Classics in Europe
Brown University experiential education: rome (ages 16-18)
Practice conversational Italian as you delve into Roman history and culture in this twelve day program. You’ll participate in two courses during your time in Rome: Beginner Italian and Making of an Eternal City, offered in affiliation with the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (the Centro).
From your home base in the quaint Monteverde Vecchio neighborhood in Italy’s capital, you will learn Italian organically as you order cappuccino and gelato and complete a scavenger hunt. Each day, you’ll visit a variety of historic sites—from the Colosseum to the Palatine Hill and Saint Peter’s Basilica—allowing you to analyze their connections to institutions and people and evaluate their importance in the formation of Rome’s distinctive identity.
John Cabot University Summer Study Abroad in Rome, Italy
John Cabot University’s summer sessions provide the perfect short-term study abroad solution. Combine our options to meet your academic needs. All courses are taught in English, except for Italian language. Over 100 courses in key areas of art history, business, communications, economics, engineering, English literature, history, Italian language, mathematics, political science, psychology, and studio arts. Take up to 6 credits in each session. Summer Engineering Program: Spend the summer in Rome, a city renowned for its remarkable feats of engineering such as the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and the aqueducts, and take STEM classes to stay on track for graduation. $500 engineering scholarship available. Institute for Creative Writing and Literary Translation: Work on your creative writing while getting to know the Eternal City. Our summer institute features guest lectures, seminars, and special events, and provide communications and creative writing students with a chance to hone their skills while exploring Rome.
The Paideia Institute: Living Latin In Rome – High School
Living Latin in Rome High School offers a holistic immersion experience in the Latin language and the city of Rome that is specifically designed for high school students. The program brings Latin to life both by reading ancient texts at the historical sites where they happened and through a variety of student-centered approaches spanning both traditional and spoken Latin methodologies. Readings are drawn from the entire history of the Latin language and therefore include medieval and Renaissance Latin, to which students are rarely exposed in typical high school curricula.
The program lasts for two weeks in July. It includes traditional classroom sessions, informal conversational Latin sessions, interactive visits to important historical and literary sites in Rome, the production of a Latin skit to be performed in an assembly of fellow students and friends of the Paideia Institute, and day trips to important sites outside of Rome.
stanford summer humanities institute
Not for credit or grade, Stanford Summer Humanities Institute encourages participants to tap into Stanford University's excellence in the humanities and social sciences—exploring texts and ideas at a profound level, writing college-level papers, and communicating complex arguments in their academic writing and discussion sections.
From a few huts on seven hills in the eighth century (or so they say), Rome would grow into an empire that, at its greatest expanse, comprised all of western Europe, the north of Africa, the Middle East, and the territory west and south of the Black Sea; more impressive than its expanse, it would last, its eastern half, until 1453.
Its roads, many still in use, formed a network along which goods and ideas traveled; its awe-inspiring buildings, like the celestial Pantheon or the magnificent Pont Du Gard, set standards not to be reached again for over a millennium; its art, like the murals in Nero’s Domus Aurea, and literature, like Vergil’s Aeneid and Tacitus’ Annals, entice and inspire to this very day, and its law code provides the foundation for Civil Law.
In this course we will study aspects of this historical phenomenon: read many of its most famous texts, reflect on how the Romans thought of themselves and others, trace the history of one of its texts, considered most dangerous by some, follow its rise and fall as an empire, and remark throughout on how different it is from Western societies today, even though the latter are profoundly indebted to it.
In this course, we’ll read some foundational works of ancient Greek philosophy, including all or part of Plato’s Symposium, Aristotle’s On the Soul, Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism (the most important extant ancient skeptical text), and a central Epicurean work, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. We’ll focus on four topics:
Can I know anything? If so, what can I know and how can I know it? We’ll consider the radical skeptical view that living without any beliefs is the only route to tranquility.
Is my loving someone good or bad for me? What is it to love a person and should we have reasons for loving? What would be a good reason for loving someone?
I’m now the same person as one particular baby born in the past. But there’s little if any overlap between the baby’s matter and my current matter or the baby’s thoughts and my current ones. What makes me the same person over time? Could I, say, by being run through a teletransportation machine twice, be duplicated? Once I understand what makes me the same person over time (if anything does), how should this affect how I treat others?
Is my death bad for me? If so, why is it bad for me? It seems entirely obvious that, even if it’s sometimes better for me to die, my dying would in many circumstances be bad for me. We’ll consider Lucretius’ famous argument for the claim that no matter when I die–even if I die “tragically early”—my death is in no way bad for me. We’ll find that Lucretius’ argument is surprisingly powerful and that it helps us understand what is good for us.
On each of these topics, we’ll devote one course meeting to reading some related modern philosophy.
Calder Classics: latin or ancient greek (in person and online)
Calder Classics online and travel programs for high school students offer an intensive interdisciplinary approach to Ancient Greek, Latin, and other ancient languages and cultures. We also hold Classics-inspired Creative Writing Workshops. By interacting with ancient history and art history, students deepen their understanding of language, literature and culture, and enhance their educational performance and personal growth.