PROGRAM OVERVIEW

How do cultures and communities construct, preserve, re-purpose, and destroy spaces and places to achieve new political, social, or religious aims or to press new ambitions and sensibilities? How do urban and rural landscapes and sites come to play vital roles in the realization of political or religious ideas? How do cities as complex agglomerations of people, places, and activities develop and by what historical forces are they shaped? How do historical legacies shape and enable yet also constrain a city’s present?

Centered in Rome, a city with one of the richest historical pasts in Europe, this program will provide students with diverse opportunities to explore these broader questions through the close examination of texts, images, sites and landscapes produced during Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. A central purpose of the courses in the program is to have students experience and explore the city and environs in depth and to learn how to investigate this experiential knowledge with academic sources of insight and information. Each course will therefore have a significant number of site visits inside and outside Rome as well as assignments that require independent exploration.

DIRECTORS

Victoria Morse and Bill North

Professors Morse and North have taught medieval and Renaissance history at Carleton since 1999 and have served as directors of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies concentration at Carleton since 2000. Both have held fellowships at the American Academy in Rome and have lived in Italy (Rome and Milan) for almost three years. Professor Morse’s research and teaching interests focus on the Italian urban experiences and changing conceptions of civic space in the late medieval and Renaissance periods. She is also expert in the history of medieval and Renaissance cartography. Professor North works on the development of the reform papacy in the 11th and 12th centuries and the ways in which Roman and early Christian past is mobilized for contemporary agendas. Both have worked extensively in Italian libraries and archives. They are excited to share their love of Rome, Italy, and Italian food (and pop music) with students.