CAS in Rome - Mark

Dead in Roma

2008-07-23T03:44:00.008+02:00

In Rome, one the primary focuses of our educational mission was to help our students to learn to become better tourists. Our hope was that during their time in the program they would broaden their tolerance for and understanding of other cultures while learning to see their own in a new light. Ideally, their experience abroad would teach them to be more deeply critical and appreciative of their own, American culture. This mission seems especially important in the face of contemporary tourist behaviors which are often complacent if not outright malicious.

Today, I ran across this article in The Independent. The article is about two Roma girls (more commonly known by the slur "Gypsy") who drowned at a beach in Napoli. Their bodies were hauled ashore, towels laid over them, and then left on the beach for upwards of three hours before authorities arrived. During that time the vacationers at the beach continued to swim with little regard for the dead women. The picture in the article depicts some of these vacationers lounging only tens of feet away.

Incidents like this force me to wonder if some sort of moral or ethical education should be a necessary component of a study abroad program. Of course, there is a certain morality implied in the pedagogy of broadened horizons, but only implied, and really very softly so. This picture shows tourists carrying on with their tourism in the presence of two freshly dead teenagers. I'd like to assume that this sort of disregard for human life is beyond the behavior of our students, but I would have assumed it beyond anyone. Additionally, I have to wonder if this incident is indicative of an attitude about going abroad, especially to Europe for Americans, that dictates a disregard for ethics and morality. The logic being that since some laws do not apply while visiting another country, no laws apply.

It is easy to forget that there is a large and very lucrative dark side to tourism. Some Western men visit South East Asian countries because sex with children is either legal or the laws against it are not enforced. Some people visit other countries to hunt animals that would normally be illegal to hunt. Other people visit certain countries to do drugs they cannot do at home. There is a reasonable case to be made that many American college student enjoy studying abroad in European countries because few have legal drinking ages. While not all of these acts are morally equivalent (for example, raping a Cambodian child is not the moral equivalent of getting stoned in Amsterdam), the will to escape the legal authority of one's country of origin is. Call it the meidung effect (meidung complex?). And, it is easy to confuse these acts of transgression, that have their genesis in a rejection of the law, as morally comparable because of this concomitant disregard for the law.

So, although drinking to excess is not the moral equivalent of doing nothing about a dead body, both acts can be, however accidentally, rationalized as a part of the experience of being abroad. The logic being that if one is able to jettison one moral norm from home, why cannot one jettison another, and another, and so on. This is a particularly difficult lesson to teach, because a study abroad program is usually focused so heavily on getting students to open up to foreign cultural norms, that the lessons of when and how to reject them are rarely important enough to be included in a curriculum. Educators assume that they do not have to add "unless someone is dying and no one else will help" to the end of "When in Rome..."

So one has to wonder how this happened. Do the Italians really not care at all about a couple of dead Roma children? Were there no Italians around? Did the tourists not know who to call? Were the tourists simply fitting in with the Italian culture by ignoring the human tragedy laid on the beach before them? Is it a normal human behavior to ignore the dead body of stranger?

Ultimately, I doubt that our students need such a simple moral lesson, but they might need a practical lesson in who to call if you see someone in trouble. They also might need to be told that fitting in to another culture does not mean that they have to accept and engage in every behavior. They have the space in their luggage to pack their morality, ethics, golden rule, religion, or whatever else it might be that guides their decisions about right and wrong when they travel abroad and perhaps that needs to be a part of (even if a small part) the study abroad curriculum.

Heavy Metal Monk

2008-07-19T01:23:00.003+02:00

In Italy I learned that different orders of friars often specialize in certain activities as a means of making money. For example, some orders make candy or alcohol and sell it to tourists. While there seems to be no indication that Cesare Bonizzi is in it for the money, this is certainly an interesting activity for a holy man.

Pictures of Rome

2008-07-15T07:20:00.005+02:00

Motivated by my trip to the Eternal City and fond memories from my time in The Protege Philharmonic, I purchased a copy of Respighi's "Pines of Rome" as performed by the CSO under Reiner. I have listened through the work three or four times since it came in the mail this morning. It has been fun to relive my high school orchestra days a little, even in this pathetically detached way. Regardless of the sentimentalism, the beauty of Respighi's work justifies a listen, especially for anyone who has visited Rome. Part of the theme of the first movement, "Pines of the Villa Borghese," was used as the basis for the childhood theme in the movie Shoe-Shine. We watched the depressing, but moving DeSica film in our Italian Neo-Realist film class which ultimately motivated the purchase.

When I ordered the CD, I did not pay close attention to the album art. As it turns out, the cover is plastered with nine images of famous places in Rome including the Colosseum, Fountain of the Naiads, Trevi Fountain, Appian Way, and the Fountain of Neptune. These images make sense on face because both the "Pines of Rome" and the "Fountains of Rome" by Respighi seek to recreate places in Rome through what is referred to as symphonic poetry. In the "Pines of Rome," the last movement is supposed to represent the pines of the Appian Way and this album cover appears to sport at least two pictures of it (maybe three; it is difficult to tell). The third movement of the "Fountains of Rome" is named after the Trevi Fountain and the fountain is also featured prominently in the upper right hand corner of the album cover. The center picture is of the Triton Fountain which is at the north end of the Piazza Navona and the name Respighi gave to the second movement in the "Fountains of Rome."

The project of matching visual representations with musical representations of places in Rome seems straightforward enough, but the album cover also includes a picture of the Colosseum centered at the bottom. None of the movements of "Pines or Rome," "Fountains of Rome," or "Roman Festivals," Respighi's three symphonic poems on the topic of Rome, attempt to depict the Colosseum in any way. It seems that the memetic momentum of the image of the Colosseum alone justifies its inclusion on the cover of the album. Similarly, the Fountain of the Naiads located in the Piazza della Republica is included to the immediate left of the Colosseum. While not as famous a site in Rome as the Colosseum, the fountain is very well known and is often depicted in pictures framed similarly to the one used here. It seems that the Colosseum and Naiads have been included for the sake of making the Roman theme of the CD as recognizable as possible. I guess it is too bad Respighi did not capitulate in selecting the most recognizable locations to title his movements by.

More Pictures from Rome

2008-07-10T02:35:00.002+02:00

I've poster about sixty of the better images to my flickr account. Follow the link to see them. Many of them overlap with what I have already posted here, but a few do not. They are also searchable on flickr.

School of Athens

2008-06-26T10:18:00.004+02:00

Communities of artists, particularly painters, when they are grouped together are often referred to as belonging to the same school. Most often artistic schools are named after the place where the artists were from or one of the leading artists in the group. It seems as though there have been artistic schools named after half of the cities in Italy: Florence, Venice, Padua.

One artist who inspired a following that was named for him was Raphael. Raphael's works can be found all over Rome. At the Barberini gallery there is a painting called "La Fornarina" that is said to have been his lover as painted by him. At the Borghese Gallery, one can see both "Young Woman with Unicorn" and "The Deposition of Christ." The Vatican Museums contain some of Raphael's most celebrated work. Aside from "The School of Athens" pictured above, the Vatican Museums also have "The Disputation of the Holy Sacrament" and "The Transfiguration of Christ."

Some artistic schools, like that of Raphael, are created around great artistry, but not necessarily as an act of premedidated creation by the artists themselves. In fact, many times the label of "The School of..." is an anarchronistic term inscribed over a set of works that seem to hang together in some important historical way. In Raphael's painting, "The School of Athens," an intellectual school is being overtly created through his art. The term itself is an example of an anachronistic label. Many of the thinkers depicted did not exist in the same place or at the same time. Zoroaster, depicted the bottom left, would never have been in the same place as Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy to whom he is supposedly talking. The reverence for these classical figures was a central expression of the Renaissance and depicting them in the same room with important Christian images was part of Pope Julius II's project of incorporating the pursuit of knowledge into the Catholic Church's agenda.

Raphael's painting thus makes us aware of the politics of a such a label as "The School of..." That label is imbued with a lot of power. Depending upon the value associated with the school being identified, the label can enhance or devalue the works of certain artists and thinkers. It can also group together or tear apart certain artists and thinkers who may have other ideas about how their work relates to the work of others. It is interesting to find that even metaphorical schools cannot escape force of politics.

Damnatio Memoriae tu Geta?

2008-06-22T14:27:00.007+02:00

One of the more fascinating aspects of being in Rome and getting to see art from the Republican and Imperial periods, is that there are many figures who have been excluded. For example, I have not seen a single bust of Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix. Busts of Sulla do exist. There is a bust of the dictator in the Glyptothek in Munich, but I have not seen any here in Rome. At the National Museum of Rome, I was able to see a series of three busts including one that must be similarly rare.

As I discussed in an earlier post, I was assigned to read about this fella, the emperor Septimius Severus for a seminar that I took at WIU. He is the one with the arch in the Forum. He is also known for being the first emperor to be born in Rome's African Province. He was known for cleaning up corruption in the senate, but doing so by turning Rome into a thinly veiled military dictatorship. Septimius had two children; one became the emperor Caracalla and the other was named Geta.

Not surprisingly, there are busts of Caracalla in almost every major museum in Rome. I think I have photographed four or five of them at this point and this picture is from the same room in the National Museum of Rome as the Septimius bust above. After the death of Septimius Severus, Caracalla came to power with his brother, Geta. They were within a year of the same age of each other, although Geta was the younger of the two. After less than a year of sharing power with each other, Caracalla had his brother and most of hist brother's family and supporters killed. He then had the senate order a "damnatio memoriae" or damnation of Geta's memory. The order meant that all public records of Geta's existence, especially including monuments like busts, had to be destroyed. The order aims to enact governmental auto-amnesia.

So, when I saw this bust, which is labeled "Geta?" by the museum, I was fascinated. At first, I thought it surprising to see a bust that could possibly be Geta at all because it was theoretically ordered destroyed. Then, I had to wonder if since it was Geta's memory that was damned, perhaps this bust which does not bear an inscription labeling it "Geta" did not have to be destroyed. In any case, the African features and brotherly resemblance present in the bust's face do seem to make a compelling case for this being Geta Severus.

It is interesting to see this process of purposeful forgetting at work in Rome. We certainly have modern equivalents that seem less pernicious such as striking evidence from the record in a courtroom, but we also have some less benign habits of forgetting collectively. It is easy to forget (heh, irony) statements like George HW Bush's at the end of the Gulf War "By God, we've kicked the Vietname Syndrome once and for all!" At the time, George C. Herring wrote an insightful article about the statement in Foreign Affairs (1). He pointed out the effort that has gone into remembering Vietnam in the United States as a self-inflicted defeat.

Of course, the effort that goes into remembering events in a particular way as a society will come as no surprise to scholars of public memory, but to see it at work all the way back in ancient Rome lends a historical view to the process that grounds it as one of the basic behaviors of collective government. That is, to the things governments have sought to control throughout history (territory, violence, loyalty, etc.) collective memory can be added. It is also interesting that the Ancient Romans could at least be legally honest with what they were doing. They had a process and a declaration for purposeful forgetting; it did not happen surreptitiously.

Further on in the National Museum, I ran across an exhibit of mosaics from the one of the Severus Family's villas. A plaque there explained that the villa was identified as the Severus's because Geta's name was etched onto the pipes of the plumbing. I guess some shit isn't worth digging up for the sake of forgetting.

1. George C. Herring, "America and Vietnam: The Unending War," Foreign Affairs (Winter, 1991): 104.

Om Nom Nom Nom

2008-06-21T13:30:00.009+02:00

"You like being a liar, with pants constantly on fire?" - The Monarch

The picture is of me at Santa Maria in Cosmedin. This is where our class started our walk up the Aventine Hill. I walk by this church everyday on the way to and from class and there is always a line out front to do just what I am doing. My pensive posture and forced smile are a result of the legend that accompanies the large stone slab into which I am resting my left hand. The "Bocca della Verita" or "Mouth of Truth" is the ancient Roman equivalent of a lie detector. If you have been telling lies and you stick your hand in the stone mouth, it is said that the monument will bite your hand off (1). While I have no illusions about the inanimate nature of the piece of stone, it does appear entirely possible that the rock might break on someone having the same effect as biting. It is amusing to watch people get their picture taken at the monument. Few dwell for very long with their hand it its mouth.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 202.

Death and the Protestant Work Ethic

2008-06-21T11:24:00.009+02:00

On Thursday this week, the class took a trip to Rome's Protestant Cemetery. The cemetery is located in Testaccio, the neighborhood in which the other graduate students and I are living. "Protestant," in this case, has a broader meaning than it does in the states. "Protestant" simply means non-Catholic, so there are Jewish people, Eastern Orthodox people, and atheists buried in the cemetery.

This picture is of Caius Cestius' pyramid. It was constructed around the time of his death in the early years of Imperial Rome (12 BC or so). The pyramid was inspired by Rome's contemporaneous military adventures in Egypt (1). The expression of wealth and power along with the will to be remembered that have manifested themselves in an excellently preserved pyramid for two thousand years are remarkable. If Cestius' concern was that he would not be forgotten by future generations, he has thus far succeeded.

Most of the plots in the Protestant Cemetery are much more modest. Among the significant figures buried there are the poets John Keats and Lord Byron, and the post-Marxist philosopher/political theorist Antonio Gramsci. On the left is a picture of Keats' grave (it is the headstone in the foreground). Although it is difficult to read, the bottom two lines say, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." Keats' wish was that this message would be the only thing written on his grave stone. The particular linguistic request is reflective of his life as a poet; one who must choose words carefully. The grave itself has become a place of pilgrimage for many of the fans of his poetry. It is actually interactive in a sense, like Jim Morrison's grave in Paris. Instead of leaving graffiti (which I think is much cooler), the appropriate ritual is to author a poem and to leave a piece of paper with the poem on it under a stone at his grave.

Keats' is not the only quasi-interactive grave site in the cemetery. Many of the other grave sites invite those who are paying their respects to appreciate the memorial in such a way as to honor the life's work of the deceased. One example is this grave on the right. The dead, Giuseppe Perugini, was an architect who worked in the modern style. The cube set akimbo demonstrates a geometric design and skill. Among Giuseppe's contributions as a modern architect was his work on the Monument of Fosse Ardeatine. The monument marks the place where, during the German occupation of Rome toward the end of the Second World War, German soldiers executed over three hundred Italians as retaliation for an ambush attack led by the Italian resistance in Rome. None of the executed were tried in anyway or shown to be connected in the slightest to the ambush. The killings were designed to by simple intimidation. Among the killed were around seventy Jewish-Italians who had been initially imprisoned only for being Jewish. It seems appropriate that an architect who helped design a grave in the honor of so many of his massacred countrymen (the killed were all men) should also have a grave appropriately honoring his life (2).

Some of the other graves represent the entombed in interesting way that I do not understand because I cannot find historical information on the deceased that would explain the nature of the grave.

The best example of these interesting grave sites is this particularly beautiful grave where Emelyn Story is interred. She was the wife of William Wetmore Story. Willaim was an American sculptor and art critic who spent much of his time in Rome. He is also buried the Protestant Cemetery. William was the son of Joseph Story, the United States Supreme Court Justice from the first half of the nineteenth century. Additionally, the character Kenyon, from Nathanial Hawthorne's The Marble Faun is thought to be based in part on Mr. Story.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 205.

2. A. Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 214.

More Jerome

2008-06-19T16:16:00.005+02:00

I took this lousy picture of the Vatican's only painting by Leonardo da Vinci on Wednesday when we visited the Vatican Museums. The Vatican Museums are an extensive complex including ancient Roman art, Etruscan art, Egyptian art, Mesopotamian art, some of the best paintings of the Italian Renaissance, and the Sistine Chapel. At least, those are the parts of the museum that I saw.

Not surprisingly, much of the art on display is religious. The vast collections include art on a number of Christina topics, St. Jerome the Penitent among them. The da Vinci painting above was never fully completed. It was not recognized as a work of art by the great artist until the nineteenth century and was acquired by the Vatican in mid-century. Jerome is portrayed by da Vinci in a typical pose in his study. He is staring at a crucifix while writing. Unlike many of the other paintings I have seen of St. Jerome, including Caravaggio's, there is a lion in the image. Apparently, there is a medieval story about St. Jerome removing a thorn from a lion's foot, hence the lounging beast. This is very different from the depictions of lions many saints martyred in the Coliseum enjoy in paints of them.

Another meme in St. Jerome paintings is the presence of the Trumpet of Doom. I first saw this figure when I visited Doria-Pomphilj Gallery, a gallery located in the same building as our classrooms. The Gallery has a painting by Jusepe de Ribera in which St. Jerome is startled by the trumpet. This painting is by Pier Francesco Mola and hangs in the Vatican Museums not far from da Vinci's St. Jerome. You can see the trumpet in the upper left and St. Jerome appears to be turning his right ear toward it.

The Trumpet of Doom is the instrument that is supposed to sound on the day of judgment. Since St. Jerome was known for his penance as well as his intellectual contributions to the Catholic Church, it makes sense that he would be attuned to hearing the trumpet's announcements. Confession is motivated by the need to be on the right side when the final day of judgment comes around, so St. Jerome's special attention to the trumpet is a reflection of his penatant bent. It is interesting to think that salvation that many seek when they enter the confessional at St. Maria Liberatrice and in other churches is prophesied to begin with a sound on this instrument. Although it is termed "Doom," for many the trumpet is the herald of ultimate salvation.

One more place where I found St. Jerome was in one of the giant frescoes in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican. Raphael depicted St. Jerome in a blue robe in the center of the painting pointing toward the heavens and apparently lecturing the other important church figures around him.

Pax Romericana

2008-06-19T15:31:00.005+02:00

I decided to sneak back up to the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, where the Mausoleum of Augustus is located, when I read about the accompanying Altar of Peace. According to the information in the museum the altar was actually ordered to be built by the Roman Senate in 13 BC. The altar is supposed to celebrate the conquering of Spain and Gaul by Augustus. It was an extremely important monument in Imperial Rome that inaugurated the Pax Romana, a period of time during which Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean coastline. The altar itself is a reproduction using pieces of the original work.

Most of the museum's interior space is dedicated to displaying the reproduced structure. The outer walls enclose the massive altar. The altar was a part of a larger complex of monuments including the Mausoleum of Augustus that is across the street. On the ancient campus, the tomb and the altar were not set so close together and a large field between them was used for military exercises. Thus, not only are the altar and the mausoleum expressions of the power of Augustus, but the overall complex which they were a part of was a staging ground for the military demonstration of Roman Imperial might.

Aside from the Altar of Peace, the museum has a full-scale reproduction of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti printed on its outer wall facing the piazza. Translating to "The Life and Deeds of Augustus;" the Res Gestae was a long text listing all of Augustus's accomplishments as the first emperor of Rome. Some of the highlights of the text include a reference to the killing of Julius Caesar and the proud declaration that Augustus was saluted as imperator twenty-one times during his reign (hence the name of the piazza). A large section of the document innumerates the achievements of Augustus to the tune of, "I did X, X many times." Additionally, this list of accomplishments is told in the first person, as if you are in the presence of Augustus as he explains to you how great he is. This is the expression of power at its most overt.

Politics and Art at the Power Plant

2008-06-18T18:35:00.016+02:00

As an undergraduate at Western Illinois University I was fortunate to be able to take an Ancient Rome seminar taught by a Dr. Brice. I enjoyed the class immensely, despite some embarrassing errors on my part as an ill-prepared undergraduate. Once I had settled in Rome, I decided to email Dr. Brice and ask him if he had any suggestions for how I should use my time and specifically, how I can best explore the themes that I am interested in here in the city (politics and art, schools, and the confessional at St. Maria Liberatrice). He responded to the first topic suggesting that I broaden my scope (presumably historically) in considering expressions of power. In particular, he suggested visiting the Centrale Montemartini. That was a few weeks ago, so he probably assumes that I've forgotten, but I haven't. I had an opportunity to visit yesterday and the following are some musing on my experience.

The Centrale Montemartini is a museum that is part of the Capitoline Museums group because it displays ancient Roman sculpture from the same national collections. The building is the former Giovanni Montemartini Thermoelectric Centre, which was Rome's first power plant. In the museum, art from ancient Rome and the pieces of the power plant are displayed along with one another. Both the sculptures and the plant itself are presented as works of art in their own right and, of course, both represent power; electrical and political.

The most surprising aspect of the museum is probably how well the pieces of the power plant hold up as works of art in and of themselves. The piece on the left is part of the first section of the ground floor. Its description, unlike the descriptions of the sculpture in the museum was only given in Italian and so I am not sure what purpose it served within the power plant. I can only remark similarly on the piece of machinery on the right that I found upstairs in the garden room. The design of the Centrale may appear to be a simple gutted and cleaned power plant with sculpture added at first, but all of these pieces of machinery were left purposefully. Additionally, depending upon where one is in the museum, certain pieces of machinery have been covered. That is, not all of the power plant is on display as art, much of the first floor's apparatuses have either been removed or disguised behind newly constructed walls.

Each of the machines left in the museum as pieces in the gallery represent the artistic form of the implements of electricity production. They all fit into a particular style of purpose-made industrial artifact. That is, they all represent the production of electricity. Moreover, some do so physically in addition to in their purpose. This control panel includes a number of gauges that literally represent power, its current, capacity, and resistance. These representations were designed to be of use for those who control the plant, but looking at the control panel itself there does appear to be a certain artistic form in its production. The gauges relevant to the person adjusting the dials are set at eye and slightly higher than eye-level, while a couple of critical gauges, which may be important enough for more people in the plant to be able to keep track of, are set up high above the panel. This expands my understanding of the representation of power, but not, perhaps, in the way Dr. Brice intended me to.

Most of the sculpture in the Centrale Montemartini is from the late republic and early imperial age in Rome. As you can see above, most of the sculpture is presented in such a way as to use the power plant itself as a staging ground. The interior of the museum that is not the power plant itself is all painted in one of the three colors: white, blue, and green. The downstairs galleries are white, the upstairs power generation room is blue, and the upstairs room containing pieces from the garden like the one immediately above this paragraph is green. The monochrome rooms do their best to allow the ancient art to be juxtaposed with the modern/industrial/found art without any distractions. With many of the pieces, human physical and political power is staged by industrial electrical power. The classical meets the industrial in the clash of white marble in front of black steel.

A plaque at the museum explained that portraiture was one of the most important and widespread artistic representations during the fading days of the Roman Republic. This bust is an example of this work. It is not known who this bust is supposed to be, but since the person it represents was able to have a bust made of himself, he was presumably of some noble standing in Rome. The plaque indicates that the precarious nature of the late republic in Rome made for particularly fierce politics. This in turn enhanced the need for representations of the self and one's power. The increasingly wealth and numbers of the noble class all competing for a few choice political positions may explain the stern countenance of this particular bust.

This is a bust of interest to me personally. It is the emperor Septimius Severus. Aside from being the first emperor of Rome to come from Rome's North African territories and having a landmark arch in his honor still standing in Rome, he was the emperor I was assigned to read about in Dr. Brice's class. I had to read a biography about him and while I do not have my notes here to be sure, I think it was the Birley.

This particularly striking statue is of the Empress Agrippina. She was the wife of Claudius and the mother of Nero. She was also a great granddaughter of Rome's first emperor, Augustus. Being both the wife and mother of an emperor, even if the emperor she mothered was not a good one, made her extremely important in her own right. It is important to note that such a statue is not merely representation of her husband or son's power, it is a display of her own.

Boys' Town Rome

2008-06-14T15:47:00.007+02:00

On Friday, the whole class took a trip to the Boys' Town in Rome. The Roman Boys' Town was started by an Irish Catholic priest named John Carroll-Abbing just after World War II. From the tour that we received on the premises, we learned that the Boys' Town in Rome currently serves about sixty-five students who live on campus, but also serves other children who attend the public schools located there. The schools are open for the admission of students who are not living on the campus.

Boys' Town is particularly interesting from a pedagogical standpoint because the boys there run their own government and are allowed to make many of their own decisions. The picture above is of the town hall where the boys meet to make these decisions. They elect their leaders to two-month terms, decide who does what labor, punish each other for breaking rules, and can even expel other members of the community for behavior that is unacceptable. The current mayor of Boys' Town, a high school-aged boy from Morocco, explained that during meetings, only the citizens of the town are allowed to speak. Others, such as the adults that help run the facility, have to seek special permission to participate.

This hands-on learning is fascinating pedagogically. To be able to generate a stable community in which the students govern themselves is very difficult. A learning environment like this one makes the student councils and student governments that we are used to at home look laughable. Maintaining such a potentially volatile community successfully for so many years is a testament to the quality of the students and instructional staff at Boys' Town.

Historically, boys' town is even more impressive that it is today. At one time, the boys themselves participated in the building of the facilities buildings and in the production of the products that it sells such as wine. Child labor laws have put a stop to this practice, but to think that the citizens of Boys' Town in the fifties and sixties would have generated this community, gone to school, and worked economically profitable jobs is almost unbelievable. The expectations placed on most American students are far fewer. Seldom do American students work full-time, even through college, let alone through junior high or high school. To be able to do this and to collectively manage the health of the community is a lot to ask of even privileged students.

Today, the students spend less time working (they still do chores around the campus), instead, they learn a set of skills that are designed to make them desirable to future employees. For example, Toyota donated a couple computer labs to the school and the students attend computer classes and other technical classes. At the end of the curriculum, the students earn a technical certificate that is supposed to be recognized by employers in Italy as well as other European countries.

Another recent change for Boys' Town has come in the demographics of the student population. Increasingly, Boys' Town is being populated by boys from the Middle East, specifically Afghanistan. Today, over one third of the boys living at the campus (I was told twenty-three) are Afghans. This is a result of the violence there following the US invasion in response to September Eleventh. It is easy to forget that political decisions made in the United States, regardless of the merit or demerit, have real effects in other parts of the world, but this is one place where those effects cannot be so easily ignored.

Forgive Me Santa Maria in Trestevere

2008-06-14T15:21:00.007+02:00

On Friday, Mike, Mia, Hillary, and I went to visit Santa Maria in Trestevere. Mike explained that the fourth century church claims to have been the first to be dedicated to Mary and she is featured prominently in the gilded depiction on the facade above the portico. Although, the church is among the oldest in Rome and consequently an important historic site, I found myself interested in the confessionals inside.

I found this piece of paper on one of the confessionals. The text appears to have two confessional prayers that can be read to the priest to initiate penance. The first is addressed to God and the second to Jesus (also, God by way of transubstantiation). Apparently, if you are not sure how you should properly begin to ask forgiveness because you are too distraught with your sins or simply nervous you are allowed to use this cheat-sheet. All kidding aside, I do have to wonder how it is actually used. That is, if giving a formal prayer to initiate penance is expected at St. Mary's in Trestevere or if it is an optional formality. There was no similar sheet on the confessionals in St. Maria Liberatrice in Testaccio, so the need to begin confession with this specific formal prayer is probably not a church edict in Rome. Nevertheless, there is some sort of expectation and some set of norms for how one begins confession. In the US we tend to think of this as the brief statement, "Father, forgive me for I have sinned..." I have to wonder if this sheet is bearing the Italian equivalent. That is, if there is one.

In order to determine if the the prayer was a recognizable Catholic standard, I made a half-hearted attempt at translating it using a combination of Babelfish and an Italian-English dictionary. After getting a couple lines down and then searching them in quotes on Google, I did not find anything. There are a lot of Catholic prayers, so this does not necessarily mean anything. Additionally, this particularly prayer may have been authored by the church officials involved with St. Mary's in Trestevere and thus might not be recognized more widely by the Catholic Church.

Bush Protest

2008-06-12T13:18:00.008+02:00

When we heard that President Bush would be coming to town our first reaction was, "Oh no; did you hear about what happened last year?" Our second reaction was, "who wants to go check the protest?" And so we did.

The protest was scheduled for five o'clock in the Piazza della Republica. We arrived a little bit before five and people were lining up across the street from the Fountain of the Naiads. Naiads are lake nymphs and the fountain features four of them, each riding her own fish-monster beneath the cool spray of the fountain. In the center of it all, Glaucus, appearing to take no interest in the bathing/fish-riding nymphs, wrestles his own fish-monster. The protesters took little time to appreciate the edifice, having a different monster from across the ocean on their minds.

There were a number of Italian political groups at the rally. Most of them were communists or some particular sect of communist. I could tell this because they won handily to contest to see who could bring the largest number of protest flags. At one point, I was tempted to take one as a souvenir. It was interesting to see flags used so prolifically by the communist factions. I think that this may have been, in part, an attempt to visualize the quantity of their presence as clearly as possible.

The protest turned out to be much smaller this year than last. I suspect that this is largely because of the waning media interest in the Bush administration as the election that will replace it looms in the near future. The Ahabism of the protest reached a fever pitch with a rendition of Denis Kucinich's thirty-five articles of impeachment by the local Code Pink contingent. Although I was not able to get a picture of it, there was at least one protester carrying an Obama poster; a more realistic political statement in my estimation.

The United States' illegal occupation of Iraq was not the only issue on tap for the protest. Many protesters also carried Palestinian and Cuban flags presumably assessing US foreign policy as poor regarding both of those nations as well. According to Kelley, who took part in the ensuing parade, the group marched all over the northeast of Rome winding up in another piazza. The entire time, a helicopter, which looked to be painted in the colors of the Rome police force, hovered overhead.

Landmarks seem to play an important role in protests in Rome. Although it would be hard to have any protest that does not at least pass near an important landmark in the monument-crowded eternal city, these places seem to be sought after by protest groups for the visibility that they lend. The Piazza Venezia was the backdrop for the 2007 protests and this year the Carbinieri and Polizia were out in force to insure that it would not be again. walking through I counted Carbinieri and Polizia vans in the double digits. The state, it appears, recognizes the importance of these places and the ability to control what happens there.

Learning at The Czech National Museum

2008-06-10T18:27:00.012+02:00

Yet another place that Jessica and I visited in Prague was the National Museum. As I have passed through many galleries, ancient sites, and churches, I have noticed school children who are also visiting. It is easy to forget that many of these institutions serve critical educational purposes for society. The Czech National Museum is a particularly good model for looking at this because it is education on a national scale.

As the picture above shows, the museum stands at the end of Wenceslas Square in Prague. For those who plan to visit Prague some day, the square is really more of a short boulevard. The square is a significant tourist destination and is also where the four major metro lines intersect, so it is perpetually bustling.

Museums often act as alternative classroom location for school-age students, especially students in publicly run schools.Most of us can probably recall a myriad of museum visits from our early childhood. Museums are aware of this and design many of their exhibits in ways that reach younger children as well as adults. Sometimes, museums exhibits seem to have been designed for school children entirely. In the National Museum, one such example was the exhibit on feet. That is, as far as we could figure out, feet is what it was designed around. All of the writing was in Czech and it included an eclectic mix of artifacts and practices tangentially related to feet. The exhibit's appeals to children included a giant foot that had to be walked through to enter the exhibit and an anthropomorphized, cartoon foot who appeared to be narrating our journey through the world of feet. On the left, a speechless Jessica stands beneath the bewildering foot-shaped entrance and on the right, the cartoon foot leads the way for visitors.

Not all of the museum appeared to be designed with children in mind. The geology and zoology exhibits included large rooms with rows of cases filled with specimens. These rooms were drab and the cases held little more information than the name of the specimen on display. They were difficult to appreciate for me as an adult and so I moved through them relatively quickly. I think that it is safe to say that few children would find them stimulating.

A particularly interesting part of the museum was labeled "The Pantheon." Upon entering, Jessica and I grabbed a map and immediately noticed this room. "Great," we thought to ourselves, "it will be interesting to see an exhibit on a place that we have so recently visited in Rome." This pantheon, was not an exhibit on The Pantheon, but rather a room with busts of the great people of Czech dissent. There were the obligatory busts of Dvorak, and Neruda. Havel has not made it yet. None of the members of the pantheon were living. This room was fascinating because, in the same way as we have created a pantheon out of groups of people like the "founding fathers," this place clearly marks-out those Czechs from history who are to be valued and imitated. Of course, those designations carry with them a set of values. I am not equipped with the requisite understanding of Czech history to evaluate the values being upheld in each bust, but from what I did see that I know of, contributions to the Czech state and culture seemed to be valued highly.

I am forced to wonder if the pantheon is designed to serve adults, children, or both. That is, are children brought through the room when they visit? It seems that such visits might be sites of cultural education that begins at a very young age.

St. Nicholas in Mala Strana

2008-06-10T17:33:00.007+02:00

This past Sunday I missed the service at San Maria Liberatrice because I was in Prague. While there, Jessica and I paid a small fee to visit St. Nicholas, a church in the Mala Strana (lesser town) district of Prague. As the picture above illustrates, the church is a full-on baroque production. Everything inside the Jesuit institution was ornately crafted. Some of the work with gold was particularly stunning like the wings on this angel and the scroll that he is holding. In addition to a stunning nave, both walls of the church were lined with smaller chapels like many of the churches in Rome. These were roped off and while there was no indication as to whether they belonged to anyone in particular, each had its own character.

In addition to being decorated is slightly altered ways, each of the chapels also had its own altar and confessional. Separate altars have been typical in the chapels of all of the churches that we have visited in Rome, but separate confessionals is unique to St. Nicholas so far in my experience. I have to wonder to whom or what the chapels are tied. Did wealth families pay for them? If one must enter one of these chapels to take confessional at St. Nichlas, are there restrictions for doing so? The confessional pictured at the right was in the first chapel on the left as I entered. This was the only chapel that was not cordoned off and may be open to the public and open to public confession all of the time.

This is a picture of another confessional in St. Nicholas. You can see the yellow rope barring entrance to the chapel in which it stands in the lower-left corner if you look closely at the picture. The confessionals themselves were elaborate wooden productions and were set into the walls of the church. This is different from Roman confessionals. Even in St. Peter's the confessionals, while equally complex pieces of art, were constructed as separate units from the church itself and set in a convenient spot in the church. In St. Nicholas, the confessionals appear to be part of the church itself.

An Accurate Touristic Representation?

2008-06-08T00:11:00.011+02:00

This is a lame picture of the lame phrasebook that I picked up to take to Prague. In fairness, the phrasebook is actually pretty handy and includes way more than enough Czech to get by for two and a half days in Prague (as I mentioned before, over sixty hours in the city and no one was defenestrated). When I bought the book, Jessica and I had a discussion about what was on the cover and why. At first, we thought that it was simply a strange picture to select for a country with a number of perfectly recognizable landmarks. After further investigation of the photo, though, we decided that these two musicians were probably performing outside of some important tourist site. We came to this conclusion because many such sites have gates like the one behind them in order to control crowds of people. Additionally, between the poles of the fence, there seemed to be people standing in groups. As the result of some more careful study, we found that the musician who appears to be singing (not the bassist) is holding a black flute. This suggested some variety in the performance being given. Anyhow, after discovering some of the more subtle aspects of the image we tacitly allowed the cover of my phrasebook slip into memory.

That slippage was stopped abruptly when we walked out the front gate of the Prague Castle. There, we first noticed the fence. It was the same fence from the cover of the book. And then, to our disbelief, across the street from the fence, the group pictured on the cover the book was performing. We stopped to listen and at a pause in the performance I took the book up to the flute player/band leader. He had a look at it, cracked a joke about being old and reached for a pen and happily signed it; hence the signature. The accordion player asked for a closer look and declared, "two thousand and six," in a way that suggested a suspicions confirmed.

At first, I was pleasantly surprised to have an image of tourism turn out to be accurate. I thought to myself how nice it is that not all constructions of place are idealized to the poitnt where they become unattainable to the actual tourist on the ground. However, I do have to wonder if I was still used in the same way that many other tourists are. Was I duped into spending my cash? Having received a signature, I felt obligated to drop some money into CD case that they had setup and with some prodding from Jessica, we agreed to go in half on a CD. I am forced to consider, despite the incredible fidelity of the image on the phrasebook which was accurate right down to the beautiful sunny day, that I still behaved in the way that benefited the people who had a hand in constructing the phrasebook (among them, the musicians I paid). That is, the phrasebook constructed a "serendipitous" experience that caused me, normally reluctant to spend even a small amount of money on tourist paraphernalia, to blow a hundred Korun (about six US dollars). Granted, the money paid for the experience is more than fair, I still have to wonder if the serendipity of the occasion was purposely designed.

Czech Museum of Music

2008-06-07T17:08:00.009+02:00

While in Prague I got to visit the Czech Museum of Music. This has been my favorite museum so far during my European adventure. Although I really enjoy viewing visual art, I get much bigger kick out of auditory art because I have some educational background in its production.

The first things that I went looking for in the museum's collection were the bassoons. I found six instruments that can be properly termed a bassoon along with one contra-bassoon.

The instrument on the right is the earliest bassoon that the museum had on display. It was made in Prague by C. Schramme around 1700. The extremely basic keying is reminiscent of the keying used on more advanced recorders. This is probably why the instrument is displayed alongside a bass recorder that was also made my Schramme around the same time. It is hard to believe that an instrument of this size would be able to play in as a low a register as the contemporary bassoon. In this way this bassoon still resembles its duclian heritage much more than contemporary designs.

For a while I thought that I would not find any other bassoons in the museum, but then I ran across this display case full of them. From left to right they are 1) made by Jan Hovak in Prague between 1860 and 1890, 2) made by Theodore Lotz in Vienna in the late 1780s, 3) made by F. Pitschmann in Arnsdorf (Germany) in the nineteenth century, 4) made by G Keyha in Prague around 1800, 5) the contrabassoon made by Simon Josef Truska in Prague also around 1800.

All of these bassoons, though not as old as the Schramme model, were still made before Heckel revolutionized the keying system, producing what is ostensibly the contemporary standard for the instrument. This collection of bassoons demonstrated some interesting experimentation at a time when the design was still being finalized. The Hovak model (number 1, far left) is interesting because it has a bell similar to the directional bells used on brass instruments. One only needs to look at a modern bassoon to figure out that this was a dead end. It is also interesting that this instrument was made so late. By the 1860s, Heckel would have been producing a demonstrably superior instrument.

Looking at the picture on right, one can also see that the shape of the bocal (that is the metal tube that connects the reed with the wing joint) was still being heavily experimented with. Although bocal sizes and shapes remain variable to this day, they generally do not vary to this great extent. For the most part the girth of the tube that makes up the bocal is what has remained significantly optional, not the overall shape. Of particular note is the bocal on the contrabassoon (number 5, far right); it actually bends up. There are no contemporary designs that include this feature. This contrabassoon is also notable for being upright. The body of contemporary contras circle around once more and thus remain about the same height as a regular bassoon, they just end up significantly wider.

Along with the bassoons, I found a number of other, perhaps less-odd instruments to enjoy at the Czech Museum of Music.

I found this accordion made by someone named Josef Hlavacek. Joseph is my grandfather's name and the surname is pretty close to ours. I am forced to wonder if perhaps I have distant accordion-making relatives. Although this seems unlikely (the difference between and E and an I is not incidental in Czech), it was cool to see something like my family's name printed on anything. This never happens in the States for me.

Another highlight of the museum for me was getting to see two glass harmonicas. The harmonica's as they are constructed here, are based on a design by Benjamin Franklin. I still have never seen one in use and would like to one day. Every now and then the glass harmonica will make it into popular or sub-popular culture. My favorite use of the instrument is on , Entroducing..., a DJ Shadow's album. The instrument works by stepping on the flat panel near the floor. This spins the glass bowls above. Then the player soaks his or her hands in water which would be put into the metal wells on both sides of the bowls. The player then drags his or her wet fingers over the bowls to produce an soft humming sounds.

Prague!

2008-06-07T16:55:00.004+02:00

We arrived in Prague around 8:00pm, I took think shot about a half an hour later. The castle in left-center of the photo is Prague Castle. It is said to be the largest medieval castle complex in the world and walking around the grounds it sure feels like it. On the right in this picture there are some arches over the river, those are the Charles Bridge. The bridge might be the most famous landmark in the city.

I'd like to point out that I have spent two days in Prague and no one was defenestrated, so I am considering the trip a success.

Sometimes an Obelisk is Just an Obelisk

2008-06-04T22:47:00.007+02:00

Sometimes it is difficult not to comment on the phallic nature of political monuments. This is a monument in the Piazza del Quirinale. It is located in front of and facing the Italian Presidential Palace and while it is no Louisiana State Capitol (Huey's Shlong), it does not take a Freud to find the monument suggestive. When viewing such an artifice, a conscientious critic is forced to consider if the resemblance is intentional (that is, if it bears meaning). It seems unlikely, in a city where gore an nudity are carved in stone on every other street corner, that an artist or architect would feel the need to be subtle about such a statement, but there is nothing about Rome that is not planned. Every inch of the city has been purposely produced by a human hand. The whole place is premeditated. For such a detail to go unnoticed seems unlikely. Also note that the picture is taken straight on from the front. This is not a distortion of the thing, this is how it is meant to be viewed.

For the uninitiated, the gentlemen with the horses are supposed to be Castor and Pollux, figures appropriated by Roman mythology from Greek mythology. I'm not sure which one is which, but I don't feel bad about this because they are twins. In fact, they are the twins who are said to be depicted in the constellation Gemini. The obelisk has a cross on the top of it and this likely dates to the time when the Popes used to live in what is now the presidential palace (they were kicked out by Napoleon). It is reminiscent of the obelisk in St. Peter's Square. Although the obelisk and the horse tamers were erected a little over a decade apart, it is hard to ignore the total image they conjure, intentional or not.

St. Jerome in the Barberini Gallery

2008-06-04T22:08:00.005+02:00

Today we visited the Barberini Gallery, one of the many important art galleries in Rome. The gallery has a number of important works including Holbein's Henery VIII, Caravaggio's Narcissus at the Source, Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, and Rafael's La Fornarina. It was nice to see the Henry VIII painting and the Narcissus because both figures are referenced so often and the images are regularly recycled as academic book covers. Now, I will recognize them for having seen the original work, not just for having seen the image in multiple books.

Along with the more famous works, I found three images of St. Jerome the Penitent. St. Jerome spent a fair amount of time in Rome working to translate important Biblical texts for the church in the fourth century after death. His time in Rome may help explain his popularity as a topic for Italian Baroque and Renaissance painters. He is considered one of the most important translators of the early church. Although I cannot find anything saying this directly, I suspect that his title, the Penitent, is a reference to his ascetic lifestyle. In two of the paintings (Guercino and Tintorreto), he is depicted in his study with a crucifix. Many of the painters who have taken on Jerome as a subject place him in his study with a crucifix and a book of some kind. In Guercino's portrayal he is sealing an envelope. This is interesting because he was known for having outspoken and unconventional views on translations of important texts. Many of these views earned him enemies within the church. So, the act of mailing a letter was often controversial for St. Jerome. In the other painting (Muziano) he is standing, looking bashfully at a crucifix. In all of the paintings the crucifix is close at hand and he appears to be appropriately dedicated to his faith. In all of the paintings he looks to be humbled or in awe. I find this confusing given the controversial nature of many of his writings.

As a rhetorical scholar, I am excited to see a saint canonized for his intellectual contributions to the Catholic Church. I am also interested to see that he received the title the penitent. I had hoped that researching St. Jerome a little bit might shed some light on the history and nature of the sacrament of confession, but so far I have not found anything directly linking him with its development.

Seeing Red

2008-06-04T21:42:00.007+02:00

Walking down the Lungotevere dei Cenci on my way home I came across this official poster for Rifondazione which appears to be one of the communist parties here in Italy. The posters were put up just across the street from the Tiber which is where I have found a great deal of communist graffiti in the past. Though the posters are certainly not readable from the street, their red color, I'd imagine, is meant to make them easily recognizable, perhaps to passing traffic. As I learned in Florence, there is an upcoming national meeting of Italian communists and these posters may be an attempt to get the members of the party out to it. Though I cannot translate the poster effectively, the images of people holding up the communist flag at what appears to be a rally is what I assume suggests that poster is designed to encourage participation in the up-coming congress.

The posters are put up in a similar style to the Berlusconi posters I found a couple weeks ago in that the same poster is repeated over and over in the same space. I am not sure what sort of regulations these poster boards are subject to in Rome, but this practice of putting up the same poster over and over again is common. The attempt to fill up all available space may suggest that there are no restrictions and that postering is simply a race to cover as much space as possible for as long as possible. It, of course, is also possible that the people who do the postering are paid by the poster. This would explain dumping as many of them in the same place as will fit. Still another possibility is that the same image repeated over three or four times is more likely to get someone's attention. Although I commonly see the same poster repeated in poster areas, I rarely see this repetition amounting to more than four posters.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

2008-06-03T14:27:00.007+02:00

This political statement was particularly interesting to me. I found it along the Corso not far down from the Via di Propaganda (no joke). It is interesting because I am not sure to which eleventh it refers. The first thing that comes to mind is September 11th, but a seven year-old statement of solidarity, despite the sign's commitment to keeping vigil forever, seems unlikely. Also, even within the topic of Al Qaeda attacks, the eleventh comes up more than once. The Madrid train bombings happened on March 11th in 2004. Spain is closer to Italy than the US and seems equally deserving of solidarity in the face of terror. Additionally, the Algerian attacks of last year happened on April 11th. Although I cannot rule out a statement of solidarity concerning September 11th, I am forced to wonder if there is an Italian tragedy that happened on an eleventh that the sign refers to. Ultimately, the fact that the sign is written in English probably means that it does concern 9/11.

Here is the sign its original photographic context. I caught it out of the corner of my eye across the street from where I was walking. It took a couple of tries to take the picture without any traffic or pedestrians in the way.

Roman Anti-Fascism

2008-06-03T13:36:00.009+02:00

Among the many forms of political graffiti I have found in Rome, the anti-fascist statements may be the most prevalent. This is especially true in Testaccio. I found the stenciled image above painted on the wall along the street next to the Tiber. It appears to advertise the student movement against fascist politics. I have been assuming all along that the Romans who participate in political graffiti are younger, but this is the best piece of evidence substantiating that presumption so far. I have seen this particular stencil painted in many places around the city.

This piece of graffiti expresses the equation of fascism with Nazism. Reading about the "Open City" period of Roman history during World War II today, it is clear that Nazism carries a similarly negative connotation in Roman society as in the US. This also explains the figure throwing away a swastika in the stencil above it. In Rome, the political right is often accused of being fascist and so it is entirely possible that the same people who are making this political graffiti are also making the communist and other leftist pieces. The two groups would at least be connected in their opposition to the current government. Being out of power, I think, is part of what motivates this sort of political statement. The media is not especially free in Italy making surreptitious political statements more normal.

With a tip from Hillary, I found this fist in a tunnel on the Vie Due Marcelli. This piece was among many others painted in the tunnel in what appears to be a sanctioned public graffiti art project. The smashing fist is reminiscent of the anti-fascist stencil above. The fist seems to be a meme in contemporary Italian street art, but I am not sure if it connected to the anti or the fascism in anti-fascism.

Sunday Morning

2008-06-03T12:57:00.008+02:00

Santa Maria Liberatrice has been the scene of a lot of commotion in our neighborhood lately. The past week the church has been celebrating both the festival of its patron saint and its centennial. On Sunday the 25th, the church finished this festival by bringing their statue of Maria out and parading her through the streets. Mia was caught in the path of the parade on her way home from the Sede. I was able to pick up some of the fliers for the event during one of my visits to the church and both feature two images on the cover; the church and the statue of Maria with her child. The statue portrerys a very adultish baby Jesus who is waving to the crowd and a Mary with a sort of surprised face with a distant stare. It seems as though the two facial expressions should reversed since one is supposed to an adult and the other an infant.

On the following Sunday, the first of June, I visited a much quieter San Maria Liberatrice. I went in about a half an hour after the morning service. There was one confessional open and a few people dotted throughout the church. I took a seat in the back and took some notes. Most of the parishioners were sitting and praying, but some were kneeling. The entire time I visited, no one went to take confession. I found this confusing, because I thought that the increased privacy of such a time would make it ideal for taking confession. However, some of the faithful who were there might have already given penance and only a few entered, so they're not being in church for confession could have just been a coincidence. It seems likely that someone takes confession regularly at this time or the priest would not take time in the confessional. Although, it is possible that selecting unpopular confessional hours could be a way to get out of performing a lot of confessions. Again, though, I doubt that Sunday morning is a time selected with that intention. In any case, I will have to visit again.

While I sat in San Maria Liberatrice, I took some more notes on the place. One thing that I notices was how bare the ceilings are. Having been to a number of Catholic churches in Rome by this point, I have seen much smaller institutions with elaborately gilded ceilings. I think that the simplicity of Liberatrice's ceiling is probably related to the fact that it is such a new church (100 years is nothing in Rome) and that the neighborhood, Testaccio, is a working-class neighborhood. It is doubtful that the folks there have the money for too many unnecessary decorations. I also noticed an older woman moving a table and some rugs around in the middle of church. The church seems to be a center of activity almost all of the time. Because the building is used for so many events, it is constantly being rearranged, even if in small ones by a single person.

CAS in Rome

2008-05-29T15:49:00.008+02:00

As I write about schools in Rome, I cannot overlook the school that I am attending. Penn State's presence in Rome in its current form, the Sede di Roma, is a little over two decades old, but the Communication Arts & Sciences Program is only three years old. The curriculum is comprised of three classes: one on travel writing, one on neo-realist film, and one called "Street and Studio" which require the students to blog about their experiences in Rome. The students are also required to keep a journal that records their experiences in Rome including their reactions to the films and readings. As a graduate student, I do all of the work that the undergraduates do in order to provide a model for them and I grade six of their journals on a weekly basis.

One of the overarching goals of the program is to teach the students to rhetorically analyze tourism and travel writing. The students are encouraged to take Rome as a text, identify themes that the city displays, and analyze those themes in search of greater understanding. The hope is that the students will improve their experience of Rome if they investigate it as a purposeful human production. That is, if they view Rome itself as an act of communication, they may be able to identify the communicative manipulations that have gone into its construction. At the same time, the students are encouraged to examine writing about Rome as rhetorical. In this case, they are asked to look into the ways in which Rome is represented at home and abroad and ask how these reproductions have influenced their expectations for and experience of the city. Ultimately, through this process of rhetorical examination, the students are encouraged to engage in an enlightened form of tourism that results in meaningful learning about place and not merely the consumption of it.

As a graduate student, I fit somewhere in the middle of this educational process. I am here both to learn about Rome itself and to learn about teaching in a study abroad program. For me, the extra layer of analysis is primarily pedagogical and this is enhanced by research interests in education. I am learning about Rome and, at the same time, learning how to teach about Rome through rhetoric's disciplinary lens. This requires quite a bit of attention to detail. It is difficult to take in new information and at the same time analyze the pedagogical purpose behind its deployment, but this nervous process of double-think is excellent practice for any scholar of rhetoric. Meaningful rhetorical analysis almost always requires the scholar to be attuned both to the object of rhetorical action (that is, the subject matter that is being communicated) and the strategic nature of its deployment (its rhetoric) at the same time. In this way, I think this experience will help me to develop both as an educator and as a scholar.

The second picture (with Mia, Jessica, and myself on the bus) was taken and edited by Hillary.

Sometimes it rains in Rome...

2008-05-29T15:32:00.004+02:00

and the people do strange things.

Ghetto School

2008-05-27T17:46:00.005+02:00

In my pursuit of Roman schooling, I am still finding different institutions to catalog. Walking with Jessica on my way home from the Sede, we passed through the Jewish Ghetto. The name of the school on the plaque is in two pieces. The first, "Scuole Ebriache di Roma," simply translates to "The Jewish School of Rome." The second part, "Scuola Primaria Ebraica Parificata e Paritaria 'Vittorio Polacco,'" is more difficult to make out. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia online, Vittorio Polacco was an Italian law professor at the University of Padua who was Jewish and of Polish descent . It would appear that the school is named after him. "Scuola Primaria Ebracia" means Jewish Primary School. "Paritaria" means equal, but I cannot figure out what "parificata" means. So, as far as I can tell, the plaque means something along the lines of "Vittorio Polacco: Equal Jewish Primary School."

The space around the school is the very center of the Jewish community in Rome. Rome's most prominent synagogue is just up the street and the area is under heavy surveillance and police protection. The display of power is confusing in its ubiquity. There are at least three policy guard posts and tens of cameras around the outside of the synagogue. One is forced to wonder whether the state is protecting the people there or monitoring them. The school is slightly removed from this scene and opens, on its other end, to a modest piazza. The building itself looks well kept and I suspect that it is a good school. Passing by this morning I saw a group of well-behave students outside listening to their instructor.

There are more schools to catalog in Rome, but I think that I will need to get inside of one to improve my exploration, so I am going to try to put together a visit through our office at the Sede. Watching Caterina in the Big City, I was able to get a brief glimpse inside the Collegio Romano (as staged by a filmmaker in 2003), but I would like to see for myself.

Confessionals at San Giovanni

2008-05-27T15:55:00.014+02:00

Today, we visited San Giovanni in Laterano. San Giovanni is a very large basilica that was something like a precursor to the Vatican. It was actually the first cathedral of Rome. The Pope's official ecclesiastical seat is the Bishop of Rome and San Giovanni is where the seat is held (1). Thus, just like the Vatican, San Giovanni is extraterritorial and administered by the Vatican.

Saint Giovanni in Laterano means Saint John in Lateran. The land on which the church was built was confiscated from the Laterani family by Emperor Constantine and St. John refers to John the Baptiste (2). I snapped a quick picture of the statue of John that stands below the altar. I had trouble identifying the statue at first; not knowing that Giovanni translates to John. Joe and I discussed who it could be and to give us credit we did consider St. John as a possible candidate...along with Jesus and Jebediah Springfield.

If one thinks of saint statues as action figures, St. John's has collected all of the best ones. Carley pointed out the most intense saint statue at Saint John's. It is of Saint Bartholomew holding a piece of his skinned face. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was killed for converting his brother, the King of Armenia, to Christianity. St. Bart is typically represented in this way; holding his own head or his own skin.

I was surprised when I entered St. John's to find so many people confessing. There were more people seeking absolution at San Giovanni than at any other church that I have been in with the exception of St. Peter's. The confessional crowd, however, seemed to be comprised mostly of people involved with the church. I saw a host of nuns going to an from confession while I tried to get pictures of the confessionals. I was able to snap this shot while hiding between a column and some chairs which ended up in the frame. My suspicion, that certain confessionals serve certain populations, has been confirmed again at St. Johns.

Having seen many confessionals by this point, I have also noticed that the elaborateness of the confessionals themselves seems related to the importance of the church. It might also be related to how many confessors the church serves. In any case, both St. Peter's and St. John's have significantly more complex confessionals than Santa Maria Liberatrice. Although one cannot enter fully into a confessional at St. John's, when kneeling as one can at St. Peter's, the walls on the sides of confessional conceal the confessor with the possible exception of his or her shoes. The level of privacy for the penitent at St. John's is thus much greater than the level of privacy for the penitent of Santa Maria Liberatrice.

Lights continue to be important as well. At Santa Maria Liberatrice, the first thing that the young priest did when he entered the confessional was to turn the light on. The light seems to be the universal sign that the confessional is open for business. The light at Santa Maria was a simple bulb that the priest also used for reading. It shown through a hole just above the doors of the confessional. At St. Peter's and St. Paul's, the light is colored (green and red respectively) and is separate from the light that the priest uses to illuminate his chamber.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 182-183.
2. Wild, 182-183.

Political Issues in Florence

2008-05-25T12:34:00.009+02:00

Visiting Florence on Saturday, I was able to get a number of pictures of political art and graffiti. Florence, being an important international tourist town, is, not surprisingly, the palate for a number of political statements. Here are some images of the more interesting political statements I saw while in town:

This message, expressing some disfavor with the recent declaration of independence by the the Baltic state, Kosovo, appeared in three languages: English, Italian, and a third that I could not identify. All of the messages were written in the same color of magic marker and appeared to have been done by the same hand. Additionally, all of them were within about a half mile radius of each other. So, I can confirm that the size of the anti-Kosovo independence movement in Florence numbers at least one.

This anti-Bush and antiwar statement was on the bottom of a shop shutter in Florence. Antiwar statements about Iraq a relatively common in Italy, but not nearly as common as statements against fascism (which are sometimes paired with antiwar statements, but they are usually concerned with domestic fascism) and statements in favor of communism.

On the topic of statements in favor of communism, I found this poster advertising what appears to be the national congress of pro-marxists and pro-leninists in Italy hanging just off one of the main piazzas in Florence. The poster encourages people to attend thereby contribute to the national conference.

Duomo-Measuring Contest

2008-05-25T11:29:00.010+02:00

There are few representations of power more ubiquitous in Italy than churches and few churches have more thought put into their construction than the cathedral or duomo of a diocese. Despite a church's professed function as a monument to the piety of the people who construct it, the construction of churches is often caught in the politics of local and regional rivalry. Siena and Florence had just such a rivalry in the early fourteenth century. After Florence built its duomo, which is one of the largest in world, Siena, determined not to be outdone, drew up plans for its own, larger church. Unfortunately for Siena, the plague struck halting construction. In this picture, you can see front walls still standing that would have made up the nave of the massive church had its construction gone forward.

The power function of the cathedrals can be ascertained simply by observing them close up. Both Florence and Siena's cathedrals have massive green and white facades. This picture, of the duomo in Florence, was difficult to take. The facade is simply too big to fit within the camera's frame standing in the piazza in front of it. The structures are certainly impressive now, but they must have been awe inspiring in the fourteenth century. With few buildings in existence of such a large size and with the knowledge of math, geometry, and art put into the design of these cathedrals being so rare, they must have appeared to truly have the sanction of a higher power.

In addition to their massive size and artistic complexity, both churches have very high bell towers. They would be able to reach the entire town and perhaps neighboring areas by ringing the huge bells in these towers. In fact, in Siena, the bells are so loud that we found them to be a bit of an annoyance when visiting. They would ring for a couple minutes each hour and were easily heard, even inside our hotel. These bell towers may not seem significant on face, but the ability to sound the bells thereby regulate the conception of time held by the people in both towns is fantastic. The church became the default arbiter of the passage of time since its bells would have announced the hours and times for worship.

This massive, and apparently unused, twenty-four hour clock is located above the main door of the the Duomo in Florence. The piece is very confusing because, as an American, I tend to think of churches as one of few places that never have clocks and so far my understanding has not been challenged except in this case. However, in light of the bell towers and the capacity of these cathedrals to mark the passage of time for the community, the clock makes more sense.

Confessional Comparisons

2008-05-25T10:50:00.008+02:00

St. Peter's basilica has some fifty or so confessionals. They are located mostly in the wings of the church in sections roped off for prayer and genuflection. With Hillary's camera I was able to sneak couple quick shots of one of the operating confessionals, before I was told not to photograph the confessionals. As I had imagined, it is a touchy subject for photography. Given the secretive nature of the sacrament, I will have to be cautious about how I document it.

There are some significant differences between confession at St. Peter's as compared to Santa Maria Liberatrice. At Santa Maria, a younger priest came out to hear confession during the service. As far as I can tell, at St. Peter's you can confess anytime. It seems pretty clear that this is designed for different audiences. Santa Maria is a neighborhood church and the priests there are fewer in number and offering a spiritual service for a population with habituated practices for attending mass. At St. Peter's the population that is confessing is largely tourist. One of the students in our program who took confession at St. Peter's explained that when he went, he was able to select a priest based on the language that the priest spoke. Each confessional had a list of languages outside ranging, he said, from two to four or five. He also said that he spent a fair amount of time talking about St. Peter's as well as confessing. I got the impression from the behavior of the people confessing at Santa Maria Liberatrice, that they were not taking time to talk about the building during their confession.

Another interesting point of comparison is provided by the Pantheon. The Pantheon has been a Catholic church since it was given to the Pope in the seventh century. Despite its technical existence as a local church, the Pantheon did not have any visible confessionals. It seems that people interact with the Pantheon more as a secular monument than as a religious one. That is, no one goes to the Pantheon to confess their sins. I would assume that it is grander to confess your sins at St. Peter's. As Hillary joked, if you have a really big sin to confess, St. Peter's would be the place to confess it. In fairness as well, you are much more likely to get a priest who speaks English and absolves sins on a regular basis at St. Peter's. Confession at the Pantheon and certainly at Santa Maria Liberatrice is much less tourist-friendly.

Bats in the Belfry

2008-05-23T17:04:00.015+02:00

The other graduate students (from the left, Mia, Jessica, Hillary) and myself are visiting Siena this weekend. Among other sights, we went to see the view from the top of the bell tower in Siena's historic city hall. According to Rick Steves' Italy 2008, the bell tower is the tallest secular tower in Italy (1). It overlooks the town's central piazza, Il Campo, and much of the surrounding countryside. The views are spectacular. The entire area is beautiful. I only wish that I was better equipped to capture it on film. Here some of the images I was able to get from the tower:

This is Il Campo, the central piazza in Siena. We ate at one of the restaurants here last night when we arrived. It was past ten o'clock, so we were fortunate to be served.

Here is an image inside the stairwell of the 330ft tower. The square spiral staircase is a challenge to ascend.

This is the Duomo. It is Siena's central cathedral. You can see the church itself (the black and white striped building with a tower) and a structure that looks like front wall of a church protruding to the left. Originally, the cathedral was planned to be the largest in Italy. According to Steves, Siena and Florence were engaged in a heated church-building contest when the plague struck forcing Siena to circumscribe its dreams of out-building Florence (2).

My favorite part of Siena so far has been the frescoes "Allegory of Good Government" and "Allegory of Bad Government" painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and located in the City Hall Museum. They depict the ruler of bad government with horns, a famous image. As I viewed the painting with Hillary she theorized that perhaps we had seen it before as the cover for Machiavelli's The Prince, but I cannot find a copy of this online. In any case, I think that she is right; that I have seen it used as a book cover.

If you can get a chance to visit Siena, I think I can speak for all us in saying that you should. The town contains countless, beautiful masterpieces of medieval art and architecture.

1. Rick Steves, Italy 2008 (Emeryville CAAvalon: Travel Publishing, 2008), 461.
2. Steves, 469.

Field Trip

2008-05-22T12:14:00.009+02:00

As I have wandered from historic site to historic site in Rome, I have come across groups of children on school trips. The end of the school year is nearing in Rome just as it is back home. Field trips, as I have witnessed them, seem to be very similar to the trips school children take at home. I would like to be able to report some significant differences between field trips for Roman students and field trips for American students, but as of yet I have not noticed any significant diversions. Roman students go to important historic sites like the Forum as depicted in this picture from Hillary. You can see the school kids wearing yellow hats standin underneath the arch of Septimius Severus (Nicole got another shot of these children).

They take chaperons. I have to assume that the older, parent-looking people are fulfilling this duty. They also tend to wear some sort of uniform hat or bandanna with their school's name on it so that the children can be identified easily and kept safe. I even caught a group outside of the Vatican sitting on a long bench eating bagged lunches.

Today, in Siena, I saw more students in the museum at the City Hall. Some were Italian and some were French. They looked older, middle school/high school age, and they did not wear uniforms. Just as at home, there is little reason to keep track of older students on field trips with uniforms. Seeing French students on a trip was interesting. Presumably the trip, for them, was a little long than the daytime excursions that many of the Roman school children are on at the Forum. The French students, like many of the Roman students, were receiving a lecture from someone who appeared to be an authority on the site that they were visiting. Just as museums at home provide guides for school groups, so do many Italian museums.

Pantheon and Power Across Time

2008-05-20T14:12:00.007+02:00

As a group, we visited the Pantheon today. This was my first time inside and I snapped a few poorly composed pictures of the interior. It is a difficult place to photograph both because framing a shot inside a circular space is confusing and because it is perpetually crammed with tourists.

The pantheon is a particularly fascinating place for the examination of representations of power in Rome. Pan-theon literally means all gods and the temple was constructed to be a place to honor all of ancient Rome's many deities. According to our Eyewitness guide, the pantheon was originally constructed by M. Agrippa during his third and final consulate in the twenties BC (1). Marcus Agrippa was a contemporary of Caesar Augustus and served as a general for him, winning a number of important battles. He was elected as one of the two consuls of Rome in 37 BC. He served as consul twice more. First, M. Agrippa served in 28 BC with Octavian and second in 27, again with Octavian. In 27 BC Octavian received the title Augustus and became the first emperor of Rome.

The original Pantheon was destroyed in a fire in 80 AD during the brief reign of the emperor Titus and then rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian. The original plans from M. Agrippa's Pantheon were reused by Hadrian and the building still bears a prominent inscription across its famous portico crediting him for the design of the building. Hadrian's building is what stands today.

While the Pantheon began as a temple for the worship of all of the many gods of Roman mythology, it became a church for the worship of only one god in the seventh century AD when it was given as a gift from the Christianized Byzantine Empire to the Vatican. The structure was rededicated as a church and the quality of its preservation is often credited to the Catholic Church. Both the interior and the exterior of the Pantheon have been altered by the groups that have controlled the Pantheon throughout history. Pope Urban VIII added two turrets to back of the portico in eighteenth century. The turrets were removed in the nineteenth century. The turrets, despite their hideousness, did make the Pantheon look more like a Christian church.

Inside, the Pantheon is littered with the influence of history. Around the circular interior of the Pantheon there are seven indented alcoves (the eighth would be the entrance) and each is used much like the small chapels inside many of the larger churches in Rome. Several of these chapel-like structures have been used to inter elite Romans. The Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was laid to rest in one of these in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a unified Italy, was also laid to rest in the Pantheon. Victor Emmanuel's son, Uberto I, the second king of a unified Italy also has a sarcophagus in the Pantheon.

The Pantheon, a quintessentially Roman building, has thus become an important site for the expression of power in Rome. Because it is a building that has been a notable part of the cityscape for almost two millennia, to be able to change the physical appearance of both the inside and outside of the Pantheon not only indicates the possession of a great deal of power, but also produces an expression of that power likely to last an extremely long time. The sense of permanence that the Pantheon lends to the expression of power is likely part of its appeal for the powerful of Roman history.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 110-111.

Red Rome

2008-05-19T16:33:00.013+02:00

Among other political groups, the Italian Communists seem to inspire a great deal of graffiti. Italy has had a communist party in one form or another since 1921, but the party has split and merged with factions within itself and with other parts of the Italian left on a number of occasions. All of this makes its history difficult to follow. Amusingly, the top of the Wikipedia site on the topic attempts to summarize the history of organized communism in Italy and fails to do so in a single paragraph. Today, communists are a political minority. Italy has a parliamentary system and the current Italian government is run by a rightist coalition headed by the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. None of the coalitions containing communist parties hold any seats in the parliament. The marginal nature of Italy's far left may help create the need for graffiti as political speech.

Walking home from the Sede, I found a great deal of communist graffiti on the walls lining the Tiber; both on the Largo Avention and Largo Pierleoni. The image above is an example of this. It declares "Rome Free and Red" with a star following. The graffiti is actually more easily viewed when riding by on a bus than it is when walking by. It appears that the artist of this particular piece is attempting to advertise his or her political views to passing motorized traffic more than to those walking by.

Not all of of the communist graffiti in Rome is aimed at passing traffic. Some of it is smaller and aimed at the sidewalk instead of the street. Yesterday, I found this hammer and sickle freshly painted on an electrical box on the Via del Circo Massimo. Given the covering of the trees in the parkway and direction of the graffiti, it is most likely intended for those passing on foot. The appeals that these pieces make are not particularly complicated; appearing to do more to simply reiterate the existence of the marginalized political left in Italy than anything else. Some other pieces seem to have more of a targeted meaning.

For example, I found this piece spray-painted on an automated currency exchange across the street from the steps that lead up to the Capitoline Museums. This piece is clearly meant for an audience of foreigners. First, this can be presumed because it is written in English and not in Italian as most of the other pieces of communist graffiti that I have found. Second, it is written across a currency exchange and foreigners presumably use these machines more than anyone else. Additionally, the machine, being across the street from the Capitoline Museums, and located near the capitol hill and downtown is placed in a prime tourist location. In addition to the message being conveyed, this particular piece of graffiti splashes paint across the screen that is used to complete the transaction. This makes it impossible for anyone using the machine to ignore its presence. It may also make the machine unusable, but I have not tested this hypothesis.

Limits: Setting and Exploding

2008-05-19T13:10:00.007+02:00

As I develop my theme on representations of power in Rome, I realize that I will have to be open minded to sites where the expression of power happens. So far, I want to explore two major places: first, the ancient expressions of state power that are made up largely of the famous monuments that populate Rome's landscape, and second, the graffiti that marks almost every public wall in Rome. I hope that I will find other sources of inspiration like advertising, protests, and contemporary statements of power made by the state. Of course, any set of sites will limit my vision of the expression of power in Rome, but I think that I can still add more breath without sacrificing any significant depth.

Festa Patronale di Santa Maria Liberatrice

2008-05-18T13:09:00.012+02:00

This morning I attended the Celebrazione Eucaristica as part of the Festa Patronale di Santa Maria Libertrice (that is the celebration of the eucharist that is part of the festival of the patron Saint Maria Liberatrice). The church in Testaccio is the new Santa Maria Liberatrice. The original church was erected in the middle of the forum and torn down at the beginning of the twentieth century.

I attended the festival mass at Santa Maria in pursuit of finding a particular confessional that I can observe. Entering the church, I noticed that there were four confessionals, two on each side of the nave. I resolved to get some photos of them, but I did not want to alarm the church goers by my strange photographic behavior, so I sat down and began casually photographing the church. Eventually, I made my way around to getting some shaky images of the confessional nearest to me. The experience made me consider the difficulty of documenting cultural practices that are ongoing. It is difficult to do so without allowing the academic perspective trivialize the culture that is being studied.

As the church began to fill, I noticed flashes going off. It turns out that the festival mass is a special occasion that brings the parishioners to church in their best clothes. The mass itself also included a great deal of parishioner participation. The church, which is not small, filled with people; some had to stand in the back. I suspect that all of these realities made today a photo-worthy occasion for the parishioners as well as me and so I felt a little less out of place taking pictures than I might have otherwise.

At the beginning of the mass, the head father came out and began to speak. The room got quieter as the parishioners began to listen to mass. At the same time, and much to my fascination, a younger priest came into the nave and entered the confessional closest to where I was sitting. During the mass, about five or six parishioners came to give penance. I was able to snap a few pictures and tried to be careful not be intrusive or to take photographs that would identify any of the confessing Catholics. In order to study confession responsibly, I think that I will have to respect the anonymity of the sacrament just as the church does.

I did learn some small pieces of information about the process of confession for the priest. The father who sat for confession today brought a book with him. When he arrived at the confessional, he turned on a light and closed the curtain, but he did not feel obligated to keep the curtain closed the entire time that he was hearing confession. At one point he had the curtain open and even appeared to be paying attention to the festival mass.

Street Horrrsing

2008-05-17T14:58:00.007+02:00

Walking through our neighborhood, Testaccio, Hillary noticed that one of the noise bands that I have been listening to lately had an add up for their new album, Street Horrrsing. It is now covered up by another poster for a photographic exhibition. These poster hangers are all over Rome and carry posters concerning anything from obscure noise bands to important political figures like the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. Like the talking statues of old, these posters offer a space for the direct public display of discourse. The dual purposes, both for the advertisement of art and for the advertisement of power, of the poster hangers demonstrates the complex interrelationship of power and art. As I develop my theme on power and its representations, I will have to pay careful attention to the messages that these poster holders carry. If possible, looking at the which posters cover which might lend some insight into the rhetoric of political advertisement in Rome.

More Capitoline

2008-05-17T14:15:00.008+02:00

Our trip to the Capitoline produced a host of images worth putting on the blog and so I selected some the highlights for the folks back home.

This is the famous sculpture of Marcus Aurelius on horseback. It was originally located outside of the two Capitoline Museums in the Piazza del Campidoglio, but in the 1990s a replica was erected and it was moved inside the Palazza dei Conservatori.

The emblematic sculpture of Medusa is also located in the Palazza dei Consrevatori.

I found this bronze horse striking. The plaque at its feet explains that it is roughly five hundred years older than Jesus.

And, of course, I must, as a rhetorician, include the bust of Cicero. Socrates, Plato, and some other rhetorically interesting figures also have busts at the Palazza Nuovo, but none are quite as interesting to me.

Bassoonists in the Capitoline

2008-05-17T13:48:00.008+02:00

Today, we visited both of the Capitoline Museums. They are on the Monte Capitolini and were designed by Michelangelo. Both the Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazza Nuovo contain countless pieces of priceless art. There are rooms literally filled with paintings, sculptures, busts, and other works. Among the important works they contain, and it is difficult to keep track of all of it, I found these porcelain figures of both male and female bassoonists.

Both of the figures were being kept behind glass which made them difficult to photograph. This was actually odd as most of the art in the Capitoline Museums is kept out in the open without the protection of glass or even a velvet rope. I had to remind myself over and over again that these pieces of art (some of which are furniture) are not supposed to be touched. The lack of physical barriers, something most US museums employ ad nauseam, and the attractiveness of much of the art made proper museum behavior difficult.

Divine Providence

2008-05-16T13:47:00.006+02:00

It turns out that our apartment building is directly across the street from a Roman middle school. The name of the school is the Istituto Figlie Della Divina Provvidenza which roughly translates to the Institute of the Daughters of Divine Providence. Despite the name of the school, it appears that it is a coeducational middle school. The Istituto is not as large as the Collegio Romano, but it is, like the Collegio, connected with the Catholic church. The Daughters of Divine Providence, for which the school is named, is an institute of religious sisters. Religious sisters are similar to nuns, but their vows are simple, not solemn. They were founded by Elena Bettini 1832, when she was only eighteen years old. According to their website, the sisters' mission is to extend the tenderness of God to all people by: educating children, reaching the elderly, and reaching families. In the late 1830s, Mother Bettini moved the institute of sisters to Testaccio (our neighborhood). I am not yet sure when the school was built and if its founding is directly connected with the sisterhood or simply named in honor of it, but these are questions that I hope that I will be able to answer in later posts.

Confessionals

2008-05-15T15:46:00.011+02:00

For my place theme, I plan to investigate a confessional. So far, all of the active churches that we have visited have had confessionals in them. All of the confessionals have been large, wooden boxes. The image above is from San Pietro in Vincoli (Saint Peter in Chains). It is a church in the Esquiline neighborhood in Rome. The church has chains on display that are said to be those that held Saint Peter in the Mamertine Prison before his execution (2). The confessional in San Pietro in Vincoli has an enclosed space in the middle where the priest would sit to hear confessions. Those who confess are to kneel at the side of the confessional box and tell the priest of their sins.

On Tuesday of this week, we visited Sant'Ignazio di Loyola (the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola). It is a Jesuit church of an impressive scale. It contains several large marble reliefs and a magnificently painted ceiling (3). The confessionals at Saint Ignatius were positioned in the front portion of the church, near the altar. At Saint Peter in Chains, the confessional boxes were located in the back of the church near the doors. I am curious if there is a reason for this positioning. It could be a coincidence or a simple spatial necessity, but it could also be related to the philosophical bents of the sects who run each church. Saint Ignatius is still in use and while we were visiting there was a ceremony occurring in one of the alcoves on the side of the church. The confessional at Saint Ignatius was a bit more elaborate than those at Saint Peter in Chains. One would enter entirely into the box to ask for forgiveness at Saint Ignatius. The priest, sits in a separate room inside the box and hears the confessions of the faithful.

I am making it a goal to find a church with an active confessional that I can visit on a regular basis to get an idea of how the sacrament of confession is practiced in Rome, and if possible, how its practice influences or is influenced by the confessional boxes and the spaces they inhabit.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 170.
2. Wild, 91.
3. Wild, 106.

Anarchy in Italy

2008-05-15T14:30:00.001+02:00

Link most large cities, there is a lot of graffiti in Rome. A surprising amount of it seems to have political messages. The picture above is of an anarchy symbol spray-painted on building along the Via dei Cavour. Just down the street, entering the intersection of the V. Cavour and the Via del Colosseo, there was another anarchy sign painted on a street sign at the end of a small parking area. The amount of graffiti on the sign made it difficult to make out its original meaning. Here, the "A" was faded, but it looked to be faded by weather, not by any attempts at removal.

We visited the Forum for the first time today and learned that Rome has a long history of struggle over politics in public places. The giant monuments around Rome are physical manifestations of the use of place to generate political commentary. Just as one engages in political speech through verbal communication, the monuments that inhabit Rome engage in political speech through the creation of places with specified political histories. Grafitti has the power to manipulate those place, adding meaning, changing meaning, and even rejecting or ridiculing meaning.

Entering the Piazza Venezia from behind, Hillary, Jessica, Mia, and I walked along the side of the giant Victor Emanuel Monument (more on that to come). I noticed that graffiti had been removed from the side of the megalithic fascist memorial to Italy's first king. It appears that there are places where graffiti is more an less acceptable in Rome (again, more to come). Thus, the battle for the control of the politics of space continues.

Finally, to highlight the importance of location in tagging Rome, I photographed this vulgar statement in opposition to fascism. Jessica pointed it out as passed it on the Via dei Cavour. It likens fascism to defecation, a declaration of judgment clear in any language. It had not been removed despite having a slightly worn appearance that seems to suggest that it was not too recently written.

McPantheon

2008-05-14T14:33:00.000+02:00

One cannot help but exclaim at the sight of McDonald's sponsored signs pointing the way to the pantheon. In fairness, the signs are at least as accurate as they are disturbing. Although the McDonald's sign is not intended to be a piece of art in and of itself, the golden arches are a powerful representation as most art seeks to be. Much like the Obelisk of Montecitorio, they mark a publicly useful object, in this case a sign, with a representation of the organization that erected the sign. Like Augustus in ancient Rome, one is encouraged to credit McDonald's with the minor importance of helping one get through the day, if only in some small way. It seems that McDonald's, a contemporary multinational corporation, has now claimed the power of the public interest much in the way Augustus did in 10BC. This perspective both sheds light on McDonald's role in our contemporary society and on the nature of Augustus's power so long ago. Perhaps there is some historical benefit in thinking of Caesar Augustus (or the Caesars in general) as a brand of Roman leadership.

The Obelisk of Montecitorio

2008-05-14T14:17:00.000+02:00

Another theme that I will explore in Rome is the influence of the politics of state on art. I am interested in the political statements of both the state and its people as made through works of art. In the Piazza della Rotunda neighborhood near the Sede, Hillary, Jessica, Mia and myself ran across the Obelisk of Montecitorio.

According to the Eye Witness Travel guide that we are using in class, it was originally an Egyptian obelisk from Heliopolis. The Romans brought it back from Egypt and Augustus had it erected as a sun dial in the Piazza di San Lorenzo. Egyptian hieroglyphs are visible toward the top of the obelisk, but the lower portions have been paneled over with a type of stone that is visibly different. The paneled sections have Roman writing on them including the Caesar Augustus's name and an the indication that he was an imperator when they were erected (1).

Using a public work of art that has practical use (as a sun dial in this case) is a way to make a political statement about he power and importance of the state. In this case it also appears to be a statement about the power of Caesar Augustus. As Rome's first real emperor, it would have been important for him to solidify the credibility of his rule. The obelisk reflects this need as Augustus's names is the most easily read text on the whole piece.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 113.

The Collegio Romano

2008-05-13T14:32:00.000+02:00

For one of my themes, I will be examining schooling in Rome. Our classroom building shares a piazza with the Collegio Romano. I snapped a couple quick photos of the high school today before I left the Sede for home. The scale of the school building is fantastic. It was not possible to capture the entirety of it, even from across the piazza.

According to the Eye Witness Guide, the school was originally founded in the sixteenth century by Ignatius of Loyola as a school for the Catholic church. Until 1870, the Collegio Romano educated the highest clergy of the church (1). Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops studied here. In 1870, the state took over the school. Today it serves as a large high school. Attending class in the Sede we can hear students come and go in the piazza that our classroom shares with the Collegio. The piazza is named after the school.

1. Fiona Wild, ed., Eye Witness Travel Rome (London: Dorling Kindersley Limited, 1993), 2007 edition, 106.

Jet Lagging in Rome

2008-05-10T22:01:00.002+02:00

Through CDG Int'l Airport, we arrived in Rome today. Our flight from Philadelphia to New York was canceled due to weather and so we were rescheduled on an Air France flight from Philadelphia to Paris. We then caught another Air France flight from Paris to Rome. On the second flight, I claimed the window seat, but was saddened to discover that the window was a lie.

After arriving in Rome, we did some exploring and ran into Dr. Benson and his family. Dr. Benson suggested that we climb the steps to a platform overlooking the city (at the Capital building, I think) and there we were able to get a good view of much of Rome including the Forum and Colosseum.

Test Blog.

2008-05-08T23:12:00.000+02:00

Today is my last day in State College. I will soon see all of you in Rome.