News - February 13, 2009

SUF field studies challenge students to look deeper into history

Assisi (80), Rome (165), Ravenna (40), Cararra e Vinci (30)…the figures for SU Florence students traveling to the cities of Italy almost any given weekend is pretty impressive. The SUF field studies program offers a front-row seat to a panorama of history that goes back thousands of years, leading up to civilization as we know it today. With intriguing field study descriptions the likes of ‘Masterpieces,’ ‘Black Death’’,’ ‘Etruscans and Romans,’ ‘Laughter and Passion,’ ‘Antiquities to Michelangelo,’ and ‘Medici to Futurist,’ students are taking part enthusiastically. Notes Elaine Ruffolo, Field Studies Coordinator, "This semester's students are participating in high numbers and recent weekends have seen almost the entire SUF student body out on the road.”

Through the course of the spring 2009 semester students have the possibility to travel to over thirty different locations throughout Italy, from excavations of Pompeii, to Etruscan tombs, to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s, or floating down the Grand Canal in Venice, including visits to monuments and museums, private openings, behind-the-scenes visits, hands-on experiences and fascinating lectures by professors and field trip lecturers.

Students are indeed enthusiastic. Says one University of Colorado in Boulder student, "The field studies program takes us to places I would not normally have visited. It's absolutely one of the best parts of the program, and why I chose to study abroad with SUF.”

Adds Ruffolo, “Our goal for the SUF field students program is to explore the history of Italy from the Etruscans to Modern Italy, and discover how and why so many Italian cities became the great centers of art and architecture.”

Upcoming Events: SUF announces international two-day conference A Transatlantic Dialogue on Migration

Several hundred participants from the public and private sector are expected to participate in this two-day conference, an extraordinary, collaborative effort between Syracuse University in Florence, New York University, the European University Institute, and Facoltà di Giurisprudenza and Scienze Politiche of the Università di Firenze. In recent decades both Europe and the United States have seen an increase in immigration and growing public controversy surrounding government initiatives to address it. This exceptional partnership between European and American academic institutions in Florence brings prominent international scholars, policy makers and practitioners together to discuss critical issues surrounding immigration, its impact on public policy, the complex inter-relationship between national policy and local practice, and to suggest reflections on immigrants' rights, cultural diversity and national identity, which have stirred such passions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The two-day conference will take place on March 23-24, 2009, at NYU’s Villa La Pietra and the Salone de’ Dugento at Palazzo Vecchio respectively.

Says Matteo Duni, coordinator of the Humanities, Social Sciences and Business Department at SU, “The main objective of the conference is to get scholars, politicians, and social workers from both the EU countries and the US together to identify problems, compare policies, propose new strategies. Equally important for SUF, however, will be to have our students actively involved in the conference. It will be for them a unique chance to see what politics and society are doing on migration on both sides of the Atlantic, and to comprehend more fully a phenomenon which is at the same time one of the greatest challenges and one major opportunity facing the world today.”