Ca' Foscari - Harvard Summer School (joint)

Giorgio Pirina, PhD, Research Fellow in Sociology, Ca’ Foscari University

Giulia dal Maso, PhD, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Ca’ Foscari University

Classroom: TBC
Schedule: TBC

Course description
This course allows students to develop an appreciation of the emerging geographies of digital infrastructure in both their material manifestations and their associated environmental impacts. It provides students with an in-depth understanding of the various tensions that bind the promises of a digital future and a sustainable digital transition. Bringing together scholars from critical data studies and critical infrastructure studies, law, political geography, and science and technology studies, the course engages with some of the most pressing questions currently facing policymakers and corporate leaders, as well as citizens.

Prerequisites: none

Paolo Pellizzari

Classroom: TBD
Schedule: TBD

Course description

The first part of this course provides an introduction to financial markets, instruments, and trading. In the second part, modern portfolio theory is presented, touching important topics such as diversification, portfolio risk, the trade-off between risks and return, the capital asset pricing model, and the importance of the efficient market hypothesis.

Prerequisites

Precalculus. Some background on probability theory is helpful but not required.

Glenda Carpio

Classroom: TBD
Schedule: TBD

Course description:

Migration patterns have shaped reshaped states and individuals throughout history and across the world. Forced migration, produced by imperial legacies and neo-colonialist practices and, increasingly, by climate change, poses political and social challenges in both the United States and Europe. This course introduces key scholarly debates in the study of forced migration in comparative race studies, and in literature. We will investigate the causes and consequences of modern population movements from a comparative perspective by asking: what are the social, economic, and political reasons and outcomes for migration across sending and receiving countries? We will also explore how contemporary literary artists represent global migration as it intersects with race and racism in America and in Europe.

Prerequisites: none

Survival Italian

In "Survival Italian" students will develop basic receptive skills, listening and reading, and basic expressions to communicate in Italian with a focus on gaining an understanding of way of life in Venice. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to: 

• provide basic information in Italian about themselves and daily activities;
• participate in a simple conversation on everyday topics;
• read and pick out important information from authentic texts (e.g. menus, signs, schedules, academic forms, etc.);
• use and understand essential vocabulary related to everyday life;
• interact within the academic context. (ask information to personnel, read and fill the most important forms (libraries, Computer rooms, other facilities)

This course will offer 2 hour classes in the afternoon 2/3 times a week over the first few weeks. We highly recommend Harvard students register so they can make the most out of their Italian summer experience!

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2024

Every year Venice hosts the Biennale di Venezia, alternating between Contemporary Art (Biennale d’Arte) and Architecture (Biennale d’Architettura). Artists come from all over the world to exhibit in two main exhibition spaces, the Arsenale and the Giardini (hosting national pavilions independently managed by the participating countries), as well as in additional buildings/palazzi and spaces around the Venice city center.

This year is the 60th International Art Exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand – MASP and the 2023 recipient of the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. Entitled “Foreigners Everywhere / Stranieri ovunque”, the exhibition this year hosts samples of marginalised, excluded, oppressed beauty, erased by the dominant matrices of geo-thinking. The interlacing themes of Pedrosa’s Exhibition – the different, the foreigner, the journey, integration – will reverberate nowhere better than in the calm and ever-renewed waters of the lagoon city. Once again Venice - over the centuries an open cradle of knowledge and communication between peoples, ethnicities, religions - is the natural forum in which to marshal new points of view and Fare Mondi (‘Making Worlds’) – to adopt the local lexicon of an earlier Biennale Arte 2009.

You will be given a ticket to the Biennale spots that gives you entrance over 3 (separate) days and will take part in two main sessions:

1. An introductory presentation on the history of the Biennale d'Arte
2. A guided tour of the Giardini/Arsenale area, and a workshop led by an expert scholar who will guide an in-depth casual conversation on reflections and considerations of certain themes present this year.

This trip will take students to nearby Vicenza to discover Palladio's home city and the important monuments that he created there. Students will have the chance to be fully immersed in Italian Renaissance, visiting three architectural masterpieces conceived by the great artist Andrea Palladio.

The Basilica Palladiana was built in the 15th century and re-shaped in mid 16th century by Palladio, assuming its current stunning features. Palazzo Chiericati was conceived by Palladio as a private building for Girolamo Chiericati. Seeing as from 1839 onwards the Palazzo has hosted guests at the local art gallery, presenting paintings and sculpture from the Renaissance to the contemporary era, students can visit both the interior and the exterior of the magestic building.

We will also visit the glorious Teatro Olimpico, part of UNESCO World Heritage. Designed by Palladio but completed just after his death, the theatre is one of only three Renaissance theatres remaining in existence, and it is still used several times a year.

Afterwards students will be free to visit the city on their own.

Do you wonder what exploring Venice feels like from the canals? Find out through a fun and physical dragon boating excursion! Students will be guided by a team from our University sporting association (who will accompany you in the dragonboats), in a trip through Venice’s canals and the lagoon that will last a couple of hours. Make sure to wear shorts and sneakers (leave the flip-flops at home) and to bring a bottle of water! The event will be post-poned in the event of rain.

The relationship between Venice and the water that surrounds the city has always conditioned the Venetian way of life and put special limits to the socio-economic development of Venetian society. This activity aims at giving students an insight into the evolution of Venetian rowing, from the height of the Venetian Republic in the 1700's to the present day in which it is practiced as a highly competitive sport, and through the classic gondola ride that has become a "must do" tourist attraction. The course will offer 5-6 lessons over three weeks with the final session uniting students in a "mini regatta" in which the crews will match their skills, and learn the rules of competition.

Only some departments or teaching committees (collegio didattico) may approve the substitution of obligatory credits (equipollenze) in students' study plans.

Most students will be able to have all CFHSS courses recognised as elective credits or extra credits.

In 2015 the Ca' Foscari - Harvard Summer School celebrated its 10th year. The programme organised a weekend of activities and events in order to celebrate, continue, and consolidate the bond that has formed between Venice, Ca' Foscari and Harvard over the years. 

In occasion of the 10 year benchmark, the Summer School also published a collection of works, thoughts, experiences and memories, as recounted by students, Faculty and staff of the programme.