Reading Rome, Writing Rome:
Creative Writing Workshop in Italy 2008
May 22-June 14, 2008
Overview
The Cornell University 2008 summer study abroad program in creative writing offers students the opportunity to enroll in English/creative writing courses for university credit while also studying the architecture, sculpture, painting, and culture of Rome as expressed in its visual art resources and in the poetry, fiction, memoirs, and letters of writers who have visited Rome or lived there.
Students may enroll in one regularly scheduled creative writing course, plus an additional Independent Study course for a total of five credits (there also is a six credit option—contact the professors). They may choose from English 281, English 383, English 385, English 481, English 495, and English 795 (see English department listings for details) for a total of five (or six) credits and two courses (graduate and post-graduate students may enroll for fewer credits in the Independent Study courses but must discuss their proposals and plans first with the professors). The courses are taught by regular Cornell University English faculty—Professor Stephanie Vaughn, Professor and Director, Department of English Program in Creative Writing and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Cornell University; and Michael Koch, Senior Lecturer, Department of English Program in Creative Writing, Cornell University.
The courses are conducted at Cornell University's teaching facility in the seventeenth century Palazzo Lazzaroni. The Palazzo is in the historic city center of Rome, only half a block from Largo di Torre Árgentina and a short walk to Campo de' Fiori and The Pantheon. Both the Palazzo and the nearby student apartments are within walking distance of many of Rome's notable sites and art collections.
Rome itself provides the principal text for many writing assignments, including and especially the entries that each student will make daily in a writer’s notebook. A number of writing assignments are given in association with site visits to museums, piazzas, parks, churches, cafes, and archaeological sites.
In formal lectures and in site visits, students will encounter the sculpture and/or painting, and/or architecture of Michelangelo, Raphael, Caravaggio, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Francesco Boromini, and Giorgio de Chirico.
Although Rome is famous as a city of artists, it also has been for the past two millennia a city of writers. Students read poetry and prose selections from a few of the hundreds of the English-language writers who have lived in or visited Rome, including authors such as Mary Shelley, John Keats, Robert Browning, Mark Twain, and Gregory Corso. Additionally, students read works by Italian writers, including selections from Dante, Michelangelo, Vittora Collonna, G. G. Belli, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, provided in bilingual editions, and from Ovid in English translation from Latin.
All classes are conducted in English. Classes meet daily, Monday through Friday and also will meet on the first Sunday of the program.
The cost of the program is $925 per credit ($4,625 for 5 credits) plus $625 for the program fee. Additionally, students must pay for the costs of housing, air travel, food, books, and supplies (please see links above for housing costs and airfare information). Local and day-trip transportation costs are paid for by the program (city bus trips, chartered bus trips, and/or train trips as well as transportation to and from the airport for those taking the group flight). Also paid for by the program are: admissions costs for all course-related visits to museums and archeological sites; computer-lab costs; and a modest amount of photocopying.