Spring Term
Our spring terms give students from any faculty a chance to take a three week course. Complete credits that you are missing for graduation or take a course to satisfy your curiosity while studying in Tuscany.
We offer 300 and 400 level courses from various faculties at the 伊人直播.
All of the courses include day-long field trips to take you off the beaten track, and there are no course prerequisites.
Courses are offered in spring I (May) and spring II (June). Students can take up to two classes in a term, and can register in one or both spring terms.
All courses include field trips. There are no pre-requisites for Cortona courses. Additional courses may be offered if there is sufficient demand.
Spring 1: May 2026
POLS 298 The Politics of Food
Dr. Cressida Heyes
“Italian” food in Canada may be as far removed from “Italian food” as contemporary Italy is from its pre-colonial diet. How then can we understand “cuisine” as an object of history, and what does it mean to describe contemporary cuisines as “authentic” or to link them to a culture or nation? How does eating reflect identity, and how, in turn, does eating abroad—eating “foreign” food—change identity? What is “gastro-tourism” and how do food and drink as visitors implicate us in relationships between producers, vendors, marketers, and consumers? How are foods and foodways branded and marketed for tourists (or locals) to entice us to participate in these now-global webs of production and consumption? This course will examine these central questions in the study of food from political, philosophical, and sociological perspectives. It examines food as a marker of culture and a site of ethical practice; travel and tourism as modes of experiencing an unfamiliar place; and the politics and ethics of culinary tourism.
HIST 300 The Grand Tour
Dr. Marco Pacioni
This course considers the main elements of the “Grand Tour,” a historical trip across the main centres of Europe undertaken to gain an appreciation of culture such as architecture, language, and art. The Tour’s cultural and political elaborations in Europe will be examined with a focus on significant works of artists and writers mainly from the 18th and 19th century who traveled to Italy. These works contributed to the aesthetical paradigm of the Italian landscape with its archaeological sites, cities, monuments, and habits of local populations. The previous heritage of Italian humanists to the Grand Tour and its later transformations into the pop-culture of modern tourism will be considered.
Spring 2: June 2026
HADVC 211 Italian Renaissance City: Arts, Society, Environment
Dr. Marco Pacioni
In 1347-1351, the Black Death, a widespread and catastrophic epidemic, created economic, social, and religious upheaval across Europe. It is from this disaster that the Renaissance city emerged. New structures such as wide and straight streets, palaces, offices, gardens, fountains, theatres, villas appeared in the landscape and created the modern forms that we can often still experience in today’s cities. Field trips to Gubbio, Rome, Florence, and lessons on-site at Cortona allow us to observe the original structures of the Renaissance city and compare them with the components of modern cities. This course aims to furnish a wider comprehension of the architecture, urban, cultural, and social components of a crucial period in the history of the city that has influenced the environments where we live, study, and work.
POLS 486 Italy and the State, from Ancient to Postmodern
Dr. Lori Thorlakson
What does it mean to be a state, and how did the modern state develop? What role does national identity play in state development? In an increasingly globalized world, what does sovereignty mean? How has the Italian state been transformed by nationalism, globalization and membership in the European Union? We address these questions by taking a broad tour through history from the ancient world, to the rise of the medieval city states, the 19th century unification of Italy and post-war European integration. Field trips include Siena, San Marino and Rome.