Join us in this four week, six-credit hour summer study abroad program in Italy!  

In the first two-week course, students live in the medieval Tuscan town of San Giovanni Valdarno (Valley of the Arno River) interacting daily with local residents.  The typical Roman garrison plan reveals the city’s history as a Florentine military outpost built in 1296 to protect her border lands. While there, students learn about Italian art, design, history, and language in the classroom and experience it firsthand.  They will walk among ancient Etruscan and Roman ruins and the Medici Gardens in the hills of Fiesole; see Florence—the birthplace of the Renaissance and a new way of picturing the world; explore the traditions of winemaking at a fourth-generation-run Chianti vineyard; learn how economic necessity and agricultural history influenced local and regional food; and discover cosmopolitan Rome with its accretions of history, from the ancient forum to its grand Baroque vistas.  Throughout the two weeks students also engage in a research project examining a design theme and tracing how it is expressed differently in each environment, and ultimately how place affects art and design.   

During the second two-weeks of the program the group will be in Milan attending classes at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti (NABA).  The second two weeks build from the early Italian art epochs covered at Il Silabo to the design culture of contemporary Italy in the design center of Milan.  A choice of courses that specialize in different fields of design such as fashion design and merchandising, interior design, graphic design, digital photography and product design will be offered as will art history courses that examine Italian design and design in Milan.  The courses contain lectures by professional designers and scholars from each field, field trips to professional venues and a graded project.