Viaggio in Italia

This week we're finally starting university classes, which is really exciting. Technically a lot of the classes started last week, but for some unknown reason our Brown-run orientation classes continued through all of last week. The Brown staff insisted, though, that it doesn't matter if we miss the first couple of lectures. I get that it's not the end of the world, but I still don't get why they had orientation overlap with the beginning of the semester.

Anyway, orientation is finally over - well tomorrow, officially, with my history oral exam (a little frightening). Now I have the gargantuan task of picking out a few reasonable classes out of a sea of hundreds. At the end of last week I went to an anthropology class on Italian culture and society that seemed like it should have been fascinating, but instead was terribly boring. A professor sat at a big desk and spoke into a microphone in a monotone voice for two hours. With that kind of set up, I think any subject matter would be boring.

First, Italian university is a lot different from American universities. Italians, like pretty much all Europeans, apply to university under one department (facolta') and take classes only in that department during their college careers. Classes are pretty much unstructured, with just a reading list handed out at the beginning and an oral exam at the end. Attendance isn't mandatory, but most of the Italians I've spoken with say they attend class. We foreigners get to take classes in any department we want, but it's a little confusing because a lot of the meeting times overlap and even the school breaks are different. It's hard to know what to expect out of the oral exam at the end... I think they vary a lot depending on the professor. The Brown program told us to look for professors we could understand easily and who seemed welcoming to foreign students. It's a tough balance, though, because I need American-friendly professors but I also don't want to take classes made up of all foreign students.

Today, though, I went to a class that I really enjoyed. It was just called Contemporary History... there are four or five different courses with that same title, all taught by different professors, and I guess every professor chooses a slightly different focus. I had no idea what to expect heading into mine, but it turns out it was a class full of philosophy majors who apparently have a history requirement. It seemed a little more intense than a lot of the classes here: he said we'd split up into smaller seminars partway through the semester, and there will be a written and an oral component to the final exam. The professor was really lively, though, pacing around the room and shouting and waving his arms around. The course has two points of focus, a little random: globalization and the emancipation of women. I think we do globalization first, then women's emancipation.

Today he spoke kind of vaguely about how globalization began with the discovery of America. That was basically the main point of the entire lecture, rephrased in a million different ways. My sense is that that's the Italian lecture style. To an American it seems like they're all a little overly long-winded. There was one point I really enjoyed, though: the proof that the indigenous Americans were less technologically advanced than the Europeans is that they never figured out how to make cheese. He was completely serious when he said this, and it struck me as a totally Italian thing to say.

So right now I'm thinking I'll end up taking this class, assuming that the professor seems accommodating to foreign students when I go talk to him in his office hours. The best part, though, is the history department building. I think it may be the prettiest building I've seen in Bologna. Oddly, it used to be a prison until the 1950s, when it was taken over by the history facolta' and the bars on the windows were replaced by glass. It's a beautiful building though, rust-colored and all porticoes, that opens up into a little courtyard where all the students hang around, reading and eating and talking, in between classes. Next time I go I'll be sure to take photos and post them.

Tomorrow's a full day of shopping classes, so let's hope I find some interesting ones!