Practical Experience and Skills
INTERNSHIPS
Photography and Public History (Tiziana Serena)
Topics: The role of photo archives in the age of nationalism in Italy and abroad: shaping collective memories, identities and narratives; historical photographs and photo archives in the experiences of Public history. Guided tour: Alinari Archives of Photography (Florence) or/and other Photographic collections, included a stroll through Florence, in search of some sites photographed at the beginning of the XX century (available with a mobile APP), compared to the present.
Cinema and history (Corin Deinhart)
Topics: The internship pairs theories in public history and visual studies with in-class discussions and experiential learning. Lessons and practicums are designed to guide students through their individual investigations of the various ways in which cinema, and visual studies in general, have the power to enrich historical writing and research. Assigned readings, audiovisual material, and writing exercises, help students prepare for and contribute to, in-class discussions, whilst encouraging them to think critically about how cinema and visual studies may be incorporated into their writing and research. A built-in, practical component of the module will simulate a professional “public history” environment wherein students will be asked to work collaboratively on a project that provides them with opportunities to: 1) Develop professional experience for their CV; 2) Work as a team to set goals and creatively apply individual skills in public history ;3) Gain experience in cultivating a “public” and designing a project that satisfies multiple stakeholders; 4) Synthesize and communicate what they have learned in Cinema and History and other HIPS-UniFi modules.
WORKSHOPS
Modern Art and History in Florence (Cristiano Giometti)
Topics: the birth of art exhibitions as a mass phenomenon in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, and the activity in Florence between the end of the 19th century and the WW2. The outcome represents a vivid cross-section of the foremost Florentine, and only latently Italian, local identity of a cultural center where exhibitions served as an instrument to promote a shared Italian cultural identity. Wokshop includes a visit to Palazzo Fenzi historical Palace (Sagas Department headquarter) , to Opera del Duomo Museum, and other Florentine museums (i.e. Museo S. Marco, Il Bargello, etc.).
Contemporary Art and History (Giorgio Bacci)
Topics: the lessons will present a series of journeys into contemporary art analysing different artists who are far from each other geographically but who often share experiences and thematic confluences. Works are looked at starting with their historical and artistic placement; on one hand they are able to relate creatively to the art of the sixties and seventies and on the other they are capable of opening up to interdisciplinary inclusion without foregoing the essence of the medium employed. The students will travel, along with migrants and the artists, and cross walls (Fiamma Montezemolo, Rula Halawani), inhospitable landscapes (Richard Misrach and Guillermo Galindo’s borderscapes), misleading thresholds to another world that is denied (Mimmo Paladino, Giovanni de Gara, Shinpei Takeda), lines of troublesome borders (Shilpa Gupta, Reena Saini Kallat) and enter houses draped in fragile memories (Mona Hatoum, Do Ho Suh, Petrit Halilaj), discovering the difficulty of relating to an identity in transit (Adrian Paci, Sislej Xhafa), remembering past languages and learning new ones (Ilaria Turba, Parastou Forouhar, Alessandra Brown), to finally reach a landing that is really a new point for future departures.
History and identity in Italian Opera in 19th century (Antonella D’Ovidio)
Topics: the relationships between opera and national identity: re-reading this topic from a transnational perspective. Focus on the melodramma repertory, in order to examine how opera and politics intertwined in 19th century Italy and how Italian opera was subsequently transposed into different cultural context. Relationships between Italian opera, politics and the concept of “national identity”. Transnational history and opera studies. Guided visit to Historical Archive of Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.