This page will be updated in the coming weeks.

Course requirements include: weekly readings, class attendance and participation, two group oral presentations, a midterm exam, a final exam, and a final project.

Attendance is required. Students must attend all course meetings and events. Intelligent, informed participation in seminars and sections is also required. Students must arrive in time in class and at all events. Missing classes or events or arriving late will negatively affect your final grade.

Readings: Students must read all assigned materials before the due date; they are necessary prerequisites for lectures and class discussion. Comments and questions about the readings are welcome in class and during office hours.
The reading is not extensive—on average, approximately 200 pages per week. But the materials are very diverse and require not so much memorization as critical reflection. Their study should lead both to the understanding and appropriation of the fundamental concepts and to their application to the other events that make up the program. Exams will mostly test students’ comprehension of these texts and keywords.
As there is not much free time in the early days of the program, it is highly recommended to read Kant’s selections and the two books assigned for the first and second week (Plato and Scarry) before leaving for Italy.

The following five books must be purchased by all students prior to their departure and brought to Italy; you must buy a paper copy of the recommended editions.
– Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver (Harcourt OR Mariner Books Classics) (if you know Italian well enough you might want to read the original text; see below);
– Giovanni Della Casa, Galateo or, The Rules of Polite Behavior, trans. M. F. Rusnak (University of Chicago Press);
– Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. George Bull (Penguin Classics);
– Plato, Symposium, trans. Christopher Gill (Penguin Classics);
– Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton University Press).

You may also want to purchase a copy of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgement, from which you will have to read almost 200 pages. It is an important book, extremely relevant to our program’s interpretation of beauty. Besides, it may prove useful for other courses as well. In case, purchase the translation by James Creed Meredith and Nicholas Waler (Oxford World’s Classics). Otherwise you will find the reading among the PDF files.

It is unlikely that you will be able to find copies of these books on the shelves of a bookstore, so you will need to order them in advance, preferably a few weeks before you leave for Turin. Do this immediately after confirming your participation in the program.

                    

Please note that all students in the intermediate/advanced Italian language course will read Italo Calvino’s Le città invisibili in Italian. Let us know, and we will be happy to give you a copy of the book when you arrive in Torino.

All other readings will be available online as PDF files. Only students enrolled in this program have access to them. To download the files click here [< this link is not yet active] and log in to the Canvas site of the course with your HUID.

Final project: At the orientation, students are introduced to the field of visual anthropology and encouraged to photograph common Italian people, places and events, rather than iconic monuments or tourist attractions, in Torino, Trentino, Siena, and other locations visited during group and personal trips. Students should identify as early as the first week a specific topic they want to document and explore; the topic must be approved by prof. Erspamer.
The final project, to be submitted by August 5, consists of a short PowerPoint presentation of ten photos taken on this topic in the various locations visited during the program. At most two photos may have been taken in the same place.

All projects will be presented in class on August 7. Click here to see the topics already assigned. [< this link is not yet active]

Oral presentation: Each student is to choose and read a chapter from Sartwell’s Six Names of Beauty (PDFs can be downloaded on Canvas) and discuss it with the other three or four students who will be working on the same chapter. Ten minutes will be available for each group to present their “name of beauty” in class on July 16. If you are interested in presenting a specific chapter you must indicate this to Prof. Erspamer with an email; otherwise you will be assigned one on July 9. Click here to see the names already assigned [< this link is not yet active].

Midterm exam: 90 minutes, on Monday, July 20. It will include several identification questions and two short-answer questions on the assigned readings and topics addressed in class and during the trips and events.

Final exam: Oral exam, on August 13 and 14: 40 minutes for each student. It addresses the entire course, including readings, trips, and events.

Technology: We expect that all work students submit for this course will be their own. We specifically forbid the use of ChatGPT or any other generative artificial intelligence tools at all stages of the work process, including preliminary ones.

Grading breakdown:
– 35%   Attendance, participation (in class, during sections, and during events), and oral presentation
– 20%   Midterm exam
– 35%   Final exam
– 10%   Final project
– Extra credit (up to 10%): Italian language course

Italian language course: Click here for more information.