Florence Mayor Dario Nardella and Syracuse Florence Director Sasha Perugini
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.
Mayor Nardella and Director Perugini with (from left) Italian professors Francesca Bea, Loredana Tarini, and Antonella Salvia
Returning alumna Ali Icenhower (on the left) happened to visit during the mayor’s event
“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.”
Pictured, from left to right: Lisa Neal Tice, Melissa Moreton, Julie Zappia McLean, Ezio Buzzegoli, Diane Kunzelman, Jonathan Nelson, Rab Hatfield, Melanie Taylor
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.
Professor Stefania Berutti came up with a fanciful assignment for the students in her Classical Mythology class: to create the front page of a “Homer Gazette,” imagining a report from the battlefield of the Trojan War. Here were her favorites:
By Ashley Broderick, Alexander Hyman, and Lucy Meneghello
By Brenna Adams, Alyssa Febbi, Rory Dulecki, Julia Reedy, Marlana Bianchi, Ian Saturnia, and Nia Bellamy
By Brendan Harris, Delaney Dolan, and Megan Campbell
This week, Dr. Daniel Leisawitz returned to the Villa Rossa for the first time in 25 years. Though he has travelled again to Italy since then, this was his first time back at Syracuse Florence. He spent some time as a guest in five of our Italian classes to talk about the doors that can open by studying Italian and the study abroad experience in general.
Dr. Leisawitz, who got his PhD from Yale, is currently on sabbatical from his job as Assistant Professor of Italian at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he also serves as Director of the Italian Studies Program. He is using this semester in Florence to work on a translation of Emanuele Trevi’s novel Senza verso. Un’estate a Roma. He also talked to current Syracuse Florence students about his work on L’Orlando Furioso, the epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto.
David Broder, who teaches our new Twentieth-Century Europe course, has just published his new book Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy.
A study of Italy’s neo- and post-fascist movements since the fall of the regime, it explains a generational change on the far-right — with Meloni’s experiences growing up in the 1990s distinguishing her from both the defeated fascists of 1945 and militants from the Years of Lead. Yet while the ambitions and modes of action have changed, fascist ways of talking about national identity and history have taken new form — from ethnic ideas of the homogeneous national community to the accusations against “financiers” and “Marxists” supposedly plotting its destruction.
Mussolini’s Grandchildren explores the history of the “party of the flame,” the success of its modern-day heirs, and the decline of Italy’s antifascist mores. It is available from Pluto Press.
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.
