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After attending NYU’s Graduate Film School, Stephen A. Unger lived abroad for 10+ years during which time he co-founded Foster’s Hollywood, a massive European restaurant chain with over 200 locations in Spain and Portugal. He went on to make a name for himself in Hollywood as a producer, distributor, and executive recruiter. In May he returned to Florence and visited the Villa Rossa.

When did you study here and how did you arrive in Italy?

I don’t recall the precise dates of my studies in Italy.  I know I came early for the Fall ’65 Program, and stayed late. My family had moved to Paris, France after my graduation from Beverly Hills High School in the spring of 1963. I enrolled at Syracuse that September and for the next two years spent Christmas, Easter and summer vacations in Europe. I drove from Paris to Florence, accompanied by my older brother Tony, arriving a couple of weeks before the start of classes. Since (at least in those days) Syracuse students were not permitted to drive during the Program, I turned my car over to Tony who returned to Paris in it.

What did you study here? 

Fine Arts (especially the Renaissance), Political Science and, of course, Italian.

What was your impression of Florence?

I loved every minute of my time in Florence.  My folks had already instilled in me a great interest in foreign cultures and world history. Florence was and is glorious. Roaming the city was like being embedded in a fabulous outdoor museum. I was totally swept up in the breathtaking art and architecture, political intrigue and momentous historical events which were emblematic of Florence.

Any particularly memorable experiences either inside or outside of the classroom while you here?  

Too many to count or recount.  I had great teachers so the course work was vigorous and rewarding. The program encouraged us to immerse ourselves into Italian life, make Italian friends, speak the language (in those days, the two families I stayed with were instructed not to speak to us in English and that was a very good thing – “Necessity being the mother of invention.”). I remember the Giotto room at the Uffizi as being particularly impactful.  Facing Giotto’s Madonna flanked by Duccio’s and Cimabue’s, I felt like I was witnessing the birth of the Renaissance (or at least a precursor to it.) Also memorable was my brother’s return to Florence at the end of the program when he turned over the keys to the Triumph Spitfire to me and I spent the next two weeks alone driving down from Florence to Rome to Naples, down the Amalfi Coast to Reggio Calabria. Taking the ferry over to Messina (Sicily), then Catania, Siracusa, Agrigento and across to Palermo. The way back to Naples to ship the car back to Syracuse where I would join it for the remainder of my Junior and Senior years. Lots of fun for a 19-year-old kid in a convertible!

You went on to have a very successful career as a Hollywood executive, among other things. Did your time abroad have an impact on your career path?

Absolutely! It was integral to any success I may have enjoyed.  It’s helpful to know foreign languages (I’ve managed to learn several).  An accidental byproduct of learning other languages is that it necessarily improves your fluency in your mother tongue. You become much more attune to grammar, structure and meaning.  However, it is much more useful to be culturally fluent; that is, to be able visit/reside in a foreign land and adjust accordingly.  Said otherwise: to be able to see things through a foreigner’s eyes.  To be open to differences and embrace them. I ended up living in Europe for over ten years and it helped me immeasurably in my personal interactions as well as my business activities.

How has Florence changed since you studied here?

In 58 years….lots! For one thing, it is much more crowded, almost unrecognizable from the mid-1960s. The long lines around places of interest and the constant influx of tourists is noticeable. However, the beauty of Florence is eternal and it is still thrilling to approach the Duomo and other majestic sights – that has not diminished.

Any advice for current students?

Be bold. Battle to learn the language as well as you can. Reach out for new Italian friends.  Treat every day of your stay in Florence as if it were a precious jewel.

Cathy Doherty had the experience many students dream of. She came to Florence and fell in love with a local.

When did you study here?

I studied Photography in the spring of 2017 as a sophomore.

What did you enjoy most about the program?

It’s hard to pick just one thing but something I still rave about to this day was how anything we were learning from our textbooks was right there in our backyard. From the art we read about in Professor Zaloga’s class and going to see it at the Uffizi, to Professor Piombino’s class and speaking to family members of prominent people affected by mob rule during the mafia’s reign in Sicily, it blew my mind how lucky we were to have these experiences in person.

Any particularly vivid memories from that time?

As an art program student I got to live in an apartment with 3 other girls. It was a really beautiful space; my bedroom had big French doors that led to our own garden and the kitchen had a little breakfast nook. I wish I could live there again! I also played on one of the school’s soccer teams, I believe we got second place that semester so it was really fun going to practices and games and having our peers come out to support! Lastly, of course being in Italy, every girl wants the whirlwind experience of cruising through the streets on the back of a Vespa to fulfill our Lizzie McGuire dreams. So on the last night of the program, a bunch of us met in Piazza Savanarola to say our goodbyes. I worked my magic and got a trusted friend of a friend to bring my housemate Annie home on one as I couldn’t let her leave without crossing this off her bucket list, and she and I spent the rest of the night giggling about it in her room and just talking about the past 4 months. This is one of my favorite memories because we hadn’t been close the entire semester- we both thought one of us didn’t like the other! She’s now one of my dear friends so it was just a really sweet way to end the semester. 

How did the experience affect your life?

I know everyone says their experience abroad is life changing but it’s true. The foundation that Professor Talini helped me set in my work in Advanced Photography ultimately led to the voice and inspiration for my Thesis my senior year back at Syracuse. And as cliché as it is, l’amore found me in Florence, so I added a couple more Italian language courses at school and found myself back there every summer and winter vacation until 2020 when I ended up living there for almost 3 years with my now husband. We are now both back in the US after 6 years together. I pretty much owe this program for changing the trajectory of my life. 

Local newspapers have been abuzz lately over a recent discovery made by history professor Marcello Simonetta, who taught a new class on Machiavelli for us this past semester. The discovery relates to the famous Pazzi Conspiracy, a savage episode in Florentine history when members of the Pazzi family tried to displace the Medici as rulers of Florence.

On April 26, 1478, an assassination attempt took place against Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano during High Mass inside the Duomo of Florence. Lorenzo was wounded but survived. His brother, having been stabbed 19 times, did not. Some 80 suspected conspirators were later executed, some by hanging from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria.

One of these was Antonio Maffei da Volterra whose detailed, page-and-a-half-long signed confession Professor Simonetta discovered in the Florence State Archives on the Ides of March this year. As he recounts in the national newspaper La Repubblica, “I confess I did not believe my eyes when I read it the first time, and I thought it was an archival hallucination. But no, it was really him, who was writing under ‘crazy’ pressure [pazzi = crazy] before they cut off his ears and nose and hung him from a noose!”

On April 19, students, host families, faculty, and staff were invited to view the spring 2023 final Student Art + Architecture Exhibition, held, as every semester, in the Studio Arts and Architecture buildings in Piazzale Donatello. Once again, beginner, intermediate, and advanced students alike demonstrated their creative talents through a wide variety of artistic media while students of the Syracuse University School of Architecture maintained their usual high standards of excellence, as well.

Photos taken by Francesco Guazzelli, professional photographer and Syracuse Florence lab technician.

Photo Gallery

Thanks to a Syracuse University Innovation Fund grant, Professor Carlotta Kliemann organized a unique workshop for the students in her Comedy and Satire in Italian film class. She hired film and video editor Alessio Lavacchi to teach them theory and practice with the programs ShortCut and Premiere over 4 sessions together. The five students in the class were then tasked with creating a short film inspired by one of the genres they had studied in class. They wrote the script, shot, acted in and edited a final work titled Local Tourist, a 6-minute video shot mostly around downtown Florence.

We interviewed alumna Mary Ann DuMond Kerr about her experience of the program a year after it was launched.

What semester and year did you attend Syracuse Florence?

Fall semester of 1960.  I think it was the second year of Syracuse in Florence.

What were your home school (Syracuse or elsewhere) and major?

I went to Syracuse and my major was sociology.

What did you study while in Florence? What kinds of courses were offered?

Political Science, Renaissance History, Art History, Italian, and ?

What was the fieldtrip program like at the time?

We arranged our own field trips to Napoli, Rome, Venice, Siena, Pisa, Bologna, and countless trips around Florence. Dr. Fleming took us to the Uffizi and many churches to see incredible art works. The field trips probably contributed to my mediocre grades, but I learned more than books could teach me. 

What is your most vivid memory of your study abroad experience?

I always think of the families with whom I stayed. One family was a Count and Countess and the other a Jewish family. They put up with my poor Italian, my late nights, crazy trips.  (Dr. Adams told us that we were expected to get culture shock, not give it.) I was so grateful for the experiences they shared and would never have had such a deep experience if it had not been for them. It was not that long after WWII.  One family, at great risk, had housed a Jewish family during the war, and my other family had to leave Florence quickly for a harrowing journey to Switzerland.  

When I was in Florence, it was during the fear of Communism era.  It was exciting to see the election banners and check out the Communist headquarters. I saved my Vota Communista poster for years. Dr. Adams later told us that whenever we climbed on a bus we would “rub shoulders and bump rumps with a Communist”.  

I also remember an exhausting trip to Siena, by bicycle (I loved my rickety bicycle). We didn’t account for the mountains we would have to climb or the failing brakes going downhill or the rain which soaked us or the many hours in the dark it took us to travel 50 miles. We were exhausted but saw most everything in Siena anyway. 

Dr. Adams took us to his farm where we made wine. A barrel of about 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide was filled with grapes. We climbed a ladder,  jumped in, and stomped around. After awhile, we could feel warm bubbles between our toes, and then we sank up to our knees in squished grapes. Finally we had to hold onto the beams to keep from drowning in wine. My friend said, “It must have been the greatest free leg show going!” I have had a passion for wine ever since. I heard that the wine we made was very strong.

If you have been back to Florence since, what was the most glaring change you noticed?

In 1967 I introduced my new husband to my beloved families. We have visited several times since, the last was in 2009 when Syracuse in Florence had its 50th reunion. I was impressed that the school had grown so much and offered many programs. We were shown around the city by a faculty member and saw places that I had forgotten or never seen. What an education! 

How did studying abroad affect your life?

I wrote to my folks, “Being here, 5000 miles away, has sure given me a chance to look at situations and life from an entirely different prospective. I’m sure I will be a better person for it, and I really want to thank you for letting me have this opportunity. I just wish I could relate in words every feeling and experience that I have had, so that you could share it with me. No matter how many pictures I show or how much I talk, I will never be able to share the full impact with anyone, not even my fellow students here, and I’m sure we will all feel the same way.”

While I was in Florence, I did a lot of soul searching about religion, relationships and my future. I left with a sense of purpose, which included a commitment to go to graduate school in social work. Since my grades weren’t great in Italy, (too much outside of school learning) I sure had to study when I got back to school. Classes were exciting and the reading inspiring. I had a real goal.

I did get my MSW at Smith College, where I was sent in the winter to Cleveland and Denver to do internships. After my time in Florence, these moves were a cinch. Again Syracuse in Italy made it easier to adjust when we moved to Kingston, Jamaica. I was the pediatric social worker at University of the West Indies Hospital. I had learned how to take risks and explore when I was in Florence, skills I used to make home visits, to confront and try to ease the pain of poverty.  

How do you occupy yourself now?

I’m a retired clinical social worker and look back on the heartwarming experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met and learned from. Most of my work was in pediatrics – parenting, child abuse, and malnutrition. I’ve also worked with sex offenders and with families coping with hemophilia. 

I have also organized fundraisers for EyeWitness Palestine, which organizes trips to Israel/Palestine to meet activists and peacemakers and return to share with others what they have seen. We bring speakers to Cleveland who discuss the plight of the Palestinians and their efforts to resist military rule, imprisonment of children, demolishing houses, wounding civilians. 

I have become more active in our Methodist Church especially after the discriminatory decision by the church to exclude the LGBTQ community. We are a diverse, reconciling church which means that we welcome all those who are LGBTQ people. How do we resist this anti-Christian decision?

We also visit our children in Washington, DC and Taos, NM. We have one granddaughter after years of nagging. Both are activists, our son is a history professor at American University, focusing on the homeless and social justice. Our daughter is a high school Spanish teacher and works for human rights in the Latino community.

Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for the opportunity to reminisce. 

[Editor’s note: see UNESCO Firenze’s Facebook page to check out the reels Katie created for the association during her time working for them.]

During my internship with UNESCO I visited the following heritage sites around the city: the Basilica di Santa Trinita, the Hospital of the Innocents, the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, the Misericordia, Piazza Savonarola, Piazza Libertà, the Giardino Dell’Orticoltura, and the Palazzo Guadagni Strozzi Sacrati. This internship allowed me to learn about Florence’s history and culture and explore smaller, less-touristy sites that tend to hold immaterial culture. These sites are not as grand as the Uffizi or the Duomo, but they still have history and cultural significance. Stories about sites like the Misericordia and the Hospital of the Innocents taught me a lot about the community and the long history of social welfare in Florence. This has been very interesting for me as I major in policy.

I have also had the opportunity to attend heritage events, such as Carlo Levi a Firenze, and learn more about immaterial heritage, that is, the history and culture of those living in the city, rather than the concrete sites themselves. This immaterial heritage is especially valuable when learning about the lives of those that were marginalized under the fascist regime and how they preserved their culture in Florence.

I highly recommend taking up an internship while abroad as it allows you to learn more about Florence than you ever could in a classroom. The hands-on opportunity to visit sites around the city, attend events, and develop relationships has been invaluable. I could not recommend UNESCO more if you want to experience Florence for all of its cultures. I am very lucky to have had this experience, and to encourage you further to visit smaller sites, here are a few pictures of those I had the opportunity to visit:

On April 6, the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, met with a group of our intermediate and advanced Italian language students to present his new book, La Città Universale (The Universal City), about the role of cities in Europe today. The event, which took place in our aula magna (room 13), felt informal and intimate. After the mayor presented his book, he and the students engaged in a pleasant conversation based on questions they had prepared after reading abstracts of his book in their courses.

The questions focusing on everything from diplomacy and what it takes to run a city like Florence to the mayor’s passion for music, the possibilities offered by a political career, unusual places to visit in this city, and the large American community here.

Afterwards, everyone gathered around the wisteria in the garden to engage with each other further, take some selfies, and continue the informal conversation with great enthusiasm on everyone’s part.

“The Mayor reminded us the role that Florence plays internationally also thanks to its weighty cultural heritage,” said Director Perugini. “It was truly a touching and inspiring experience. Many thanks to our Italian Department for guiding the students in the reading and understanding.” 

This March, five out of six members of the Florence MA Class of 2000 gathered in Florence—many returning for the first time in over 20 years. The motivator for this reunion, originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic, was alumna Lia Markey. Lia was inspired to invite her classmates to join her in Florence, where she is spending a few months this spring on research leave from her duties at Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago. She didn’t have to twist many arms, and she and the other members of her cohort spent a delightful week together sharing memories, visiting favorite art historical monuments, and reconnecting with former professors and colleagues.

A highlight of their visit was a brindisi at the Villa Rossa hosted by Florence Graduate Program coordinator Molly Bourne, who took the above photograph of the class of 2000 in the garden with their professors Ezio Buzzegoli, Rab Hatfield (retired), Diane Kunzelman, and Jonathan Nelson. Unfortunately, Lia was not able to attend due to the momentary illness of her pre-school daughter, so she, along with classmate Jenny Patten, who couldn’t come to Florence, are not pictured. The current MA class of 2023 also joined the event, and enjoyed hearing their predecessors reflect on how an extended period of immersive learning in Florence has impacted their lives both personally and professionally. We have excerpted some of their words here.

Lia Markey: “The Syracuse M.A. in Italian Renaissance Art in Florence instilled me with a passion for archival research that has inspired years of research. Training in the social history of art, conservation studies, museum studies, and paleography prepared me for a varied career as an interdisciplinary art historian, while the process of writing and presenting the symposium paper provided essential skills for lecturing and for teaching.

Thanks to the Syracuse MA in Florence, not only did I learn skills that would allow me to progress in the field of Renaissance studies, but I also met friends/colleagues that I would treasure throughout my life. Florence will always be a second home for me.”

Melanie Taylor (Director at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Singapore): “The experience of being a teaching assistant was perhaps the most formative I had in my two years in Florence. Preparing for classes, especially the focus on how to communicate with students, and being able to stand physically in front of masterpieces discussing them, was a gift of time and pure joy. Nothing will replace time spent in the presence of frescoed walls in hidden side chapels or sculptures in the niches of Orsanmichele. The Florence program and professors have always understood how remarkable being in the presence of art and architecture, and all things Italian, is. I don’t think any other program strives in the same way to immerse students (all students, especially the undergrads) in Italian culture.”

Lisa Neal Tice (Instructor of art history at Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA): “The graduate program in Italian Renaissance Art at SU Florence was an invaluable experience, both personally and academically. The courses in conservation and restoration, museum studies, and archival research enriched my understanding of Renaissance art but perhaps most importantly, they were an introduction to diverse fields of study within art history that have impacted how I teach, research and study art history today. The faculty at SU Florence generously established many connections and opportunities for us throughout the city. On a personal note, I am grateful for the students with whom I shared these experiences, who are now both colleagues and friends. We studied and lived together in Florence and experienced academic successes and challenges, many travel adventures, many, many cappuccini, and created enduring friendships. I treasure my time at SU Florence and hope that students will continue to benefit from the incredible education and experiences the program has to offer.” 

Julie Zappia McLean (Program Coordinator, Cornell University Society for the Humanities, Ithaca, NY): “The program immersed us in the world of the Renaissance: we learned directly from primary sources, interacted with on-site professionals, explored elective classes, and became residents of the incomparable city of Florence. I would attribute my experience as a TA for Syracuse’s undergrad courses to my successes as a museum educator. I learned to approach looking at original works of art from an interpreter’s perspective, to ask questions of my audience, to facilitate discussion, and to lead large groups of people through a space. I learned how to read my audience, that people have many varied opinions and responses to art, and how to engage almost any type of learner with art. After returning to the U.S., I held several positions in museum education at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, before taking my current job, which welcomes fellows each year to study at our center and produce work in art history, literature, music, cultural studies, and many more humanities topics. The friendships I formed with our cohort have endured, as seen by our recent reunion. We hold each others’ memories of our special time in Florence, and I know we’ll never forget the many profound experiences we shared.”

Engineering professor Francesca Parotti was featured in a recent issue of La Repubblica’s Il Venerdi’ magazine about a new master’s degree in space design at Florence’s Istituto Superiore delle Industrie Artistiche that she has helped to launch. Parotti is quoted throughout the article, talking about meeting the future needs of humans on the moon and on mars, the hypothetical planetary engineering process known as terraforming, and space-related prototypes that have already been developed.