This program is not currently set to run during Academic Year 2024-2025 (including summer 2025). Please check back for any updates which will be posted on this page.

This course leverages a place-based approach to close reading by offering students an experience of what it takes to be a traveling scholar. HONR 202: From Tourist to Scholar in Tuscany engages students during the spring semester and supplements the course with a travel option in pursuit of an innovative study abroad experience or connect in a Virtual Study Abroad model without travel. This seminar is an introduction to place-based pedagogies in the humanistic tradition emphasizing the methods and skills required to conduct research and learning on a global stage.

HONR 202 students can choose to travel with the instructor to Italy for ten days immediately following the spring semester or collaborate in that traveling research through a Virtual Study Abroad partnership with the students abroad. Our critical reading strategy will integrate techniques essential to the work of a global scholar. We will immerse ourselves in the challenges of translating, overcoming obstacles through intercultural competence, conducting interviews, collecting evidence in situ, understanding museums, reading archeology and architecture, and engaging local populations beyond the fantasies created by tourism.

Each student will design a research project focused upon Tuscany. As these projects go forward, we will identify the obstacles associated with pursuing that research abroad, articulate strategies for overcoming those obstacles, and implement them. Students opting for travel will participate in a ten-day travel program in Tuscany following the semester. Each student not traveling will complete a Virtual Study Abroad module in collaboration with the traveling cohort.

We will be traveling to Siena, Italy in the heart of Tuscany. The students will take advantage of relationships which have grown over the past forty years between SUNY Geneseo and a variety of stakeholders in Siena and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. The purpose of this option is to increase access to study abroad by lowering costs and integrating a travel experience into a spring semester class. The lower costs result in folding tuition into the spring semester and leveraging lower travel costs during shoulder season. (Students wishing to remain in Italy and travel beyond the end of the program can do so.) All students in the class would follow the same course through final exam week. Students who wish to engage the travel option will come to Tuscany with Professor Wes Kennison for ten days immediately following the semester. Those who opt against travel would pursue a Virtual Study Abroad Project in collaboration with the travelers during the same period. Students would interact through digital platforms. Students will participate in planning day trips and excursions to Rome, Florence, rural Tuscany, and other locations.