wallace Stevens, Noble Rider and the Sound of Words

CREDIT CARD PAYMENT

Please note that a 2.9% booking fee must be applied to Paypal and credit card payments. Therefore your total for this course would be $3,210. In order to avoid the booking fee, you can pay directly from your bank. Please check the Bank payment option for details.

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