The first edition of this summer workshop jointly promoted by Duke University, Iuav University of Venice and Venice International University was held at VIU from June 4 to June 16, 2012. The academic activities were coordinated  by Prof. Mark Olson and Prof. Victoria Szabo from Duke and Prof. Girogio Gianighian from Iuav.

 

The aim of the workshop was to provide a thorough introduction to a series of digital tools for the analysis, interpretation and visualization of data related to the shaping of man-made space.

 

The following technologies were taught and used by students: 3D modeling using Google SketchUp, 3D acquisition using Photogrammetry, interactive mapping with Google Earth, Scalar, and the basics of ARCgis related to Google Earth. These 3D modeling, visualization, and mapping technologies enabled the students to engage with questions of change over time and dynamic process in urban and rural environments, showing how man-made spaces respond to social and economic process and transformation.

 

The program of the 2012 workshop focused on the example of data for the drinking water supply system of Venice, using this documentation to visualize how supply systems determine the shaping of urban space.
The city of Venice thus became  a laboratory for training with technology.

 

The workshop was addressed to Master's- or Ph.D- level students in Interpretive Humanities (including Cultural Patrimony, History of Art, Architecture and Urbanism, History, Geography, Architecture, Archaeology, and other relevant disciplines).  Fifteen  students from all over the world were selected to participate in the workshop.

 

In ten days of intense work in the VIU Mac laboratory and site visits in the city, students obtained skills that permitted them to interpret, visualize, and communicate collaborative research projects.  The four final projects were presented to a  public of specialists and interested guests at the end of the workshop.

 

Work Schedule: June 2012

 

May 22 - June 22, 2011

The Duke University Office of Study Abroad, in cooperation with Venice International University, will offer a four-week, single course program in Venice, Italy in the summer of 2011. The program is designed to provide participants with the opportunity to study aspects of Venetian history and culture, which have been particularly important in the shaping of European civilization.

 

 

ENGLISH 142 - 01

The Venice of Our Imaginations (ALP, CCI, R)

 

Taught in English by Professor Marianna Torgovnick. One course credit.

 

Venice has long had a special lure and special meanings for Europeans and Americans. What are the meanings and how have they changed over time? Has the lure been seen as dangerous as well as seductive?

 

This course will enrich your Duke in Venice experience through the study of selected readings, one selected musical composition, and touring and discussion of selected world class art. Readings to include: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and Othello; Poe's "Cask of Amontillado"; James' The Aspern Papers; Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, and Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice. We will also see and discuss selected films. The class format will be lecture-discussion. To check images against the historical record, students will read assigned portions of a history of Venice and take tours of specific sites in the city.

 

Because 2011 is a biennale year, significant time will be devoted to touring and discussing the amazing art installations around the city. In addition, the class will include trips to sister cities, such as Verona, Padua, Ravenna, and perhaps (depending on class desires) Florence.

 

Students will be assigned either an oral report or two short written exercises and will write a term paper due the final week of the semester.

 

 

PUB POL 101/ VISUALST 190.01/ POLSCI 100Z

The Art of Politics and the Politics of the Arts: Music, Art and Politics in Northern Italy (CCI, ALP, SS)

 

Taught in English by Professor Ken Rogerson. One course credit.

 

This course will examine the tense and inspirational relationship between art, music and politics in northern . Students will explore examples of art and music in state-building, social and grass roots movements and revolutions, as well as how political institutions supported and encouraged artistic creation and development. The course will also make occasional field trips to opportunity to go on day trips to nearby cities such as Mantua, Padua, Ravenna, Treviso, Vincenza, and Verona . While at these locations, students can visit museums, churches, public monuments and archaeological sites.

 

 

June 5 - 26, 2011

Three different courses will be offered during this edition.

Dwelling Between East & West: The Philosophy of Architecture


Surrounded by its labyrinth of dark, narrow, often dead-end streets, twisting at right-angles through densely built-up, separately demarcated parishes, glimpsing fragrant gardens hidden behind high, crenellated walls, sniffing the pungent odors of exotic oriental spices in the bustling, crowded markets, one might well have imagined oneself transported, as if on a magic carpet, to one of the great mercantile centers of the Middle East — to Baghdad, Cairo or Damascus — to the world of Marco Polo's travels or the Arabian Nights, yet this is the city of Venice. Once described by the great Venetian art historian Giuseppe Fiocco as a colossal suq, the city of Venice has always conveyed a distinctly Oriental atmosphere, especially in its architecture.


The purpose of this course will be to explore philosophically, through the concept of dwelling, how architecture, specifically Islamic and Venetian, can help set the conditions for a life lived more fully and thus authentically human. We will see how "in the oriental mind a peculiar seriousness is associated with the attribute of color, a seriousness rising out of repose and out of the depth and breadth of the imagination, as contrasted with the activity, and consequent capability of surprise and laughter characteristic of the western mind." (John Ruskin The Stones of Venice.)

 

In short, through classroom readings and visits to major Venetian architectural sites, students will come to see how Venice, a Christian city, was shaped not only by Islamic architecture but Islamic mystical ideas as well. Seeing Venice through both Christian and Islamic lenses will show the class how to dwell contemplatively between the Islamic faith of the East and the Christian faith of the West.
Professor Brian Braman, Department of Philosophy

 

Highlights: 3 credits

 

Philosophy major/minor elective

 

The Imaginary City: Why Writers Love Venice


Venice occupies a unique place in the artistic imagination of the west. Rising from the lagoon in a riot of color, form, and texture, the shimmering reflections of Venice incarnate the essence of beauty. This course will study some of the most important ways modern writers have discovered in Venice an opportunity to explore and unsettle the traditional meaning that beauty holds for thought, art, and life.


Starting with the post-romantic era, we will focus on how several literary giants refashion the beauty of Venice into a paradox of great richness and complexity. For Henry James, Thomas Mann, and Marcel Proust, the beauty that is everywhere visible in Venice also possesses a hidden side of risk and peril. The course will study the specific ways that each of these writers—along with John Ruskin before and Joseph Brodsky after them—reveals Venice to be an imaginary site of powerful tensions, traversed by the competing forces of growth and decay, desire and knowledge, truth and illusion.

 

The course will also offer students the means for experiencing their own stay in Venice as a valuable source of self-reflection, an intellectual voyage into unfamiliar territory and waters. To encounter the beauty of Venice fully can open new perspectives on what it means to live, to love, and to understand wherever we find ourselves.

 

Alongside its central focus on literary masterworks from the modern European tradition, the course will also develop three complementary areas of instruction: a philosophical context stretching from Plato to Nietzsche and beyond; a cinematic dimension composed of "Summertime," "Morte a Venezia," (Death in Venice) "Don't Look Now," "The Comfort of Strangers," and "Pane e Tulipani" (Bread and Tulips); and a regular supplement of on-site visits to Venice itself—the marvel of its churches, palazzi, museums, pathways, and waterways.

 

Professor Kevin Newmark, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures

 

Highlights: 3 credits

 

English major/minor elective; Philosophy major/minor elective; Romance Languages

 

Venice: an Imperiled City in Comparative Perspective


This course focuses on the plight of cities perennially imperiled by floods comparing Venice to Amsterdam and New Orleans. It combines the study of history, ecology, public policy and political science. It examines how floods and the threat of flooding have shaped physically, politically and culturally shaped these cities. The readings for the course will include works of fiction, memoirs, journalism, and architectural history as well as ecology, political science and public policy.

 

Since the course will take place in Venice, students will be able to observe firsthand the variety of ways in which the flood threat has affected the city and the diverse means it has adopted to cope with that threat.

 

Professor Marc Landy, Department of Political Science

 

Highlights: 3 credits

 

Political Science major/minor elective

 

Boston College Summer School
Summer 2008
May 28 - June 15

PL 353 Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemporary Seeing (3 credits)

This course will explore how art and philosophy can help set the conditions for a life lived more fully, and thus authentically human,
each and every day through "contemplative seeing of art". As a means to help develop a sense of contemplative seeing, students will begin the course with an in depth reading of Thomas Aquinas and his understanding of what makes something beautiful.
The course will then investigate more specifically the relationship between art and philosophy and how together they can help set the conditions for a life truly lived well.
This course will be taught in English.
Prof. Brian Braman, Department of Philosophy
Fulfills: Philosophy elective

FS 175 Drawing from the Venetian Masters (3 credits)

In this class students connect to the visual arts tradition by visually internalizing it through drawing. Drawing from a master forces one to understand the visual language used to construct the image, how the dark and light forms are organized, the arrangement and use of color, the role of light and space. Students will strive to ensnare a sense of the whole picture with a few lines, or simplified forms,
to distill the organization of a masterwork into a small sketch. This introductory level Fine Arts Studio course will introduce students to the process, materials, and issues addressed in exploration of the basic principles and concepts of making visual artworks. The course emphasis therefore is two fold: first, the command of basic formal concepts and skills: the page, how mark, shape, value, scale and composition interact to become a visual language, and secondly, an introduction to the great masterworks of Venice. This course will be taught in English.
Prof. Stoney Conley, Dept. of Fine Arts
Fulfills: Fine Arts core/major/minor elective

Boston College Summer School
Summer 2009
May 31 - June 21

Like last year's edition, the summer program is a three-week two-course program.

 

Drawing from the Venetian Masters

Fulfills: Fine Arts Core (3 credits)
Maximum number of students: 12


Introductory-level studio art course examines the process, materials, and issues addressed in exploration of the basic principles and concepts of making visual artwork.
Professor Stoney Conley, Department of Fine Arts



Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing

Fulfills: Philosophy major elective (3 credits)
Maximum number of students: 16


Course explores how art and philosophy can help set the conditions for a life lived more fully, and thus authentically human, each and every day through the “contemplative seeing of art.”
Professor Brian Braman, Department of Philosophy

Venice
International
University

Isola di San Servolo
30133 Venice,
Italy

-
phone: +39 041 2719511
fax:+39 041 2719510
email: viu@univiu.org

VAT: 02928970272