News and Blog – Page 63 – DEV – The Umbra Institute – Study Abroad in Italy

Another Umbra landmark last night: it was the twelfth bi-annual literary anthology reading. The Birraio, Umbra’s go-to pub for important events, hosted the reading in their Buddha room. Professor Cynthia Clough, the instructor of the “Italy of the Imagination” course, conjured up the class’ work over the semester and then passed the baton to anthology editor Emily Swaine, who lead off the evening.

One by one all of the students in the course sat in front of the giant tin Buddha and read their best essay. Art awakening memories, what the barista gives you every morning, and the many meaning of niente — these were among the wide range of themes that came out last night.

It’s that time of the semester, once again, when students wash their feet and stomp on buckets of grapes. It may not be the most desirable thought to consume wine made by your own feet, but the process has been used for generations in Italy. Staff member Zach Nowak led the group in the process of making wine and each student who participated in the wine making course will have a bottle of wine to take back to the United States.

In photo: Chelsea Allworden (University of Minnesota) and Meredith Taylor (Elon University) take part in stomping grapes into wine.

Last Friday, Umbra students accompanied by Art History Professor Dr. Adrian Hoch took a tour of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Palazzo Farnese was once the home of the Farnese family and has housed the French Embassy since 1874. Professor Hoch described the wealth and vision of the noble Italian family and their architects, which included Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Michelangelo.

The imposing building has virtually never been opened to the public, so Umbra students were able to be part of a very special moment in “art history”. The exhibition includes 150 masterpieces from Naples and France on display in the beautiful halls of the upper floor, but the highlight of the visit was a chance to view the breathtaking “Loves of the Gods” fresco cycle by Annibale Caracci in the West Wing of the palace. The exhibit runs through April 27th.

Using a bit of wit, a dash of humor, and their mastery of the Italian language, the Italian 310 students solved their very own game of Clue. Barbara, Umbra Institute’s Italian 310 professoressa, cleverly created roles, scripts, and a ‘theft’ to be acted out over a birthday dinner for two of her students.

As the captain of the imaginary cruise ship, Barbara laid out the plot for the interactive game to begin. All her students collaborated to disentangle the web of clues leading to culprit who ‘stole’ the missing gold ring. Even the food that was prepared for the potluck was skillfully incorporated into the plot! Luckily, the ring was recovered in a slice of birthday cake. Case closed.

Well, not quite, but it sure feels like it! With about a week of nearly 60 degree weather behind us and more to come, spring is in the air at the Umbra Institute! The students are beginning to get a taste of what the outdoors life is like in Italy: the main point of congregation is Piazza IV Novembre (Google Maps link) and its scalette (steps), which dominate the city in the summer.

Since they are bathed in Mediterranean sun for the vast majority of the day, the new midday pastime is getting an olive oil-drizzled panino (with prosciutto, salame, or other local treats), taking a seat, and chatting with your neighbors – be they American or Italian. Every year, students list the steps as one of their favorite aspects of Perugia, and for good reason. The concept of a main piazza as a central meeting point is a huge part of the Italian lifestyle, so Umbra students are truly beginning to experience la bella vita.

Last Thursday, during a wine tasting in a local Perugian enoteca, Umbra students transformed into knowledgeable wine connoisseurs. The art of vino came alive thanks to the expert, Sylvia, and the helpful enoteca owner and staff. They explained everything from reading labels, to pairing foods with a wine’s acidity, to using the senses to examine and, of course, enjoy a quality bottle of wine.

Students sampled three types of wine to judge for themselves whether they found hints of green apple and almond here or honey and blackberry there. Students also learned how weather, use of machinery, and location, location, location impact what goes into the bottles we find at the store. The evening’s lesson will serve Umbra students well when sharing the Italian experience with family and friends.

Umbra Institute students last night enjoyed more than a hot cup of Joe. Umbra staff member Mauro Renna and history prof Zachary Nowak entertained students who participated in the Coffee Workshop, offered as part of Umbra’s extra-curricular series of food workshops. Renna and Nowak described the convoluted and often odd history of that bean which lets us start our mornings, from its domestication in Ethiopia and export from the Yemenese port of (get this!) Al-Moka, through its arrival in Venice and quick spread through Europe.

History gave way to botany (Coffea arabica vs Coffee robusta, the two main species), processing, and even a little economics (coffee is the #2 most-traded product behind petroleum in dollar value). The workshop ended with a tasting of six different coffees and an explanation of their “cultural context”: Italians rarely drink cappucino after 11am, and coffee in a glass cup is considered more elegant. Renna finished up the night with a demonstration of how to us the “moka,” which in Italian refers to the Italian coffee pot, not a drink with chocolate.

The next workshop is Aperitivo 101, next Tuesday!

Umbra Institute professors Simon Young and Zachary Nowak have been working on an exciting new initiative, a blog about Italian food history.The Umbra Institute has a long history of food studies as a part of its academic program. Professor Simon Young, who teaches “The History and Culture of Food In Italy,” and Umbra history professor Zachary Nowak have created a unique blog that attempts to fill a research gap that students of food culture in Italy often encounter.

Many sources are only available in Italian,

and often then only treated in book-length monographs.

Young and Nowak’s blog, on the other hand, presents a clearinghouse of sources (hard-to-find firsthand accounts of Italian food in the past in English), resources (search engines and other directories), images, and Italian food news, as well as their commentary on all of the above. Young and Nowak are also in the process of making their colleagues in food studies aware of the blog and soliciting guest posts from other scholars. The blog, called Food In Italy (FoodinItaly.org), will be made available not only to Umbra students but also other interested in food history in Italy.

Perugia has about a 3 to 1 ratio of nooks to crannies, Umbra Institute students found out yesterday. Sunday afternoon saw two editions of the “almost internationally-renowned” (as history professor Zachary Nowak describes it) tour of Perugia. Nowak took the students on a sun-drenched traipse around Perugia’s center, recounting anecdotes and stories about monuments and people in Perugia’s past.

The tour, not intended to be a historical tour in the strictest sense but rather an entertaining walk around the city, included answers to such questions as “Where was the aqueduct that brought more debts than water?”, “Why is everyone’s last name?”, and “Why is the bread here so bad?” (in Via dell’Acquedotto, because the orphanage gave that name to foundlings, and because of the Salt War of 1540). Nowak, who will teach a class on the history and culture of food in Italy this summer, will lead the Coffee Workshop next week

Professor William Pettit III was asked to participate in a special on the art of fresco and the Sistine Chapel.

According to its website, in every episode of the History Channel’s program “Museum Secrets,” its troupe “travels to one extraordinary museum: the Louvre, the Vatican Museums, London’s Natural History Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto [and] reveals the stories of one of its irreplaceable treasures: the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel, the golden mask of King Tut, and many more. Museum Secrets probes familiar legends and assumptions, using cutting edge research and technology to investigate the unknown.”

It’s no surprise that Umbra’s dashing and affable fine arts professor would be a candidate for a television special, but it was his expertise in the technique known as buon fresco that got him involved in this particular project. Buon fresco is a process, perfected in the fifteenth century in Italy, of painting on a wet lime-mortar covered wall. Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raffaelo all used it—and William Pettit teaches it. Pettit was asked to participate in the episode on the Vatican Museums, which discusses Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

The Umbra professor was contacted by the producers because he is one of the few artists and instructors of the fresco painting technique working today. In particular, they were interested in a demonstration of the techniques of cartoon transfer—pouncing and incising—which he also teaches to his students at the Umbra Institute in his ARFP 210: Fresco Painting course. The demonstration involved producing a full sized drawing (cartoon) of Michelangelo’s Adam, and transferring the drawing onto a fresco wall Pettit had prepared. The series was aired on the History Channel on January 6.

The Umbra Institute is now in its third year of offering the class as part of its fine arts program. Want to know more? Click here for a description of Professor Pettit’s class.