Academics in Rome

With the academic semester in full swing, I wanted to use this blog post to express my appreciation for the IES Abroad course offerings and how they integrate their students into the city of Rome. 

To start, the classes I’m taking this semester are as follows:

• Rome as a Living Museum
• Documentary Filmmaking
• From Cinecittà Studios to Real Locations: A Survey of Italian Cinema in Rome
• Italian 401

I was also enrolled in “Lights, Camera, Action: Making a Fiction Film in Rome,” but had to drop it after being accepted into a Corso Singolo at Roma Tre. This is a very exciting development and I will dedicate a post to that experience in the future!

Something I have been noticing and immensely enjoying about my courses is the attention to quality education while catering to the novelty of our unique situation as American students in Rome. In the classroom, I am consistently engaged by the history, art, and culture I am learning about. Of course, this is specific to my position as a film student, but I've heard that even the material of business classes lean into our location. Once this importance has been established, we are brought out into the city for field studies, which provide a real-life understanding of what we've been learning about in class. 

The classes I'm taking with the most frequent field studies, nearly weekly, are "Rome as a Living Museum" and "From Cinecittà Studios to Real Locations: A Survey of Italian Cinema in Rome." For both classes, it's always fascinating to see the monuments we have been studying or the shooting locations of the iconic Italian films we've been watching. Students are also given opportunities to give presentations on these places while standing right in front of them. It's educational and, on top of that, gives us poor American saps an unforgettable experience in the city. With locations like San Pietro and Castel Sant'Angelo on the menu for Rome as a Living Museum, I have a new understanding of these ancient monuments that I pass every day between my apartment and the IES Abroad Center. Even when attending class, I feel I am taking full advantage of my semester abroad; opportunities to explore are not reserved for outside of the classroom, on your own time.

In my other classes, "Documentary Filmmaking" and "Italian 401," we are encouraged to incorporate the city into our work. We are assigned to make a documentary capturing some aspect of Rome, therefore engaging with both the course material and the city. In Italian, we are assigned a weekend recap sent to our WhatsApp group, describing our travels or what we did in Rome. Seeing what others are doing engages me and encourages me to do something exciting each weekend. In Italian, we also spent a class period at the cinema watching a new Italian language rom-com, Finché notte non ci separi. We missed much of it due to the Roman dialect, but we debriefed afterward with our excellent and encouraging professor. This is another great example of how we are experiencing the city authentically with the guidance of the fantastic IES Abroad staff!

Allow me to take a moment to praise the IES Abroad Rome staff and professors. Everyone I have interacted with has been so helpful and delightful. My professors have all been encouraging, kind, and dedicated to our education. I feel fortunate to not only be studying abroad in this incredible city but to feel supported by the IES Abroad team and educators. 

Outside of class, we have access to extracurricular activities that further enrich our time here. In the video embedded in this post, you'll see a gelato-making experience that was not only a total blast but also changed how I see the countless gelato shops I pass. Other opportunities include pizza making, group excursions, soccer matches, artistic ventures, and more. And of course, there was my IES Abroad planned weekend trip to Campagnia and the easy day trips I've taken out of Rome. All of these travels have been incredible and you can read about them in my previous post. 

Ci vediamo dopo!

-Ellie