Note: This course listing is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a contract between CIEE and any applicant, student, institution, or other party. The courses, as described, may be subject to change as a result of ongoing curricular revisions, assignment of lecturers and teaching staff, and program development. Courses may be cancelled due to insufficient enrollment.
CIEE Study Center Syllabi
To view the most recent syllabi for courses taught by CIEE at our Study Centers, visit our syllabi site.
Required Language Courses
ITAL 1501 FERR—Intensive Italian Language, Beginning I
ITAL 1502 FERR—Intensive Italian Language, Beginning II
ITAL 2501 FERR—Intensive Italian Language, Intermediate I
ITAL 2502 FERR—Intensive Italian Language, Intermediate II
These courses provide students with basic skills needed to communicate on a daily basis. They include grammar, conversation, listening, and reading comprehension. Students are placed according to language background.
ITAL 1002 FERR—Semester Italian Language, Beginning II
ITAL 2001 FERR—Semester Italian Language, Intermediate I
ITAL 2002 FERR—Semester Italian Language, Intermediate II
ITAL 3001 FERR—Semester Italian Language, Advanced I
In these courses, after being placed in the appropriate class, students continue their language study during the semester.
Required CIEE Core Course
HIST 3002 FERR
Contemporary Italian History: From Unification to the Present
This course provides an overview of Italian history from the revolutionary and nation-building movement of the Risorgimento up to Berlusconi’s second government in 2001. Students analyze the impact of the First and Second World Wars on Italian society and identity, the diversity of the Italian regions, and the differences between north and south. Important events in Italy since 1945, such as reconstruction and the ‘economic miracle,' the cultural revolution of the 1970s, and contemporary Italian politics are examined, and special attention is paid to long-term social issues (migration, the Mafia, etc). The course also focuses on historical developments up to the present day, including the challenge of terrorism, the ‘clean hands’ revolution, and new political parties. Instructor: Davide Lombardo
CIEE Elective Courses
AHIS 3002 FERR
Italian Renaissance Art
The course introduces students to the world of art through art historians’ methods. It particularly provides skills and techniques needed to read a Renaissance work of art, as well as appreciate it aesthetically. As a work of art is a complex phenomenon, all of its aspects must be analyzed to be understood. Which colors, shapes, and lines are used? What is the meaning? But also, who is the artist? What is his cultural background? What materials and techniques are used? What was its original setting? And finally, for whom was it done? All these questions need to be answered in order to have a deep and critical awareness of an artwork. The course acquaints the students with major protagonists of Italian Renaissance Art. It examines the evolution and development of Western Art, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, focusing on a selection of centers, great artists, and their masterpieces. Moreover, Ferrara with its outstanding monuments is our case study, giving students a great opportunity to examine artworks within their original settings. Instructor: Chiara Basalti
CLST 3001 FERR
Seminar on Living and Learning in Ferrara
The CIEE Seminar on Living and Learning in Ferrara, taught in English, is designed to improve students’ intercultural communication and competence while studying abroad by considering how Italians are different from, and similar to, themselves and others. The course offers opportunities, both in and outside the classroom, to develop insights and the skills necessary to interact effectively and appropriately, and to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the cultural richness of Italy. Contact hours: 25. Recommended credit: 2 semester/3 quarter hours. Instructor: Richard Chapman, CIEE Resident Director
HIST 3001 FERR
Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy
1182 saw the birth of the great preacher and founder of the Franciscan Order, Francis of Assisi. After initial suspicion of Francis’s essentially plebeian religious movement, Pope Innocent III offered the monk and his followers safe harbor in the Catholic Church. Almost four centuries later, another evangelical Catholic, religious innovator, and humanist, PietroCarnesecchi, was brutally put to death by a newly invigorated Catholicism. This course charts the 400-year journey of the states, republics, and principalities which today constitute the nation of Italy. It starts with a look at the social and political make-up of Medieval Italy within a European context and then focuses on particular groups, movements, institutions, events, and ideas including the Mendicant orders like the Franciscans and the Dominicans, popular and heretical religious beliefs and sects such as Dualism and Cathars (prevalent in Northern Italy), the European-wide phenomenon of witchcraft, the temporal and spiritual institution of the Papacy, the last Crusade and the Inquisition, Martin Luther, John Calvin, the theological Concept of justification by faith and Protestantism, and, finally, the Catholic Church’s answer to the ‘new faith’—the Counter Reformation whose conclusions ultimately sealed the terrible fate of PietroCarnesecchi. Instructor: Luke Seaber
INRE 3002 FERR
Italy and the European Union
This is an introductory course on the European Union and the shifting European context in the framework of post 1945 historical development. The process of European Integration is posing new challenges to nation states, both at the level of their functioning and role and at the level of national identities. This course explores the evolution of the project of European integration from the small European Economic Community of 1957 to the continent-wide European Union of today. Alongside it will explore the critical areas of EU policy from migration policy to the democratic and public opinion deficit and economic convergence of the European area. The weight of geographical difference and of local identities, etc. will be examined. The necessary theoretical background will be provided, supported, and discussed through empirical examples. Instructor: Davide Lombardo
ITST 3004 FERR/SOCI 3001 FERR
Creating Italy: Gender, Ethnicity, and Italian National Identity
This course will explore issues of ethnicity and race in Italy over the last hundred years and more, investigating how these have interacted with concepts of Italian national identity. We shall range from Fascist ideas of womanhood to Pasolini's ideas on homosexuality and from Italy's fraught relationship with Ethiopia to the contemporary reporting of migration. The most celebrated of phrases on Italian national identity is perhaps that attributed to d’Azeglio, ‘We have created Italy. Now we have to create Italians.’ The ultimate aim of this course is to explore the implications of this quote over the last hundred years. Instructor: Luke Seaber
ITST 3003 FERR
Culture, Translation, and Language
This course, taught in English with Italian texts, aims to take an in-depth look at contemporary Italy through modern and contemporary texts and artifacts. The opportunity for profound appropriation of texts offered by the experience of translation serves as a tool for greater appreciation of Italian society and, at the same time, offers a chance for students to develop a practical life skill and deepen their linguistic awareness and abilities. Students are expected to take an active role in their personal linguistic and cultural explorations and to present their discoveries and findings to the class. Instructor: Michela Benuzzi
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