A Report on the Program's Activities: Summer 2011
From the Director, Antonella D. Olson
ad.olson@mail.utexas.edu
Office: HRH 2.106B; (512) 471-5531
Thirty-five students from
UT-Austin enrolled in this year's program. Matthew Rabatin, Assistant Instructor,
French and Italian,
taught with Program Director Antonella Olson, Distinguished Senior Lecturer,
French and Italian. Students spent their class time (1 1/2 hours for each
class) from Monday to Thursday, 25 May to 6 July, in the Palazzo Antici-Mattei,
a baroque palace in the heart of Rome.
The cost of the program
was originally $4,400, but due to a favorable exchange rate in May, each
student was reimbursed €100 in cash in Rome at the end of the program. The
fee did not cover airfare, UT tuition and fees, textbooks or lunches Monday
through
Friday.
The program fee covered:
• housing and two meals per day (three on weekends), • classrooms in the Palazzo
Antici-Mattei, • transportation from the airport, bus tickets, a monthly bus/metro
card, • several social gatherings that also included birthday celebrations, a lunch,
a reception with host families and a final dinner, • a conference with Italian writer Dacia Maraini,
• admissions to and guides
for the Galleria Borghese (Rome), Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este (Tivoli),
Castel Sant'Angelo (Rome), the Museo
di Capodimonte (Naples), and
• guides for the Roman Forum and Coliseum (Rome) a Caravaggio tour (Rome),
the Vatican Museums and the archeological excavations of Pompeii.
This year, $25,000.00 in scholarships was assigned to deserving students participating in the Program. The Program also received $4,000 in scholarships from Federico Torre,
former UT-Austin student and Rome Study Program participant. Our warmest gratitude goes to the College of Liberal Arts.
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ITL 612:
Second-Year Italian
six credit hours, taught by Matthew Rabatin
(Enrollment: 21 students)
This is a second-year course
in Italian language and culture, taught mostly in Italian. In this class,
students begin moving toward
fluency in Italian
by focusing on seven major communicative functions: describing, comparing,
recommending and expressing opinions, narrating in the past, expressing likes
and dislikes, hypothesizing and talking about the future.
Grammar from first-year Italian was reviewed, and new grammar points were
presented, always with the intention of developing and strengthening students’ abilities
to use these seven communicative functions. A wide range of cultural topics
was explored.
At the end of the program, the 612 students performed for the host families
by reading poems and singing songs:
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ITC 348:
Italian Drama Workshop.
3 credit hours, taught by Antonella Olson.
(Enrollment: 14 students)
This is an upper-division
course taught in Italian with emphasis on speaking, listening, reading and
comprehension skills. Through performing art skills,
the course has three main goals:
1. A
deeper understanding of Italian culture;
2. Improvement in pronunciation
and
intonation;
3.
Progress in Italian language.
In Rome,
students of ITL 348 studied an introduction to the history of Italian theater,
kept a journal
in Italian,
read articles
on contemporary Italian society, read
Esercizi di stile by Raymond Queneau, translated by Umberto Eco,
interviewed Italians, and wrote skits based upon Esercizi di stile.
At the end of the program, students performed in Italian some of the skits
from Esercizi di stile and
skits that they wrote:
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The Palazzo Antici-Mattei has been used as classroom space since summer 1999. The Centro Studi Americani (CSA) is one of the major Italian libraries of American Studies and is situated in the majestic Palazzo Antici-Mattei, a seventeenth-century palace. Its rooms feature frescoes by Tuscan and Flemish painters of the early 1600s. The CSA provided and will provide again next year a spacious, elegant and distinct environment for our students.
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Included in the program's cost:
- 1) An orientation session in Rome;
- 2) guided visits to ancient Roman sites;
- 3) a guided visit to the Museum of the Galleria Borghese;
- 4) a guided visit to Tivoli (Villa Adriana, Villa D'Este)
- 5) a tour (and great lunch and ice cream) in E.U.R.
- 6) visits to churches
housing paintings by Caravaggio
Optional field trips organized by the Director:
- 1) A three-day visit to Sorrento, Pompeii (ruins),
the island of Capri and the Capodimonte Museum in Naples
2) A three-day visit to Matera and the archeological sites in Metapontoto
3) A one-day visit to Florence,
4) A one-day visit to Venice
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