Rome Art & Culture Seminar

Program Topic Format Reading List Field Trips Special Events Cost Calendar Scholarships Application

PROGRAM

Temple University Rome offers a 4-week Art and Culture Seminar. This six credit graduate seminar is designed to bring together the disciplines of aesthetics and cultural studies. In its interdisciplinary thrust, the seminar is intended to serve as a foundation for advanced study in the human sciences and to reflect the most current trends of thought in post-modern culture. This year's topic is "Vision and Rationality." The seminar convenes from June 2 - June 26, 2008, at Temple University's campus in Rome, the Villa Caproni.

The Temple Seminars in Art and Culture welcome applications from advanced undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students in fields such as literature, film studies, philosophy, art, and social theory. The seminar entails an intensive program of class work, field trips and guest lectures. The city of Rome is used extensively as a resource. All classes are taught in English.

The Temple Rome campus is ideally located in the heart of Rome, in the Villa Caproni, a handsome building facing the Tiber river. Just north of Piazza del Popolo and within walking distance of the lively Spanish Steps and the beautiful Borghese Gardens, the Villa Caproni is convenient to living accommodations, shops, and restaurants. Its facilities include a 13,000-volume library, one of the largest English-language libraries in Rome, a computer center, academic classrooms, extensive art and architecture studios, an art gallery, and student lounges. Accommodations can be arranged in a Temple student Residence or students can make their own living arrangements in advance.

SUMMER 2008 PROGRAM : VISION AND RATIONALITY

This year's topic will focus on the troubled relation between perception and cognition in three historical moments of Western culture: the Renaissance and the birth of single point perspective; the Baroque and Counter-Reformation; and the postmodern critique of Enlightenment rationality. We will speculate about how our culture has been shaped by collaboration and conflict among visual, visionary, ideological and rational ways of knowing the world. The scope of our inquiry will embrace literary, philosophical, painterly and cinematic texts.

Among the questions to be raised are: What is the relation between visual and verbal representation? Is the perceptual realm of sight necessarily subordinated to rationality? What is the place of visual representation in the tug-of-war between imaginary and real spheres of being? What historical and ideological exchanges between vision and rationality continue to affect our social and political orders? What role does aesthetics play in the making of a public sphere?

FORMAT

The seminar is conducted in English through lecture/discussion sessions and closely coordinated field trips. The class sessions will focus upon the listed readings below in the theory of ideology and the history of art. The field sessions will focus upon Roman illusionist painting, Caravaggio and the Counter-Reformation, Baroque sculpture and architecture, and the holdings in futurism and abstraction at the Museum of Modern Art in Rome.

WORKING READING LIST FOR SUMMER 2008

• Selections from On Painting, by Leonbattista Alberti

• Vision and Visuality, edited by Hal Foster

• Selected writings by Teresa of Avila

• Selected poetry by John Donne and Richard Crashawe

• "The Analytic of the Sublime" from Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment

• Selections from Four Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan

• Force Fields, by Martin Jay

• "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" by Louis Althusser

• The Inhuman, by Jean Francois Lyotard

• Film: The Draughtsman's Contract, by Peter Greenaway
  

FIELD TRIPS

1. The Advent of Single-Point Perspective: paintings by Giotto, Lippi, Michelangelo--including the Sistine Chapel. (Rome)

2. Baroque Painting and the Counter-Reformation: the incarnational image in the work of Caravaggio. Also trompe l'oeil works by Pozzo, Borromini, the anamorphic experimenters. (Rome)

3. The Tradition of Roman Illusionist Painting (Pompeii)

4. The Uffizi, Brancocci Chapel. (weekend trip to Florence)

SPECIAL EVENTS

In past years we have invited guest lecturers and artists to conduct a one day workshop in relation to the issues of the seminar, and we hope to continue this practice. Previous guests include: Rodolphe Gasche (theorist, philosopher), Juliet Mitchell (psychoanalyst), Jacqueline Rose (literary critic), Anthony Giddens (political theorist), Jean-Marie Straub (filmmaker), Marco Bellocchio (filmmaker), Enzo Cucchi (painter), Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel (installation artists), Peter Greenaway (film-maker), Bernardo Bertolucci (film-maker), Michael Fried (art historian), Peter Flaccus, (painter), and the Brothers Quay (film-makers).

TUITION COSTS AND LIVING EXPENSES SUMMER 2008

Students are also responsible for the costs of round-trip airfare (estimated at $1,000), meals, living expenses, personal travel, insurance, and the International Student Identity Card (currently $22). All students should expect to pay $150-200 for Italian immigration and visa-related expenses.

* This fee is based on 2007 costs and subject to change.

**Please note that the program fee applies to fellowship and non-fellowship students alike.

2008 CALENDAR (SUMMER I)

May 29-June 27, 2008*

*Dates are tentative and subject to change.

SCHOLARSHIPS

This year two tuition fellowships will be made available on a competitive basis to applicants from the College of Liberal Arts. If you wish to be considered for these awards, please make a note on the application form. Students applying for these fellowships must submit their applications not later than February 15, 2008.

Matriculated Temple Students may apply for a limited number of $500 scholarships. Awards will be made on the basis of financial need and academic merit. Application materials are automatically made available to all Temple students who are accepted for the program.

Students who hold Temple University Fellowships or Future Faculty Fellowships may be able to apply tuition waivers to the Rome program, subject to the stipulations of their awards.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

Send completed applications to the International Programs Office.

The deadline for program applications is February 15, 2008.

To speak with program faculty:

Alan Singer, Temple University, 215-204-7575

alan.singer2@verizon.net

For further information, contact the International Programs office at study.abroad@temple.edu.