Engineering professor Francesca Parotti has been teaching a class on Sustainability in Civil and Environmental Systems since we introduced our engineering program in 2015. Outside of teaching, her freelance work includes that of building-site safety manager. On March 6, she participated in a round-table at a conference on women and workplace safety at the town hall in Bagno a Ripoli, a suburb of Florence.
Parotti was happy to report back that the discussions were very animated and there were several interesting talks. She said participants stressed the importance of women taking leading roles in the workplace while being guaranteed the ability to reconcile work and motherhood and not being forced to choose because of a lack of institutional support.
Speakers also highlighted how performance stress affects women more than men because they are constantly being forced to prove that they “deserve” their roles in STEM or as managers.
As a case in point, Parotti’s presentation focused on her struggles as a safety manager trying to make others respect the rules because of the chauvinist culture of building sites where service orders are taken less seriously when delivered by a woman.
Dr. Victoria Bartels is a graduate of our Master’s in Renaissance Art program and began teaching a class on Italian Arts from Antiquity to Michelangelo for us this semester. Her research focuses on material culture, arms and armor, dress, and gender in early modern Europe as well as 19th century perceptions of the Renaissance.
In an attempt to shed light on some of history’s unwilling agents of war, her chapter examines the role of criminals in the martial initiatives of Cosimo I de’ Medici, who governed as Florence’s Duke from 1537–69 and then as the Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1569–74. The bulk of this study focuses on the crewmembers of Medicean warships. Large numbers of workers were also needed for state-sanctioned fortification and expansion projects. By presenting a more detailed picture of the involuntary personnel that fueled Medicean military enterprises, her study aims to redefine the notion of ‘soldier’, as well as demonstrate how forced labor was sourced, organized, and deployed in service of the early modern Tuscan state.
The essay is part of a collection investigating the shadow agents of Renaissance war by using new archival evidence and sources like literature, artworks, and other non-textual material to uncover the men, women, children and animals who sustained war by means of their preparatory, auxiliary, infrastructural, or supplementary labor. These shadow agents worked in the zone between visibility and invisibility, often moving between civilians and soldiers, and their labor was frequently forced.
Tommaso Ciuffoletti, professor of our brand-new wine culture and appreciation class, recently became the first recipient of the Beatrice Torrini Journalism Prize. Ciuffoletti helped develop Treedom, a social forestation project that allows people to plant trees at a distance and follow their growth online. He also writes for online wine magazine Intravino, is the former marketing director for a group of important wineries, and is now a wine entrepreneur himself.
The award was presented by the Vice President of the Region of Tuscany and Councillor for Agriculture Stefania Saccardi, along with Beatrice Torrini’s parents, Marco and Miralba. They established the prize in memory of their daughter, a correspondent for La Nazione newspaper specialized in wine who passed away at age 42 in December 2020.
The ceremony that took place in Palazzo degli Affari included reflections on the vital contributions young professionals are making to promote and share information about Tuscan wine like Beatrice did. Francesco Mazzei, president of Tuscan wine association Avito, stressed the importance of supporting young journalists in such efforts. RAI documentary production manager Lorenzo Di Dieco proposed developing new TV documentary stories on women producers, technicians, and writers in the wine world in Tuscany.
The award was also supported by Intesa Sanpaolo bank with the patronage of the Region of Tuscany, the Municipality of Florence, and RAI Toscana.
The author (seated, center) with some of his cohort in the Villa Rossa garden.
Editor’s Note: Jordan Pierre attended the “Florence and London Summer Session” in 2022 and was one of those students who just stand out from the rest and leave a lasting impression on Syracuse Florence staff and faculty. As Assistant Director for Student Life Jessica Volpe recalls, “he was part of the group living at Meridiana that left flowers after their staff had been mistreated by students in the previous blocks.” Student Life Advisor Melanie Honour said “his positive energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity for life was contagious.” Syracuse University News also recognized him this week for his leadership and activism on the home campus.
I decided to study abroad because I understand how important it is to gain exposure to how others live outside the environment you have come to normalize. My story is unique in that I didn’t quite know how I was going to cover the expense to get to Italy, nor did I do my due diligence on researching the area before going. My entire mindset was just on getting there and then figuring it out. I felt caged mentally, spiritually, and physically since I had never left the U.S., nor has anyone in my household. So, my mind was fixated on getting the expenses covered, which I was lucky enough to do with the help of the Syracuse University financial aid office and several alumni, and most importantly just getting to Italy.
With friends at the Colosseum in Rome
My experience abroad exceeded my expectations. From visiting Rome and seeing the Colosseum, to going to Venice and traveling on a gondola, to watching the San Giovanni fireworks on Santa Trinità Bridge in Florence, the experience was sacred, vividly captivating, and difficult to describe with words. I enjoyed the sightseeing, the relationships I built with other students, and the decoding of the brain, helping me to understand how limited my perception of the world was and how that perception, or how we define the world, is ever-evolving. My mind has expanded because of this exposure.
If I could change one thing about my experience abroad, it is that I wish I could have brought more people with me, not just relatives but also people from my community. With all our experience we must show gratitude and understand how fortunate we are to be in this position. We must think about the individuals who may never have the platforms and experiences we do and devise a plan to bridge that gap and create a space for others to join us.
With Professor Christian Tarchi’s psychology class on a site visit
Traveling abroad has changed my perception of the world by showing me how different life is outside of America. I think that most people often formulate a perception of other people, communities, and countries based on images portrayed in the media. The danger is that we develop preconceived notions of who people are and their way of life based on images fed to us, without ever taking the time to speak to these individuals or travel to these places to create our definition. By going to Italy, I formed my own opinion and perspective of Italian culture and people based on my own experiences and interactions. This limits the cycle of stereotypes and misconceptions. It’s hard to differentiate between true and false when your only gateway or exposure to other cultures is based on selective images shown to you.
Going abroad and studying in both London and Florence taught me how vast the world is and how limited the lens was through which I perceived it. I now realize how important it is for us to take full advantage of the opportunities we have to leave our block, our community, our state, and especially our country. There are two forms of incarceration in this world. One is literally to be imprisoned behind bars; the second is one we don’t often talk about or acknowledge, which is to be a victim of limited exposure.
So, it’s important that when you do go abroad, you document your experience, whether through video, picture collages, reels, or TikTok — whatever creates some form of documentation that you can bring back home. That way, you can go back to your community and educate those with limited access to the resources and funds to travel to another country, and you can liberate them through your experiences. You become a vessel through which your community lives. The lens in which you see the world is limited and you expand it through exposure. You define your life, your purpose, and who you are through your experiences. Travel helps you understand that your identity, which you believed was so firm, is actually variable.
Every February, Villa Rossa holds events in connection with Black History Month. This year the Villa offered a special screening of a new TV documentary, “The Black Italian Renaissance”, available in Italy and the UK on Sky TV. This 90-minute program features animation, theatrical reconstructions, and interviews with various experts including our own Professor Jonathan Nelson. He also served as the art historical consultant and introduced the event at Syracuse. The TV program addresses some basic questions about the many Black figures that appear in paintings and sculptures in the halls of the Uffizi Gallery, the great Venetian Palaces, and the most important churches in Rome. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why were they portrayed, and why did they remain unobserved until these days?
Youth of Moses, Botticelli, 1481-82, Sistine Chapel, Rome
Even in the Sistine chapel, Black figures appear in Botticelli’s Youth of Moses. Black Africans were depicted regularly in Italian Renaissance paintings, but until quite recently, they remained largely unseen by scholars and viewers alike. Several recent studies focus on paintings and sculptures showing Blacks as servants, thus reflecting the presence of African slaves in Italy. Many works, however, including those by Botticelli and Michelangelo, also depict and even celebrate Christian Africans. The strategies used by artists to depict Black figures can provide keys to better understanding specific works and the society that produced them.
On Thursday, February 9, 2023, members of Florence’s city council, the Red Cross, and various cultural/academic institutions joined Program Director Sasha Perugini to inaugurate a commemorative plaque which the City of Florence has installed on the façade of the Villa Rossa honoring Nerina and Bona Gigliucci’s lifetime of service to the Italian Red Cross. Members of the representative delegations spoke of the significant contributions the two women made during their lifetimes, not only as volunteers with the Red Cross, but also as pioneers in the advancement of nursing as a profession, and in the advancement of women in Italian society.
Nerina and Bona, members of the noble Gigliucci family from the town of Fermo (Marche), daughters of Conte Mario, architect and original owner of the building, lived in the Villa Rossa most of their lives. Indeed Bona, affectionately known by Syracuse students in the 1960s and ’70s as “La Contessa,” lived in the villa from age 7 to 96. In 1959, she moved upstairs to a private apartment on the third floor when Syracuse University began renting (and later purchased) the villa for its newly founded Florence program (the Syracuse Semester in Italy). Syracuse and La Contessa shared not only the villa, but over two decades of friendship and reciprocal respect until her death in 1981.
Nerina and Bona, ages 18 and 11.
Nerina, the oldest of the two sisters, was born in 1878 and was well known in the intellectual and social circles of Anglo-Italian Florentine society. In 1908, she was a founding member of the first women’s association in Italy created to support the emancipation and professional advancement of women. In 1910, upon graduating from the Italian Red Cross nursing program, she began immediately volunteering in hospitals. Throughout WWI she worked as a field nurse for the Red Cross for which she received the Silver Medal of Honor for Military Valor. In addition to her social, civic, and humanitarian work, Nerina was a notable author, playwright, chronicler, and biographer. After her death in 1963, her younger siblings, Bona and Donatello, collected many of her writings and published them in the volume “Nerina, an Anthology,” which can be found in the Syracuse Florence library.
Nerina on her wedding day, April 26, 1920Nerina Gigliucci (ca. 1959)
Bona Gigliucci, born in 1885, followed in Nerina’s footsteps, graduating from the Italian Red Cross nursing program in 1917. In 1916, she too was called to serve in the military field hospitals in Italy where she earned a Bronze Medal of Honor for Military Valor. She continued to be active in nursing throughout World War I and World War II and up until 1956. Having always been passionate about art, she was also an accomplished painter and illustrator of children’s books.
Bona Gigliucci, 1904Bona Gigliucci, 1960
The plaque, which rests proudly on the façade of the Villa Rossa, is yet another reminder of the meaningful relationship that the university established with the Gigliucci family in the 1950s. From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, the Gigliucci were an important part of the social, intellectual, artistic, and philanthropic fabric of the Anglo-Italian community in Florence. Syracuse University is happy to honor the memory of the Gigliucci sisters and aspires to carry on their dedication to scholarship, culture, and community service.
Fifty years ago today, in the Spring semester of 1973, Angela Demopoulos and Ben Mack met as students at Syracuse in Florence. They remember dancing together at the St Valentine’s Day party in Room 13 of the Villa Rossa: that was the beginning of their romance. After graduating from college in 1974 and getting married three years later, Angela and Ben moved to Washington DC where Angela worked at the National Endowment of Humanities and Ben taught history at high school. Then they moved to New Orleans, while Ben attended law school at Tulane, and finally settled in Charleston, South Carolina, where their three children – Alex, Benjamin, and Anna – were all born and grew up.
Angela and Ben Mack, Spartanburg, SC, 1977
Fast forward to forty years after her parents’ met at SUF: in the Fall of 2013, Anna Mack was studying at NYU in Florence when she met Ben Pardee, who was studying at SUF. Anna and Ben were introduced through mutual friends and discovered that they both had classes with Prof. Dorothea Barrett. Anna’s parents came to visit her in Florence for Thanksgiving break, so Prof. Barrett arranged for Anna and her parents to visit Villa Rossa.
Anna with her parents in the Villa Rossa garden Fall 2013
Anna and Ben at a Fiorentina game Fall 2013
Anna and Ben returned to their respective home universities (Wake Forest and Bates) and graduated in 2015. They then both moved to New York, settled together in Brooklyn, and got married in April 2022.
Anna and Ben at their wedding in Charleston, South Carolina, April 2022
Anna’s parents at Anna and Ben’s wedding 2022
Anna’s father Ben now has a law practice in Charleston, and her mother Angela works as the Executive Director of the Gibbes Museum.
In August 2022, Anna and Ben returned to Florence for their honeymoon. They visited the Villa Rossa and met up with Prof. Loredana Tarini, who was Ben’s Italian teacher in 2013. Anna now works as a producer on Broadway, and Ben is a product manager for Condé Nast Traveler.
Ben, Anna, and Prof Tarini on the balcony at the Villa Rossa in 2022
Ben and Anna on their honeymoon
Ben and Anna on their honeymoon in Florence August 2022 – come back soon!
The exhibit “Co-Opted Wood” at BHMF’s cultural center The Recovery Plan
In an art historical context, Florence is accepted as a powerhouse of Renaissance art and architecture. The city is alive with trophies of its former Renaissance glory and to this day Dante, Michelangelo, and Galileo contribute to Florentines’ sense of identity and pride. Yet the blinding effect of Florence’s inexhaustible Renaissance art collections can also distract the average visitor from the stunning lack of contemporary art.
As soon as I learned of my internship placement at Black History Month Florence (BHMF), I was intrigued by the nature of the organization. Each February, schools across the U.S. mark Black History Month as a time to reflect on challenging histories and amplify narratives tied to blackness in America. While the work of BHMF is especially visible in European spaces during the month of February, it also continues throughout the calendar year.
Ismael Lo’s graphic design work for Antirəzinə magazine
Longtime Florence resident and New York native Justin Randolph Thompson is the director of BHMF, an association that starts conversations through engaging with artists in its exhibition space, partnering with local art spaces, and coordinating events for the duration of February each year.
My fellow intern Alice Robertson and I met on the first day of the fall semester. We quickly discovered our shared excitement and apprehension regarding our placements at BHMF. The organization consists of eight platforms and at any given time is in dialogue with a plethora of art spaces, artists, and researchers across the world. Our first two and a half hour meeting with Justin illuminated the organization’s impressive reach.
Detail of Lo’s design work for Antirəzinə magazine
Alice and I were immediately tasked with curating a show to highlight a Young Gifted and Black Italians (YGBI) residency. Three artists – Ismael Lo, Ofelia Balogun, and Jermay Michael Gabriel – were selected to participate in a residency in the nearby town of Pistoia. Lo and Balogun collaborated on a project. Alice and I started setting up an exhibition to promote the residency and the associated artists.
We drew up a preliminary proposal of where to place each artwork. BHMF runs a cultural center and exhibition space called The Recovery Plan near Piazza San Marco, operating through the Santa Reparata International School of Art (SRISA). BHMF’s premises consists of four rooms for exhibitions, a reading room, and a central area containing a library and displaying archive material. The space is very flexible, allowing it to be used in various ways.
Ofelia Balogun’s work on migration
Alice and I were able to think creatively and propose a layout that would effectively present each artist’s work. The first room was dedicated to Lo and his graphic designs for the anti-racist magazine Antirəzinə. In the next room, we displayed the work of Balogun, who focuses on movement-based expression, including one of her dance pieces playing on a TV screen. The last two rooms contained Gabriel’s work, which deals with colonial history.
An internship that involves receiving materials, thinking through a visual proposal, and hanging an art show is a dream for two art history majors interested in museum spaces. I would like to encourage every student to visit the space and check out whatever the latest exhibition might be. Justin and the BHMF team are doing great work in the city. Interning for the organization has been an enriching addition to my study abroad experience.
Jermay Michael Gabriel’s work on the effects of colonialism
Last May we received a special visit from Susan Baum and Carol Gerst, who returned sixty years after their semester abroad with us. They reflected on what has changed and what has stayed the same as they toured the campus with Director Sasha Perugini, shared their old photos and keepsakes, and sat down for an interview.
