Informational meeting for the Rome Institute of Liberal Arts (RILA). This is an exciting opportunity to spend a part of your summer studying the great books in Rome and earning transfer credit to UT. The meeting will be Wednesday, November 19, at 5 PM in Waggener 403b
The Jefferson Center has a number of $2,000 scholarships available to make this program more affordable for UT students.
The program itself consists of a month long class that takes place in the heart of the Eternal City. Students will live in Rome and will have ample opportunity to explore its many celebrated sights, with all their charms and wonders. will study in the historic and centrally located Collegio Romano, where Galileo once had an apartment. It’s also close to many of the major sights: it’s a two minute walk from the Pantheon, a five minute walk from the Vittorio Emanuele Monument and the Capitoline Hill, and a twenty minute walk from the Colosseum.
Regular class meetings, in which the texts will be studied and discussed intensively, will take place four times per week in the mornings. Students will be enrolled with students from other American universities, and will have the chance to study with them and to get to know them.
RILA offers a choice of two courses, both of which earn UT credit. Each class is discussion intensive, and involves the study of a selection of great books that have particular relevance to Rome and its history. Empire and the Soul is an introduction to the basic problems of political philosophy with particular attention to the Roman Republic and the emergence of the Empire. In it, you’ll study works by Livy, Vergil, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare. This course carries upper level government credit. Beauty and the Sacred covers some of the great reflections on the meaning of art and its relationship to the divine. Its texts include Plato’s Symposium, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics.
As part of both classes, students will tour many of the museums, churches, and ruins, guided by experts in Rome’s art and history. On two occasions, classes will actually take place in the Vatican Museums, and will be followed by tours. There will also be excursions to cities surrounding Rome, including Siena, Orvieto, and Tarquinia. The tours supplement the readings: students will see how the thinkers they read grappled with the same basic human problems as Rome’s great historic leaders and as the artists whose work they’ll view. While Rome is almost indescribably beautiful, its deepest wonders only truly open up when one starts to understand the thought that inspires them.
For more information on the program and the scholarship opportunities offered by the Jefferson Center, please attend the meeting, or if you can’t make it, contact Dr. Erik Dempsey, by email at ed6335@utexas.edu. He will be teaching the Empire and the Soul class. You can also visit RILA’s website at:
Dr. Erik Dempsey
Lecturer, Department of Government
Assistant Director, Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas