Classics FSP Rome

This is a biennial program and will be offered in fall 2025.

By means of extensive field trips throughout the Italian peninsula (e.g., Latium, Tuscany, Campania, Umbria), students develop a deep familiarity with the topography and material culture (sites, monuments, artifacts) of ancient Italy. A separate trip off-peninsula focuses on the material culture and history of Roman Britain, as an administrative region and a frontier society of the Roman world.  

The aim of the program is to study the processes of continuity and change in the development of ancient Rome, Roman Italy, and the Roman world. The monuments of the post-Classical Roman world are also examined, so that students consider the profound and continuing influence of ancient Italic cultures upon the present.

The curriculum embraces architecture, the visual arts, history, religion, and the basic techniques of archeological analysis. Students study the Roman world through lectures and discussion in situ. We develop a deeper understanding of types of evidence and how we reconstruct and write history, especially history "from the bottom up" or "from the margins."

Program Brochure

CLST 30.1 City of Rome, Art and Architecture. ART. Taught by Dr. Fabiana Battestin (University of Tuscia (Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Viterbo)).

The course offers an extensive overview of the development of the city of Rome from its foundation in the 8th century B.C. to the end of the 4th century A.D., through a direct experience of the Ancient Roman places, architecture and art. Students will also develop basic computational skills to organize and manipulate archaeological data, by creating in small teams a digital base timeline and a thematic map of the city of Rome.

CLST 30.2. Cultural Diversity of the Roman World. INT or SOC; CI.

This course explores the history and cultural diversity of the Roman Empire, through field trips to ancient settlements, sites, and museums in Italy and Britain at the furthest distance from Rome. Britain illustrates a frontier zone, where different peoples interacted and crossed cultural as well as physical boundaries; and we evaluate lived experience and cultural hybridity how we study status, gender, ethnicity of various peoples.

CLST 31. Roman Myth and Religion. TMV.

In this class we study traditional Roman religion and mythology. Visiting sites and museums in Rome, Italy, and Britain, we reconstruct polytheist religious experience and consider the institutions/modes of religious conservativism and transformation. A final unit considers the confrontation with Christianity from a Roman point of view.

In Rome, students live in shared, self-catered apartments/flats equipped with kitchen facilities for preparing meals. Students should expect to share a bedroom and bathroom with other students. All students committed to this program will complete a housing preference form for shared housing and roommate placements. 

During the excursions, students should expect to share a bedroom and bathroom with other students on the program. 

According to a Fall 2023 participant they recorded the following step/walking data over the course of a 70 period while participating in the program.

Total Distance: 391.46 miles

Daily Average: 5.51 miles per day

Pompeii Average: 7.56 miles per day

England Average: 5.27 miles per day

Longest Day (10/7/2023): 10.42 miles (Herculaneum scavenger hunt + Vesuvius climb)

Total Flights of stairs: 824

Total Steps: 946,699

This program is extensively based onsite and in the field in and around Rome and Italy and the UK.  

For more information, please see the department website.

Budget Sheet for Classics FSP Rome