May 2022 | Emma Yun
Juxtaposed against the historic backdrop and winding walls of Florence, students recite Dante through their screens on a trip that takes them back hundreds of years in time. They are just in time to see both locals and tourists from afar flocking to the magnificent city’s streets for the celebration of Easter Sunday. While the on-going pandemic has created limits to in-person field trips, it also created unprecedented opportunities to teleport to sites around the world.
The trip took place in April during the second seven-week spring session of classes for the course Italian 102, and was open to both students and DKU community members. While the trip was held through Zoom, DKU’s visiting lecturer of Italian, Francesca Viva of Italian 102, emphasizes that the introduction of online learning created a need for mastering a combination of technological facilitation skills and the execution of an integrative classroom. In this manner, a new model of communication was developed. Motivated by a shared pleasure in learning new languages, Professor Viva created a space where both real and virtual borders are blurred.
And blur those lines she did as she partnered with art history lecturer and Italy tour guide, Professor Anna Piperato, to host this virtual field trip. worked tirelessly through the semester to create an interactive space for students through virtual games, chatting in Italian with others, and cinema-based projects. Despite the challenges online learning can present, she successfully utilized the modern technology and resources available at DKU to maintain a hyperconnected and engaging class environment.
Educated in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Italy, Professor Piperato is no stranger to the rich, multifaceted aspects of regional cultures, and displayed this expertise as she effortlessly walked the streets of Florence, pointing out the city’s infinite hidden pieces of history along the way. Professor Piperato previously led multiple virtual tours of cities Italy for her own art history course (History 106) and the DKU community, so she is well-acquainted with the country’s history and cultural traditions. While past tours focused on the human landscapes of Italy and stories behind them, this trip was dedicated to educating about how historical events, figures, and culture impacted the development of the Italian language.
Located in the Mediterranean Basin, the cradle of the Renaissance, Florence, Italy is world-renowned for its prominence as a center for both international trade and intellectual exchanges. From Dante, to Machiavelli, to Michelangelo, and Galileo, the city’s been a rich cultural hub of innovation for centuries. Following Professor Viva’s philosophy of viewing the complexities of the past to understand the contemporary lives of Italians today, this experience gave students the opportunity to speak Italian using the language of Dante’s Divine Comedy in the city he once flourished in.
After a stroll through the piazza with plenty of curious “hellos” from passerby, Professor Piperato brought students along the twisting streets to see sights such as the prison-turned-art-museum, Bargello Palace, Florence Cathedral, and the Sword Makers’ Guild. Speaking in a mix of English and Italian, she challenged students to practice their listening skills while enriching them with the cultural history of the language they are studying and its homeland.
At the trip’s highlight, we stopped at the Casa di Dante, where Dante Alighieri himself once lived. His poetic epic, La divina commedia, or The Divine Comedy, is a masterful combination of culture, theology, and literature that served as a paragon for Renaissance age works as well as for the development of the Italian language itself. While still in a beginning course for Italian, Professor Viva found it fundamental that students understand and appreciate essential pieces of Italian culture – and who better to learn from than the “Father of the Italian Language” himself?
Students diligently prepared for their recitations of the Cantos dell’Inferno by learning not only the vocabulary, but also the basic concepts of how to read an artwork to gain a more contextualized understanding of the piece and language used in it. They additionally practiced alongside recordings of acted-out versions of the piece, with Professor Viva, and audios of their teaching assistant, Lorenzo Maggio Laquidara.
“I found this field trip very enriching in terms of multiple aspects including site seeing, culture studying and language learning. (…) During the field trip, Professor Piperato would speak both Italian and English. I stayed really focused to try to understand the Italian part. I was very surprised to find myself understanding most of the context by both listening and guessing. Sometimes when the content became difficult, Professor Piperato would use English to explain which made it easier to understand. As for the speaking part, we got the chance to read the poetry of Dante on the field trip. I practiced it many times with Professor Viva and the video. I was extremely nervous when I started to read, but gradually I found myself becoming more fluent and improving in terms of speaking Italian.”
– Yueci Sun, Student in DKU Italian 102
In a city bursting with historical significance, technology helped bridge the classroom from China to Italy, transporting students right into the heart of Florence. Culture, language, fashion, history, and the modern age collided to enrich students’ understanding of the country and its language. While bumps in internet connection and accidental un-mutings are to be expected in this new, virtual environment, students and professors alike did the unexpected on this trip to bring themselves across these barriers and bring their text to life.
