Spoleto Study Abroad
Summer Program in English
May 11 to June 8, 2022
The Courses
THE TRAVEL MEMOIR: WRITING IN AND OF PLACE
Professor Bret Lott
There is perhaps no more exciting, baffling, apprehensive and ultimately rewarding educational experience than travel, and there is no better way to understand that experience than to write about it. This creative nonfiction workshop will seek through writing about our travel experiences in Italy – good and bad, wise and foolish, enlightening and murky – to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a human being far from home.
Students will keep journals of their travels, and write two full-length essays as well as short exercises for class; books we’ll read include Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson, A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, and Best American Travel Essays 2017.
THE ITALIAN IMAGE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Dr. Scott Peeples
From the colonial period onward, Americans have defined themselves and their physical environment in contrast to Europe: new versus old, egalitarian versus stratified, untamed versus civilized, innocent versus corrupt. At the same time, however, many Americans – artists and writers in particular – have looked to Europe for inspiration and validation, and have imitated European ideals of beauty and sophistication. This paradox was particularly pronounced throughout the nineteenth century, amidst acute anxiety over the young republic’s seeming inability to produce literature and art that was both uniquely American and worthy of respect on the world stage.
This course will examine the complex responses of nineteenth-century American writers to Europe, and in particular Italy, the country that had a strong imaginative pull on authors ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to Margaret Fuller to Henry James.