Tory Brundage, UW College of Education, shares about Education Rome, a three-week study abroad program that focuses on gender, multiculturalism and education in Italy.
Education Rome aims to help students develop a better understanding of how, as social constructs, gender and multiculturalism have some roots in Italian history. That history helps analyze modern-day social issues, with particular focus on issues of education, in Italian society. Students engage in field research and photo elicitation to explore historical, contemporary, and artistic concepts of gender and race. This was the third year that we have run the program and we intend to go back to Rome a fourth time next summer.
This year we took 14 students to Rome. It was an incredibly diverse cohort with 10 participants coming from the Brotherhood Initiative, a program that serves Black, Latino, Native, Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian male undergraduates. Additionally, the group had students from all class standings as well as from a wide range of majors – education, public health, business, environmental studies, engineering, informatics, life sciences, etc.
My personal favorite memory from this year’s trip was taking the students on a street art walking tour in the Ostiense neighborhood. It was a good way to get off the beaten path in Rome by exploring art and political commentary that you definitely won’t see in the Vatican Museums. There was a stretch that included depictions of influential people for each letter of the alphabet. One was an American rapper that many students immediately recognized and the excited discussion that followed was an absolute joy to witness. The students were clearly having fun and made connections across the globe as well as across course themes in a unique and adventurous way.
In addition to the street art walking tour, we visited the Vatican Museums, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Palpatine Hill, the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, and La Sapienza, University of Rome.
