Notre Dame’s annual Rome Seminar brings together graduate students and junior faculty members from around the world to learn from top scholars and interact with peers at the University’s Rome Global Gateway.
Sponsored by the Italian Studies at Notre Dame program and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the seminar’s interdisciplinary topic changes each year, with recent themes including CineRoma, Philology Among the Disciplines, and Dante’s Theology.
The 2016 seminar was organized and led by Ingrid Rowland, professor of architecture at Notre Dame, and was centered around the study of past and present Jubilees—holy years of forgiveness and reconciliation in Catholicism.
In addition to lectures and discussions at the Gateway, the seminar takes participants out of the classroom and into the city, visiting monuments, museums, and churches throughout Rome.
“I’ve got a completely new appreciation for art and architecture and all these things that have been peripheral to my literature studies, but really go hand in hand,” said Alex Cuadrado, a Columbia University Ph.D. student in Italian and participant in this year’s seminar.
Theodore Cachey, inaugural academic director for the Rome Global Gateway, hopes the seminar will spawn new projects among the young academics who participate.
“The relationships that are formed during the seminar become very important,” said Cachey, also the Albert J. and Helen M. Ravarino Family Director of Dante and Italian Studies at Notre Dame. “What new research is needed? What new projects can come from the discussions that we’ve had over the last couple of weeks?”
Originally published by at al.nd.edu on December 14, 2016.