{"id":14790,"date":"2026-06-17T11:02:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T09:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/?p=14790"},"modified":"2026-06-17T11:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T09:03:20","slug":"professor-stefania-berutti-uses-syracuse-fellowship-to-bring-ancient-myths-to-life-across-florence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/2026\/06\/17\/professor-stefania-berutti-uses-syracuse-fellowship-to-bring-ancient-myths-to-life-across-florence\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Stefania Berutti Uses Syracuse Fellowship to Bring Ancient Myths to Life Across Florence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What if studying Classical Mythology meant racing through the Uffizi in search of a sarcophagus, or taking a selfie with a mythological statue at the Pitti Palace? That\u2019s the premise behind the #100Myths Project \u2014 a semester-long adventure designed by Stefania Berutti that turns Florence itself into a classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The project grew out of a practical challenge: museum visits are too short to cover everything. Rather than rush students past the artwork, Berutti designed a series of scavenger hunts that sent them exploring on their own \u2014 identifying mythological characters in vases, statues, and paintings, and photographing themselves alongside the finds. The results were immediate: students who seemed disengaged in the classroom lit up in the galleries, racing up staircases and debating details on ancient vases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The final assignment pushed things further: each team had to write an original story featuring mythological characters from Florence\u2019s museums, then turn it into a scavenger hunt for their classmates to play. Both teams set their stories in contemporary Florence \u2014 no AI, just their own creativity. One team even ventured into the Boboli Gardens; a site never covered in class. They had made the city their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A scavenger hunt may sound frivolous, but Berutti sees it as a way to drive students to slow down, read captions, and look carefully at works of art they might otherwise walk past. <\/strong>Creative writing does something similar: over eight years of leading writing labs tied to archaeology and ancient history, she has watched students use storytelling to forge a genuine connection with ancient cultures \u2014 feeling the responsibility of giving old myths new meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The #100Myths Project was made possible thanks to a Syracuse Teaching Innovation Fellowship, with support from Director Sasha Perugini and Assistant Director Rachael Smith. In September, Berutti will host a webinar to share her tools with colleagues \u2014 because whether the lens is Art History, Mythology, Fashion History, or Ancient History, Florence\u2019s museums have something to offer every discipline. The #100Myths Project could become a model for interdisciplinary teaching across the Syracuse faculty.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if studying Classical Mythology meant racing through the Uffizi in search of a sarcophagus, or taking a selfie with a mythological statue at the Pitti Palace? That\u2019s the premise behind the #100Myths Project \u2014 a semester-long adventure designed by Stefania Berutti that turns Florence itself into a classroom. The project grew out of a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":14793,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14790"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14798,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14790\/revisions\/14798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/suabroad.syr.edu\/florence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}