Academics in Orvieto

The curriculum in Orvieto hinges upon the dialogue between the verbal and the visual. For millennia words and images have been the primary means of narrative and representation. Italy remains an origin point for this history as a crossroads of the arts and humanities. For this reason, our location in Orvieto is vital, providing the opportunity to study design, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, and history from original sources in their original context. By being in this place we hope to inspire interdisciplinary collaboration and cultivate a model of learning that is place-specific.

During the first month, all students take Disegno, the course that orients us to the city by challenging us to look at, listen to, draw, and write about Orvieto. Through these first encounters, the class prepares students to engage deeply with their surroundings and lays the foundation for a semester of intentionality.

Following Disegno students have a choice between a studio art or humanities course each month. These courses are taught by Gordon College faculty, faculty from associated colleges and universities, and professional artists and writers. Working closely with teachers in a workshop setting provides unparalleled opportunities for our students. This echoes the relationships used throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance of forming sustained conversation and development of work. This course model between teachers and students has been a gift to everyone involved since the beginning of the program.

Though the curriculum is based on the arts and humanities, Gordon in Orvieto is open to all majors. Talk to your academic advisor to determine if this program fulfills your degree requirements.

Courses may change or be canceled due to low enrollment or instructor availability. Studio courses are limited to 15 students; when demand exceeds capacity, the Orvieto team will assign placements based on course preferences and degree requirements.

Spring 2026 Curriculum

February 21 – June 13

Throughout the semester students without previous Italian language study will take ORV 101: Italian Language Studies, a course in conversational Italian with the central purpose of assisting students' full participation in the life of the Orvieto community. [2 credits]

Please note, courses are subject to change.

1st Month All students take:

• ORV 270: Disegno in Orvieto (Instructor: Matthew Doll) This drawing-based course is taken during the first month of the semester by all students, both art majors and non-art majors. The course prepares each student to engage deeply with their surroundings, giving the visual language of description a lead role in forming a relationship to the landscape and townscape. [4 credits]

2nd Month Students may choose between:

• ORV 372: Sculpture Studio at Orvieto (Instructor: Patrick Marold) Recognizing the functional and symbolic qualities of local materials that define and articulate the natural setting and the urban context of Orvieto, this course will focus on creating sculpture that addresses the viewer in the broader context of the city and countryside. [4 credits]
• ORV 375A: (Special Topics in Literature) Italy in Film and Fiction (Instructor: Rini Cobbey) Modern Italian cinema and literature are renowned for their seasons of realism, but Italians have never relinquished a longing for the magical. The people who have lived through Fascism, world wars, political corruption, and economic whirlwinds have often sought renewal and escape through imagination. In the last century and a half, Italy’s novelists and filmmakers have pioneered forms of “neorealism,” but they have also given us some extraordinary dreams and illusions. This course will sample a wide variety of Italian writers and filmmakers—some Nobel laureates and Oscar-winners as well as several directors and authors who are deeply loved by the Italians. We will examine the cinema and literature in the context of recent Italian history. The Orvieto program has long seen beauty in connecting the past and the present, and the class will also explore how the artistic and religious heritage of medieval and Renaissance Italy infuses the cinematography and narratives of modern filmmakers and authors. Fulfills core literature requirement for Gordon students. [4 credits]

3rd Month Students may choose between:

• ORV 322: Text and Image (Instructor: Matt Doll) Text and Image considers questions of design through mapping in ways that link art with architecture, text with image, meaning with materials and the body attentive to space. Aided by the local setting and associated texts, this course will engage the mapping of space through projects utilizing 2-D and 3-D elements as well as video and sound recordings. With typography, color, physical design and other media, we will produce new interpretations of familiar spaces in and around Orvieto. [4 credits]
• ORV 350: Poetry and Ekphrasis (Instructor: Christine Perrin) Explores the relation between poetry and pictorial arts in the classical Renaissance tradition of ekphrasis (poetry about art or visual art based on poems). Students both study tradition and practice of the craft of ekphrasis. [4 credits] (For Gordon English majors: can fulfill "Writing and Rhetoric" requirement or Creative Writing concentration). 

4th Month Students may choose between:

• ORV 371: Painting Studio (Instructor: Cherith Lundin) Oil Painting Advanced studio in methods and materials of oil painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. [4 credits]
• ORV 379: (Special Topics in History) Jews and Christians in Italy (Instructor: Matt Lundin) This course explores the history of Jewish-Christian relations in Italy. We will seek to understand the roots and development of antisemitism—of discrimination, persecution, and hatred directed against Jews. But we will also consider long periods of co-existence and interdependence. One of our goals will be to understand how and why conceptions of religious, ethnic, national, and racial identity have changed over time—from the medieval period through the Italian Renaissance to the modern Italian nation-state. Using artwork, literature, film, and historical case studies, we will grapple with enduring questions about faith, belonging, identity, community, and tolerance. Individual stories will illuminate the human cost of persecution and witness to the urgent, ongoing task of defending human dignity. [4 credits]

Fall 2026 Curriculum

August 29 – December 19

Courses may change or be canceled due to low enrollment or instructor availability. Studio courses are limited to 15 students; when demand exceeds capacity, the Orvieto team will assign placements based on course preferences and degree requirements.

All students take: 

ORV 270: Disegno in Orvieto (Instructor: Matthew Doll) This drawing-based course is taken during the first month of the semester by all students, both art majors and non-art majors. The course prepares each student to engage deeply with their surroundings, giving the visual language of description a lead role in forming a relationship to the landscape and townscape. [4 credits]

2nd Month Students may choose between:

• ORV 350: Poetry and Ekphrasis (Instructor: TBD) This creative writing class, fundamental to the core identity of the program, continues the lively conversation between words and pictures that has been occurring for almost three thousand years. It explores the relation between poetry and pictorial arts in the classical Renaissance tradition of ekphrasis (poetry about art or visual art based on poems). By encouraging the practice of ekphrasis—we will engage with local artworks as well as those encountered in other parts of Italy, becoming better listeners while sharing in the dialogue with the past for our present moment. Students study both the tradition and practice of the craft of ekphrasis. [4 credits] (For Gordon English majors: can count for "Writing and Rhetoric" requirement or Creative Writing concentration).
• ORV 371: Painting Studio (Instructor: Philippe Fretz) Painting studio in methods and materials of oil painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. This course will incorporate the landscape as way to ground our connection to the exterior geography through representation of Italy and the local setting. Utilizing field studies and studio work, we will work towards specific views of the territory to expand our vision for Orvieto. [4 credits]
   

3rd Month Students will be assigned one of the following courses:

• ORV 379: Special Topics in History - Dante and the Medieval World (Instructor: Walker Reid Cosgrove) This course focuses on Dante’s Divine Comedy as a window into the artistic, literary, religious, political, intellectual, scientific, and social developments of the medieval era. As we explore medieval European civilization through Dante, we will find a vibrant history at least as bloody and violent as our own; however, unlike our postmodern world theirs was a world filled with truth, meaning, enchantment, and beauty.  We will explore how the medievals answered life’s most persistent questions of human meaning and purpose, and how Dante encourages us to reflect upon these questions in our own lives over 700 years later. [4 credits] (For Gordon English majors: can count for the "Literature before 1800" requirement).
• ORV 372: Sculpture Studio at Orvieto - Encountering the Figure (Instructor: David Platter) Building on the rich figurative tradition in art, this course enables students to form a contemporary response through sculpture. We will examine how the figure has been considered in Italian art & architecture as we work through a variety of materials and methods to develop the ‘essence of life’ through sculptural media. Balancing process-learning through intensive exploration and steady reflection on the human condition, this course asks the student to contend with material translation and the greater implications of our invitation to live in transformation. [4 credits]
   

4th Month Students may choose between:

• ORV 375B: (Special Topics in Literature) Reading, Attention, and Technology (Instructor: John Mirisola) This course will investigate the role of current technologies in shaping our habits of attention, and how this dynamic affects our interactions with literature. Drawing on insights from visual artists, musicians, philosophers, and cultural critics, we will examine the ways in which literary reading challenges the urgency and immediacy we’ve become accustomed to in our current technological moment. As we explore works of contemporary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that make particular demands on the reader’s attention—to look more closely, to look again, to have patience, to embrace uncertainty—we will ask how these qualities influence both the interpretation of the text and the experience of reading. [4 credits] (For Gordon English majors: can count for the "Writing and Rhetoric Requirement").
• ORV374 – Design Studio in Orvieto: The Ethics of Intervention (Instructor: Kelly Foster) The work we do when we design things for the world around us – images, objects, spaces, experiences – affects the everyday lives of those who encounter our work. Our design process should therefore be embedded in the social realities, history, and culture of the communities for whom we design. In this studio we will work in multiple design media to explore how an ethic of loving our neighbors takes the social embeddedness of our work seriously, establishing a design process that includes sensitivity, care, and delight. 

Future Semesters

Spring 2027

All students take: 

ORV 270: Disegno in Orvieto

Studio Courses:

ORV 372: Sculpture Studio at Orvieto

ORV 374: Special Topics in Art -Text & Image

ORV 315: Printmaking at Orvieto 

Humanities Courses:

ORV 350: Poetry and Ekphrasis  

ORV 379: Special Topics in Literature - Dante & Desire 

ORV 379: Special Topics in History - Art History

Fall 2027

All students take: 

ORV 270: Disegno in Orvieto

Studio Courses:

ORV 376: Special Topics in Art - Design Studio in Orvieto

ORV 371: Painting Studio

ORV 374: Special Topics in Art-Text & Image

Humanities Courses:

ORV 375A: (Selected Topics in Literature) Italy in Film and Fiction  

ORV 379: Special Topics in History  

ORV 350: Poetry and Ekphrasis