ARH 399: Exhibiting Art and Design in London

This course investigates the central issues and practical concerns surrounding art and design curation, with a special emphasis on contemporary exhibition practices in London, a global cultural center. It includes a three-week on-site component combined with pre- and onsite work, through which students will be exposed to a rich array of art and design venues and to scholarship on museums (as spaces of ritual, debate, interpretation, preservation, and omission; as contact zones, training grounds, centers of power, and mirrors of society at large).

GLBL 388: Contemporary Britain in a Global Setting

This course examines contemporary British politics and society. We will discuss the commanding themes in British politics and public life and look at their historical context. The course provides an introduction to the principal institutions, parties and issues in British politics. This will extend to consideration of key social issues - including race and diversity and aspects of popular culture from broadcasting to sport, from music to the monarchy.

Wine Marketing Management

Wine Marketing Management will provide students with a deep understanding of every aspect of real world wine marketing management. This course will teach students the unique aspects and attributes of the wine industry and how that drives marketing planning and decision making. The course begins with learning to understand the wine marketplace and the keys to success in today’s saturated market. Students will learn how to evaluate customers and wine markets, ensuring that their marketing strategies will resonate with those customers and will get the desired results.

Sustainable Marketing

Sustainability is the greatest challenge of our lives. While the past century has witnessed an unprecedented increase in global wealth, the spoils have been unevenly distributed, exacerbating economic inequality, social injustice, food insecurity, and health emergencies for the world’s underrepresented. Those with means fed an ever-growing cycle of ‘abundance accumulation’ that has resulted in increasing consumption patterns, further inspired by business and marketing activities designed to stimulate our desire to ‘buy more stuff.’

Tuscan Journal

For centuries artists and writers have created sketchbooks and journals inspired by Italy’s rich culture, physical beauty and history. Through direct observation and engagement with the natural landscape, architecture and culture of daily life of Tuscany and its surrounding regions, students will record their impressions and create personal travel journals that capture the “zeitgeist” (spirit) of Tuscany. We will explore a variety of writing, sketching, and mixed-media techniques, both traditional and experimental, to help students find their personal voice.

Gender and Sexuality in Italian Cinema and Media

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of how cinema and other medias ‘construct’ expectations about masculinity and femininity and ideas about normal and deviant sexualities. The course will encourage students to reflect on the multiple axes of privilege, exclusion and inclusion within the production and consumption of media culture. The course explores some of the ways in which Italian cinema and media have made use of ideas about gender and sexuality as crucial components in the articulation of discourses about the nation, the family and the couple.

CINE 388: Neorealist Cinema

The term Neorealism refers to a set of films made in Italy at the end of World War 2. This was a time when the country was in ruins and the Italian film industry was on its knees: the main film studios in Rome (Cinecittà) had been expropriated and turned into refuge camps; equipment to shoot films was extremely hard to find and electrical power supply was very limited. Rather than making film production impossible, these obstacles actually instigated the emergence of a new way of making films.

Exploring the Dolomites: Landscape, History, Ecology, and Literature in Northern Italy

This unique travel/study- field seminar features a wide-ranging exploration of the Dolomites, recently designated as World Heritage Site by UNESCO for the distinctive variety of their morphology, geology and landscape. These spectacular and monumental mountains retain traces of extraordinary interest for disciplines such as Geology, Paleogeography, Geomorphology and Paleontology.

History of Women and Gender in England and Wales

This course examines the history of sex and gender in nineteenth and twentieth century England and Wales. We will explore the rich and varied lived experiences of British men and women using a wide range of primary sources, including written discourse, speeches, photographs, novels, and film. The course proceeds in a predominantly chronological fashion with case studies of key groups interspersed throughout. We will trace changes in the representations and expectations of sex and gender from the Enlightenment to the present day.

Marine Biology in Panama

An intensive field course in Panama focused on tropical coastal biology and environmental issues. The course will integrate biology of 3 distinctive coastal habitats/biomes (coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass meadows) and consider relevant human environmental issues on global and local scales. The course will be offered in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s (STRI’s) Bocas Research Station (BRS), located on Isla Colon along the northwestern Caribbean coast of that country. All of these habitats are abundantly present within minutes to ½ hour boat ride.