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About the Seminar
- Manka Varghese, Director
- Historically, Italy was one of the leading countries of emigrants – their citizens created homes in a number of other countries, especially the United States - now it is a major destination for immigrants from countries as varied as Romania, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Morocco. In this seminar, we will investigate immigration and identity at several levels through the lens of schooling, which is a central institution in the formation of identities and the lives of its citizens and residents. We will mainly explore how immigrant youth and their families are making sense of schooling and how this influences who they are. We will look at how immigrant youth and their families change the identity of the country while they navigate its diverse institutional contexts, especially the context of schooling. We will also look at how the institution of schooling is making programmatic and instructional decisions around their immigrant student population, thereby crafting identities for them.
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Today was our half day historical introduction to the city. Susan Sanders, the director of the Institute of Design and Culture (IDC) in Rome (www.idcrome.org) took us on an engaging narrative accompanied by a walking tour of the major starting points of ancient Rome. We started the tour at the Forum Boarium where Hercules’s temple and the foundation of Rome lies, followed by a trip to the view of the Roman Forum from the Capitoline Hill where we were told about the ancient story of Romulus and Remes, and the changing face of Rome from a city that worshipped Roman Gods to the main Christian and then Catholic center of the world. The other stops we made were to the top of the Capitoline Hill where the old senate building was, the monument made to commemorate King Victor Emanuel in Piazza Venezia, San Ignatius’s Basilica, the Pantheon, and then the oldest temple in Rome in Largo Argentina. Susan mentioned that the most amazing thing about Rome was how the past meets the present here and the sense of continuity in the cycle of life. She also mentioned her appreciation for Italians that are not obsessed about time saving and getting to places on time but value immensely social interactions and enjoying every day as it comes. The narratives that Susan provided helped us in understanding that historical sense of Rome as an undefeatable and warrior city, which Susan also mentioned as being invoked by the present mayor of Rome, Alamenna. When the new mayor was inaugurated in the Spring of this year, he made strong statements about Rome having to go back to this period of strength and grandeur, which some find invigorating and others find intimidating because of the way it has also targeted foreigners in its quest for “purity.” After Susan’s tour, we broke up for the day and met at 6 p.m. in our apartment where Sundar and I had cooked rice, dal, fish curry and beans curry for our students. My old friends from middle school and high school, Anita and Michele, joined us and entertained the students as well as providing them with a number of ideas and suggestions for their stay in Rome. Tomorrow, we will be meeting at 8.30 a.m. to recap our week and for instructions for our last day of the week. This week and next week (as opposed to week 3 and 4 where we will be meeting Monday – Friday), we will be having short weeks because we had discussed giving students time to be able to go away to different places in Italy. Also, for a 5 credit class, we were having plenty of class-related meeting time all in all in the 4 weeks as well as plenty of reading (and responses to readings) that were assigned to the students beforehand. The students were discussing possible plans for their long weekend – some were planning to stick around Rome and see the many sites they had not seen already such as the Vatican and the Borghese museum while others were being ambitious and planning to go to 3 different cities over 4 days.
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