Art & Design in Florence

First semester Italian. Develop basic listening, speaking, reading, writing, and communicative competence skills. Some cultural readings are included. No prerequisite.

Further develop basic skills, and improve conversation and comprehension proficiency as well as reading and writing skills. Includes grammar review. Prerequisite: Completion of one or two semesters of Italian language. If you have completed one semester of Italian, register for FLOR 1002. If you have completed two semesters of Italian, register for FLOR 1003.

Syllabus for 1002 (PDF)

Syllabus for 1003 (PDF)

This intermediate through advanced language course will focus on practical skills while emphasizing conversation and vocabulary building. Prerequisite: Completion of three or four semesters of Italian language. If you have completed three semesters of Italian, register for the 5-credit FLOR 1004. If you have completed 4 semesters of Italian, register for the 3-credit FLOR 3100. The 3-credit version of the course has fewer tests, and more focus on a higher level of oral and written work.

Syllabus for 1004 (PDF)

Syllabus for 3100 (PDF)

This studio course introduces you to the principles of painting and develops skills in composition, observation, and the use of materials. The course will include sessions on technique, brushwork, and the use of different media, color theory, and composition. During the first half of the course, assignments will concentrate on developing different skills and building techniques, while during the second half of the course, you will use these skills to develop your own work.

Explore the history of art in Florence in the many galleries and museums and use this knowledge to inform your own work. The course will cover the technical developments of the Renaissance, including perspective and form, and will introduce modern painting, including abstract and conceptual. This study will be the basis for developing painting skills through engaging with, and responding to, the works and artists you study.

This course will introduce you to the creation of 3D forms through exploration of material, technique, and process to create sculpture in a variety of media. Using natural, manufactured, found, discarded objects, objects from nature etc., you will develop your own visual language. Working in a variety of media, the four basic methods of sculpture—including carving, modelling, casting, and assembly—will be explored, alongside different types of sculpture including relief, additive, subtractive etc. Drawing on this knowledge, you will develop your own projects.

Starting with the Renaissance, the course will explore public sculpture through the history of Florence to the present day. Using this as a basis, you will create your own work, engaging creatively with the history of sculpture in Florence and with the contemporary city. Through looking at examples of sculpture in Florence, you will consider how materials and the 3D space have been exploited to articulate concepts.

The course will also have a focus on developing skills for self and peer criticism to discuss the development of your work. You will have a series of assignments designed to engage with Florence and to think about the relationship between objects and space, as well as the viewer and the socio-historical context.

This introductory foundation course investigates the various materials, skills, and expressive issues involved in drawing the city of Florence, its architecture, sculptures, and the human figure from the live model. You will explore a range of compositional issues such as figure/ground relationships, light and shade, perspective, line and shape, value and color, texture, anatomy, contrapposto, and design. You will draw on site in Florence as well as in the classroom. Both will be used in conjunction with exploring diverse approaches to the learning of drawing fundamentals. Emphasis is placed on drawing from perception while focusing on different cultural conventions relating to space, perspective, the human figure, architecture, anatomy, and proportion. Class visits to on-site locations in the city of Florence, its piazzas, gardens, museums, as well as a visits to an Artist Studio will be arranged.

If you have a background in drawing, you may submit a portfolio to take the studio at an intermediate level.

From its beginnings, photography has been used as a tool to explore, analyze, and experience society and our role within it. The course will challenge you to question, explore, and express your own identity through photography and to take inspiration from your host city environment, in synergy or contrast with your own identity. You will deepen your ability to think critically and express your thoughts through images and related texts by analyzing and interpreting experiences in Italian society. Through various photographic exercises and assignments, you will explore digital photography as a tool to interpret and narrate different aspects of the city and our personal experience of and with it, reflecting on identity in a visual way.

If you have a background in photography, you may submit a portfolio to take the course at an intermediate level.

This course will focus on the rise and development of consumer cultures with specific emphasis on the similarities and differences between the Italian and US American practices using Italian products as the case study. The aim is to study and to apply interdisciplinary theoretical approaches to the study of consumer society now and in the past. The course will explore key substantive themes in the history and sociology of consumption.

The course examines literary representations of Italy, with a focus on Florence and its surroundings, and analyzes how discourses of gender, power, national and individual identity inform literary constructions of the Italian landscape and of the Italian city from the 19th Century to the present. Travel writings as well as poetry and fiction inspired by or set in Florence by authors from different eras and traditions will be contrasted with representations of the Italian, Tuscan, and Florentine space by Italian authors.

The sea is a place where cultures meet. This course will explore its influence, with a special focus on art history and a mainly Italian and Florentine point of view. Topics will include: the impact of Islamic art on Western culture; the role of Byzantine art in the development of Florentine painting; the rediscovery of Greek classical culture and its importance in Renaissance civilization; the consequences of the fall of Constantinople and of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. You will explore Florentine churches, palaces, and museums in search of visual evidence of the links between the city and the diversity of Mediterranean culture.

This course was structured out of four core ideas: how fashion designers and artists communicate and market their art; how institutions communicate and market the fashion items and artworks they have on display; how the audience communicates their experience of fashion and of art and how this influences marketing and promotional strategies; how these three processes are implemented through communication and marketing channels and for which purposes. The course will explore its core ideas integrating theoretical and experiential-learning approaches.

This course is an investigation into how the identities of different peoples in the Mediterranean can be understood through the lens of the food they cultivate, trade and eat. After an introduction to different definitions of identity, with a particular focus on the formation, maintenance and evolution of group identity through cultural practices, the course will analyze the history and culture of food in different civilizations of the Mediterranean basi

Traveling abroad has always been an experience of enrichment, enhancement and transformation of a traveler’s identity and intimate self. Starting from this assumption, this Creative Writing course will use the narrative strategies offered by modern and contemporary autobiography to draw inspiration from your Italian and European travel experience. Both a ‘classic’ field in literature and a flourishing contemporary trend, the genre of autobiography defies categories and allows you to experiment with innovative forms—from diary to travelogue, from literary nonfiction to the so-called “autofiction”—that are also currently evolving under the influence of the social networks and the possibilities of augmented experience offered by the web.

The course will deal with the most relevant sociological theories on crime as a particular form of deviance. The aim is to apply different theoretical perspectives to the study of the deep relation between crime and culture in our contemporary societies. Given that crime and culture are two complex and multilayered notions, a variety of materials will be used (sociological essays, newspapers, audiovisuals, TV shows, movies, music, among others) in order to analyze specific case studies both from the US and Italy using a cross-cultural comparative perspective and to stimulate an active in-class students’ participation.

You will explore the fundamentals of graphic design techniques and skills to develop a visual communication language to present concepts and ideas. The course will include formal graphic design principles including color, balance, negative space, etc., and you will complete short exercises to demonstrate your understanding. With practical projects and exercises, you will delve into image and composition creation, web layout design, and graphic illustration and enhancement.

The course will examine the role of graphic design in creating social media content, how design principles are exploited, and to what effect. Through formal analysis, you will develop skills to assess the effectiveness of design content, as well as what performs well and what fails to be successful.

This course will introduce you to the history of design in Italy from the post war period to the present day. The course will begin by exploring the connection between design and the rebuilding of Italy and the Italian economy, following the devastation of World War II. The link between Italian design and Italian identity, and the concept of ‘Made in Italy’, will be explored through the study of design including fashion, coffee making, cars and mopeds, and furniture.

The impact of Italian design outside Italy and the emergence of global companies, including the main fashion houses, will lead you to understand the importance of design, both as part of the Italian economy and as a lens through which the world views Italy.

This studio course addresses sense of place, and the contribution of artifacts to interior environments, with a Made in Italy brand as the theoretical client. The project includes using historic precedent for adaptive use or renovation of spaces in an historical space in central Florence. Made in Italy design philosophies will be explored as the motivation for aesthetic and programmatic design decisions. Exploration of the use of materials, light, and movement will be key factors in the design of the space to align with the brand’s philosophy.

The course is designed to build upon all previous studios through application of knowledge of human needs and the impact of cultural norms in implementing life safety, codes, accessibility, and integral aesthetics as applied through the design process. You will analyze themes and examples of the selected Made in Italy brand throughout the project design development as well as presentation. Special attention will be focused upon the pre-design, programming, and schematic design phases of the process as you explore multiple concepts and design solutions for projects. The exploration of innovative use of materials will be a theme throughout the individual and group projects.

Coursework will include both individual and team work for the overall project.