WORLD CULTURAL HERITAGE: VENICE AND BEYOND

This course aims to introduce students to the methods and tools of analysis in history and heritage studies by using the city of Venice and the surrounding islands as a hands-on learning lab. By combining regular class sections with on-site training in different locations (museums, churches, public spaces, archaeological sites), Venice will be experienced as a lens through which different world cultures have been perceived across time. In fact, Venice may be considered as a uniquely cosmopolitan melting pot that combined a historical past rooted in the Classical and Byzantine traditions with multiple influences, spanning from the Islamic world to the Far East and beyond.

Students will learn to deal with a wide range of interdisciplinary sources (both textual and visual) and will be invited to work individually or in groups on selected topics related to the course.

No prior knowledges are required.

The course will take into consideration all periods of Venetian history, from the rise of Venice as a local settlement, to the time when it became a leading Mediterranean power, and, later, an iconic travel destination in the 19th and 20th centuries. History and cultural heritage will be approached as subjective cultural phenomena that stimulate multiple individual reactions and require a critical discourse to be fully understood.

Specific literature will be provided in class by the course instructor.

Class participation: 20%
Readings and short individual presentations: 20%
Final presentations (couples or groups): 30%
Final paper: 30%

Final papers should be approximately 3,000 words in length and are expected to thoroughly and critically engage with a research topic chosen by the students in consultation with the instructor. The papers will be assessed according to their coherence, comprehensiveness, clarity of argument and precision in addressing the subject matter. The deadline for submission is 31 January 2025.

scritto e orale

Classroom sections and onsite classes in and around Venice (museum, churches, etc.).

Questo insegnamento tratta argomenti connessi alla macroarea "Città, infrastrutture e capitale sociale" e concorre alla realizzazione dei relativi obiettivi ONU dell'Agenda 2030 per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile