Professor Alexandria Brown-Hejazi, who teaches a class on art and science in the Renaissance, published an article in the March 2025 issue of the prestigious art history journal The Burlington Magazine. She told us about her exciting discovery:
This article presents a document I discovered in the state archives in Rome in 2018. I was participating in an archival training seminar led by Notre Dame that prepared students for working in Italian archives at the start of their dissertations. While completing my PhD in Art History at Stanford, my dissertation explored artistic exchange between Safavid Iran and Italy, looking particularly at embassies sent from Isfahan to Venice, Florence, and Rome in the 1600s. While hunting for documents related to this exchange, I discovered the last will and testament of Teresia Shirley, the wife of one of the Safavid ambassadors. It is a very exciting find as it highlights the voice of Teresia, who was an essential and powerful figure in the embassies, but who usually gets overlooked. I am hoping this discovery will contribute to our knowledge of how women in the early modern world were agents of power in the diplomatic world as well.
The author (in the middle) with photographer Emma Innocenti (left) and videographer (and intern host) Kirsten Hills (right)
During my time in Florence, I have been interning under videographer Kirsten Hills as her sole production assistant. Kirsten works with several organizations to document events and tell stories through her films.
During my third week in Florence, Kirsten and I worked on a massive project together for a travel company named Tauck. They held a week-long event in Florence to celebrate 100 years of the company and helped their staff and clientele immerse themselves in the rich history of the city.
Working alongside Kirsten to document this massive event has become a core memory abroad for me and gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation for the city I get to call home for four months. Kirsten and I worked with a team of three other professionals in order to successfully cover each massive event. With over 800 participants in the celebration, our video team often had to split up our responsibilities, giving me a much bigger role than I was expecting in my internship.
Internship host Kirsten Hills filming in the Palazzo Corsini
While I had worked in film before, I only have experience documenting things on strategically planned-out film sets. Filming events in real time was a completely different experience, one that was extremely challenging to jump into, but also super exciting and rewarding in the long run.
Through this internship, Kirsten has exposed me to different sides of the film industry that I have never experienced before. While it has certainly been a challenge jumping into a new field of work in the midst of a major project, with Kirsten’s help I have learned how to quickly adapt to new situations and acquire new skills, as well as how to remain professional in high-stress situations. These soft skills are some of the most important things I have taken away from my abroad experience in Florence.
In March, Syracuse Florence Director and Director of Global Innovation of Syracuse Abroad Sasha Perugini presented her latest research on AI and study abroad at the Forum of Education Abroad Conference in Toronto, where she participated in two panels.
In the first, “From Tensions to Transformations: The EU Perspective on Study Abroad,” Dr. Perugini presented with Syracuse Abroad colleagues Associate Provost and Executive Director Erika Wilkens, Director of Global Teaching & Learning Troy Gordon, and Syracuse Strasbourg Director John Goodman. In it they explored the challenges of managing expectations versus reality in the field of international education.
Perugini chaired the second panel, “AI and Study Abroad: An Overview,” in which she explored ethical tensions with Attorney Gianfranco Borio and delved into the AI-driven job market. Panelists discussed questions like: What does it mean to study abroad in an age when ‘place’ is increasingly decoupled from presence? How do we preserve learning, while engaging with tools that can simulate it but that can also dumb us down?
“Far from a futuristic abstraction,” Perugini explained, “artificial intelligence is reshaping how we design, deliver, and experience international education.”
Being in Florence this semester has been a whirlwind. I am two months into my stay here and it has flown by, what with school, travel, and my internship at the Recovery Plan and Black History Month Florence (BHMF), a local research center and arts organization. My majors include Art History and Rhetoric, Writing, and Public Discourse. I hope to become an art curator in some capacity, so this experience has been an educational and rewarding first look into the art world for me.
I am so grateful for the opportunity Syracuse and Justin Randolph Thompson (Director of BHMF) have given me to further pursue my academic and career goals. Every day I am offered a chance to learn and grow in my prospective field, and I have had a lot of creative liberty and flexibility to work on projects I am interested in.
I have been able to help put up and take down multiple shows this semester, including the tenth edition exhibit of BHMF, which revisits BHMF programs from past years, as well as a project looking into the life and art of William Demby, a local artist. Currently I am working on a project proposal to submit to a gallery highlighting an exhibit that I helped curate at a different location for BHMF.
Here’s what an average week looks like working for BHMF:
Tuesday 11:00am – Begin work on project proposal assigned by On-Site Supervisor, Justin Randolph Thompson. 2:00pm – Meet with Syracuse Supervisor, Professor Jonathan Nelson to discuss current projects, receive advice, and check in. 6:00pm – Continue work on project proposal after receiving feedback from my Syracuse Supervisor.
Tuesday to Monday Continue work on project proposal in contact with On-Site Supervisor to discuss specific details of exhibit space.
Monday 10:00am – Prepare for project proposal meeting with On-Site Supervisor. 11:30am – Meet with Justin Randolph Thompson, the head of the Recovery Plan/BHMF. Present and discuss my proposal, edit and collaborate proposal together. 2:20pm – Edit proposal independently and prepare to re-send it to On-Site Supervisor.
At the time of writing, my project proposal is in its final stages. If all looks good, it will be fully ready for review by the end of the week. This proposal has been one of my favorite aspects of this internship so far, as I have learned a lot of valuable skills such as project organization, material gathering, and communicating professionally. I feel like I am able to have a lot of hands-on learning experiences with a lot of freedom to work independently which has been really rewarding.
Besides project proposals, I am often working within the exhibits themselves. Typically, I meet with Justin and Professor Nelson once a week for official meetings, communicate via email or Whatsapp throughout the week, and am called to help with exhibit set up and take down. When putting up exhibits, I am often given the space to add creative input on what material is used, the configuration of the space, and communication with art lenders.
Taking down exhibits is quicker and focuses more on hands-on work with repackaging the art and cleaning the exhibition space. I have already made what I think to be lasting connections and am grateful to be a part of something so widespread throughout Italy, Florence, and the world.
This week we had the enormous pleasure of welcoming a true champion of experiential learning and member of the Syracuse Board of Trustees, Mike Venutolo (class of ’77), to the Villa Rossa.
Mike and his wife Kim, both of whom proudly come from blue-collar backgrounds, have made it their mission to preach the life-changing benefits of study abroad, strongly encouraging students to prepare themselves for the workforce by “getting their hands dirty.” The Venutolos spent 30 years working between the Gulf region and London, England, before shifting their focus to philanthropy work in the US by supporting Syracuse students to get hands-on experience at home and abroad.
Considering their longtime familiarity with Syracuse University’s premises in London, people have long assumed the Venutolos were also familiar with our program here in Italy. But they had never been. “Kim said to me it’s about time we visit Florence,” Mike laughed sheepishly as we welcomed them to the villa.
They told us about their experience bringing some 30 Syracuse students over the years to the Gulf region on a two-week engineering internship program that they spearheaded. “Students were surprised when we asked for their shoe size ahead of time,” explained Mike. “It was for the steel-toed boots they would be wearing while on the ground.” Kim laughed at the memory. “We were not going to be spending our time in some university lecture hall!” When they did visit a university in Saudi Arabia, KFUPM, Kim and two student interns were the first women to have ever stepped onto the premises.
Because of their backgrounds and passions, they appreciate the fact that there are still so many small businesses in Italy, including shops in which artisans continue to practice age-old trades and, significantly, pass on their manual, technical skills to new generations.
While Mike went abroad right after graduating from Syracuse with a civil engineering degree, Kim didn’t leave the US until she was 40 years old. “It changed who I was,” she said. And it turned her into an ardent advocate for study abroad. “It opens you up, you see everything differently.”
As one of the only “international” board members, Mike feels a responsibility to help Syracuse students experience the world. “Home will always be there,” Kim says to students. “And you might not get another chance like this.”
We hope this visit to Florence will not be their last.
Read more about the Venutolos’ philanthropy work for Syracuse here.
On Monday, February 24th, 2025, Syracuse University Florence and the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, promoted by Calliope Arts, hosted a Wikipedia Editing Marathon at the Villa Rossa. The event was open to graduate and undergraduate students and the focus was to edit existing Wikipedia articles and write new articles on Wikipedia concerning female artists who were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno in Florence.
Although the presence of these women artists has been recorded at some level, there is a lack of scholarship on many of them, even on basic databases like Wikipedia. These artists were members of the Accademia and received commissions, sometimes becoming very successful. Getting even minimal information on these women on Wikipedia opens a conversation about their presence and careers, even inspiring further research and interest by scholars. Advancing Women Artists (AWA) works on restoring artworks by female artists while also creating more scholarship on these women to establish their presence in the digital world.
During this event groups of Syracuse Florence staff and students worked on both creating new pages for female artists and expanding existing pages. The event began with a presentation on the current AWA restoration project, which centers around the female artist, Violante Beatrice Siries. Siries was an established portraitist in 18th-century Florence, even gaining patronage by members of the Medici family. She was taught by other artists in addition to attending the Accademia, and later, she taught other female artists.
Paintings done by Violante were discovered in a private Prior’s Chapel in the monastery of the Certosa di Firenze. One of these paintings depicts a post-Annunciation reading Madonna and the other a portrait of Saint Catherine. The paintings were placed here with a third painting depicting Saint Agnes that is being restored alongside the other two. Although originally attributed to Violante during the process of restoration, it has been discovered that the painting is not by Violante. Violante has been the subject of previous AWA restoration projects, and there was existing information including a Wikipedia page on her. However, there is always space to expand and improve.
After a brief editing tutorial, attending staff and students split into smaller groups and got to work. During the editing marathon, three groups of Syracuse students and faculty worked on collecting information for three different female artists into new and existing Wikipedia pages. This process involves taking information from a source and paraphrasing it into an article as opposed to directly quoting or writing one’s own thoughts and ideas. Everything on Wikipedia has to be tied back to a reputable source in an accurate way, which at times can be a tedious writing process. Through Wikipedia pages, writers can directly link other pages mentioned, for example, other artists, locations, and cultural and historical events. This connection pushes them as recommended to readers which will hopefully allow the public to become more knowledgeable on these often-overlooked female artists. With these articles, these artists do have a presence and even a better chance of additional research.
One group included members of the Italian and art history departments who worked with students on translating the Italian version of Violante Siries’ page onto the smaller English version of her Wikipedia page. This involved translating sentences and then cross-referencing sources to fit them into the English page. Frequently, Italian artists will have more information accessible in Italian sources, which leads to pages being written in Italian. Wikipedia publishes the page only in the language it is written. In this case, this meant Violante Siries had a much longer Italian Wikipedia page compared to her English page. While this ensures the information on each page will be clear as opposed to auto-translated, it can be limiting for readers.
Another group included AWA art restorer and Syracuse alumnae Elizabeth Wicks. With this direct connection to past AWA projects, Wicks and her group were able to help make edits to other existing female artists’ pages, all of whom AWA has restored works for previously. The third group began the process of creating a new Wikipedia page for the artist Carlotta Lenzoni De’Medici. Although there was some existing information online, collecting the sources onto one Wikipedia page can make research easier in the future or possibly inspire new research into the life and career of the artist. The process of creating a new Wikipedia page is more complicated than editing an existing page and requires additional approval; as of March 2025, this page is still not live.
Although the event was only two short hours, the group was able to accomplish a lot. This is nowhere near the end of this project, and readers and historians should be aware that, although the presence of women artists was not always publicized, they existed. From the list of female artists that were members of the Accademia dell’Arte di Disegno, several do not have Wikipedia pages or easily accessible information. These were artists and teachers, and although not nearly as common as male artists, their presence needs to be recorded.
The Syracuse Florence community was especially festive this week to celebrate the end of the Carnival period, which concludes with Martedì Grasso (AKA Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday).
Christian traditions like this are strong here in the capital of the Catholic world. For the last few weekends, the streets and piazzas have been a colorful stage for Italian children in costume. Hallowe’en may be gaining in popularity here, but Carnevale remains the main festivity for which Italians dress up and masquerade.
To kick things off, Professor Eric Nicholson and his students performed “Long Live Carnival, Long Live Love” – scenes from the Commedia dell’Arte, an Italian theatrical art form whose origins are tied to the famous Venice Carnival.
Students from Prof. Falciai’s advanced Italian classOlivia Champeau and Maya Lewis
The next day – Mardi Gras – our student services staff organized a mask-making station and a tasting of traditional carnival-related goodies in the Villa Rossa garden.
Giulia Ricciardi, our Student Experience Manager, had this to say about the day’s festivities:
This year the Carnival celebrations at SU Florence brought together tradition and a touch of creativity from both staff members and students. For Mardi Gras, staff members came to the Villa Rossa wearing Venetian masks, cowboy hats, and colorful outfits. As the festivity coincided with our weekly event Typical Tuesday, we offered carnival treats to our students, who seemed to really appreciate it as everything disappeared fast! Student Services also provided blank masks to decorate so students could fully immerse themselves in the spirit of Carnival. All of this took place in our Villa Rossa, decorated from top to bottom for the occasion! We all had fun!
Professor Victoria Bartels, who teaches Italian Arts from Antiquity to Michelangelo and Italian Renaissance Art, has published a chapter in the new collection Refashioning the Renaissance: Everyday Dress in Europe, 1500-1650, edited by Paula Hohti and issued by Manchester University Press.
Entitled “Dressed to kill: arms, armour and protective attire in Renaissance men’s middle- and lower-class dress,” her text discusses how this clothing expressed contemporary notions of masculinity and social status. With a focus on Florence and other Medici-governed territories and using the large data set of Italian inventories collected by the Refashioning the Renaissance project, Bartels examines how arms were legally regulated, their prevalence in the urban middle and lower classes, and the complicated practice of petitioning the state for weapon privileges.
Congratulations on the publication of your book! Could you please tell us how it came to be?
Thank you! The story was indirectly inspired by my time in Florence. I found the city, aesthetically, to be greatly influential for the kind of setting I wanted to work with. Whereas the story itself, and the emotional arc the main character undergoes, came more from a personal crisis I experienced in late 2020. I initially wrote it to grapple with what I was going through and to figure out what I was feeling, but then as I revised it and got feedback from others, it grew into something much bigger.
Alexandra (left) with Professor Molly Bourne at the Graduate Symposium
Did your experience in our art history grad program impact the book’s content?
Definitely! While the book is high fantasy, and therefore not set in our world, I based the world off of late 15th century Italy, which was something I studied a lot during the grad program. We would read and discuss so many historical anecdotes in our seminars that I became inspired to do something creative with all the information I’d taken in. I still have quite a few books that I used for my classes, and so I took to re-reading those while revising for further inspiration.
Do art historians have an advantage in tackling fiction writing?
I certainly think so–there is something interesting about our discipline in that we are at once dealing with an inherently creative subject matter (art), yet examining it analytically. I think many who are drawn to this field initially are due to an attraction to beauty and appreciation for the art itself. It then requires a fine balance to utilize both that aesthetic appreciation and a distanced analysis for a sound argument in a paper. Fiction writing requires a similar approach. You must first have a genuine love for the story you’re telling–and a certain amount of creativity to go along with it–but then you need to be able to step back and look at it critically in order to revise and edit it.
Alexandra (center) with fellow grads in 2019
Any advice for budding student writers?
Write, write, write. I’ve heard it said often that you shouldn’t publish the first book you write, and I think it’s true. Of Constellations and Clockwork was the ninth novel I wrote, and in hindsight, I’m glad none of the previous ones were published. It takes multiple books to understand what kind of things you like to write, what works, and to figure out what makes a story uniquely “yours,” compared to other works out there. Read widely in your genre and outside it, and read craft books, but don’t be afraid to bend the rules a bit too.
Dr. David Broder, who teaches our Twentieth-Century Europe course, has published a New York Times comment piece on the recent turmoil in French politics.
It argues that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is exploiting not only conflict over immigration and national identity, but also a declining public faith in the country’s welfare model and promise of meritocracy.
