Academics in Orvieto

FALL 2022 CURRICULUM 

Throughout the semester, students without previous Italian language study will take ORV101: 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]

1st Month All students take:

ORV270: Disegno in Orvieto (Instructor: Matthew Doll) This drawing-based course is taken during the first month of the semester by all students, art majors and non-art majors together. The course prepares each student to engage deeply with his or her surroundings, giving the visual language of description a lead role in forming our relationship to the landscape and townscape. [4 credits]

2nd Month Students choose between:

ORV322: Text and Image (Instructor: Jim Zingarelli) Inspired by different topographical points within the city and from the surrounding countryside, we will explore narratives that emerge from a layered observation of Orvieto. Working in paint and drawing inspiration from both predella altarpiece paintings and contemporary installation practices, each student will create a multipart project that offers a personal vision through attentive observations of the city and local landscape. [4 credits]

ORV375: (Special Topics in Literature and Creative Writing) Reading Virgil in Umbria: Furrow, Verse, Civilization, Grapes, and Honey (Instructor: Christine Perrin) The word versus (Latin) means a line, a row, and the metaphor is of plowing—of turning from one line to another (vertere) as a plowman does. The landscape is one of the reasons that we are drawn to this beautiful country, and when you drive through it on your way to a monastery or a vineyard to help with the harvest you see such lines and turns. Virgil writes about cultivating the land and bees in his Georgics, and in the Aeneid he turns his lines to telling the origin story of Rome. He is revising Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey at the same time that he seeks to distinguish his own epic and national identity. Much later, Dante takes Virgil as his guide through hell and purgatory where his will is purified. We will read this story and think about its being part of a line of stories having the great and long conversation with each other through the centuries. But we will also think about the land in which we are learning to dwell for a time, the labor of storytelling in civilization making, and the work of bees. We will read the map of his journey, harvest grapes, see Bernini’s sculpture of Aeneas, while absorbing Rome’s sense of itself as an empire as we walk its streets and statuary. [4 credits]

3rd Month Students choose between:

ORV376: (Special Topics in Art) Design Studio at Orvieto: Form, Function and Spatial Significance (Instructor: Tim Miller) With a focus on furniture and objects, we will investigate the relationship between concept, design, material and creation. Students will be introduced to the process of designing and building furniture and objects through a range of exercises aimed at developing technical skills, gaining confidence working in three dimensions, and seeing an idea through to an actualized form. Through the observation and study of local architecture, traditions, materials and processes, we will focus on designing work that honors the spaces we inhabit, with an added emphasis on our shared life in the convent. [4 credits]

ORV330: Women, Religion, and Reform (Instructor: Agnes Howard) The Renaissance and Reformation not only brought changes in art, science and belief, but prompted extraordinary writings by distinguished women in Italy. Women contributed literature, argument and devotional works. Religious institutions, particularly convents, fostered this work. Convents were set apart from the world but integral to the life of the community. In this period, Catholics opened new venues for women to teach and serve, while Protestants offered different paths for faith and learning. This course will examine texts and institutions from the period, situating them within the religious communities in Orvieto. [4 credits]

4th Month Students choose between:

ORV371: Painting Studio at Orvieto (Instructor: Bruce Herman) Advanced studio in methods and materials of oil or tempera painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. [4 credits]

ORV350: Poetry and Ekphrasis (Instructor: TBA) Explores the relation between poetry and pictorial arts in classical Renaissance tradition of ekphrasis (poetry about art or visual art based on poems). Students both study tradition and practice craft of ekphrasis. [4 credits]