About the Author
Dr. Kris Fresonke is associate professor with the Department of English and
co-founder of the Adelphi in Florence program.
Adelphi in Florence Now in Its Second Exciting Year
Kris Fresonke
From May 25 to June 15, 2006 a group of about twenty students will go abroad to live in Florence, Italy for three weeks to study the Renaissance. I work with faculty members Professor Tom McAnulty and Professor Jacob Wisse to offer this interdisciplinary course, combining studio art, art history and literature, using the city of Florence as our laboratory. The program, now in its second year, is Adelphi’s first-ever study abroad program. It offers students 3 credits in Art or English.
It was a long journey to Florence. This program represents the first in-house study-abroad course ever offered by Adelphi, and the planning took months. At times it felt like a gamble. The three of us who had launched this international program found ourselves in May 2006 with twenty undergraduates, riding a bus up into the hills above Florence. The bright Tuscan sunlight was dazzling; the crowds of tourists were vast, and the day was already warm. Why had we traveled so far, and what were we doing here? How would the students respond on the first day of class?
Then everyone got off the bus and saw the view.
The 500-year-old Duomo was luminous. The river Arno was bright blue. The city unfolded its charms, as it has done for visitors for centuries. “Bellissima,” sighed one of the students.
We got right to work. “Let’s talk about the city of Florence, and why it is here,” I began, filling in some historical background. Students spent the next half-hour exploring the Roman origins of the city, which shaped it in ways still visible today. “The Florentine Renaissance combined commerce and artistic genius,” declared Professor Wisse, continuing the morning’s lesson, “and the church behind us, San Miniato, is a perfect example of this fusion.” Students entered the Medieval hilltop church and began their immersion into the city’s thousand years of architectural heritage. Inside, Professor McAnulty, a specialist in sculpture, reviewed Christian iconography found in Florentine churches, preparing students for their visit to the Church of Santa Croce the next day.
And so it went. We three faculty may have wondered at times if we were ready to explain the art and literature of the Renaissance in three weeks, but immersion in one of Europe’s loveliest cities took care of all our doubts. Over the course of three weeks, students spent their days walking in the footsteps of Dante, Brunelleschi, Boccaccio, Fra Angelico, and Michelangelo. They talked to a sculptor restoring the marble figure of Moses in the façade of the Duomo. They sampled Italian cuisine and fashions. They debated the effects of restoring the David. They discussed Dante’s Inferno in the city that inspired it. They visited Pisa, Siena, and Venice. They traveled to Rome, where they joined the crowds greeted by Pope Benedict in St Peter’s Square, toured the Forum and the Colosseum, and admired the newly cleaned Sistine Chapel ceiling. For their final projects, students made half-hour presentations to their classmates and faculty on such topics as “Classicism and the Renaissance” and “Gardens and Cloisters in the City of Florence.”
At the airport, amid suitcases loaded with memories and souvenirs, students were reluctant to return to New York. “It was wonderful,” said art history major Siobhan Vicens, “because the Renaissance wasn’t just a set of slides, or something from books. It was where I lived.”
And we faculty unanimously agree: team teaching was the great joy of this experience, one we were delighted to be able to repeat in 2006. We strongly encourage Adelphi faculty who dream of teaching overseas to consider starting a study-abroad program of their own.
Please see our website for more information at http://academics.adelphi.edu/florence/, or contact Prof. Adam McKeown at mckeown@adelphi.edu. 
◆ 49513 visits. ◆
