Summer Study Abroad in Italy 2015

August 4, 2015

This summer, students went to Italy for an HONR study abroad. In HONR 299: Making the Human in Venice, students traveled to Italy to ask the question: how did humans come to be who we are? The course covered the history of the modern understanding of humanity. This included all aspects of humanity: space, time, psychology, knowledge, faith, government, art, architecture, music, science, and more.

By traveling through Italy, students were able to see and hear the legacy of the Renaissance era. They were able to gain a deeper understanding of its impact on history and appreciation of the differences from our own culture firsthand. Each student was required to keep a blog to record his or her findings. Claire Lee, sophmore in Political Science and Stamps Scholar, offered to share her blog here. It can be found at claireinitaly2015.wordpress.com.

One of the unique aspects of Making the Human in Venice was that after we learned about a specific topic, type of architecture, building or painting we were then able to go and see the item that had a influence on how we as humans view the world and humanity today. Even though we were a small class, just five students, our different majors (representing Liberal Arts, Engineering, Agriculture, Health and Human Sciences, and Pharmacy) made the class truly interdisciplinary and allowed us to each bring a different perspective to any particular topic, which really helped me to start considering other methods of thinking and synthesizing information. Italy is an amazing country and I feel that this class enriched my experience in Italy by forcing me to dig deeper as we traveled throughout the Italian Alps and Venice and every city in between. I found myself working to be a better traveler and scholar and have left Italy with more than touristy pictures, but a greater understanding of the Veneto region and its influence on the world today.