The Rome Gateway and the École Française de Rome inaugurate Joint Multilingual Summer School

At the end of June beginning of July, 2022 the University of Notre Rome Global Gateway, the School of Architecture, and Nanovic Institute for European Studies in partnership with the École Française de Rome organized the first edition of the Summer School “L’Antiquité et ses réceptions - The Antiquity and its Receptions.”

The Summer School was open to doctoral and advanced MA students from European and North American Universities such as the University of Avignon, Columbia University, the University of Montreal, the Sorbonne University, the University of Rouen Normandie, La Sapienza Università di Roma and the University of Notre Dame. This year's focus was on Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, with the support of the Istituto Autonomo Villa Adriana e Villa d’Este. The school was conducted in three languages, Italian, English and French in a multilingual and multicultural environment.

Melissa Yorio is one of the three students from the University of Notre Dame who attended the school. Yorio is starting her second year in the Early Christian Studies master's program, jointly offered by the Departments of Classics and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She heard about the summer school from the Director of Graduate Studies for the Early Christian Studies program, Hildegund Müller who suggested she applied because of her interest and training in Classical reception.

“I am so glad Prof. Müller mentioned the course to me,” commented Yorio. “ It has been a unique opportunity to explore Classical ideas on art and architecture and their later reception during the Renaissance and I have learnt so much in such a short time.”

Yorio graduated from Washington and Lee University in 2021 with a degree in Classics and Medieval and Renaissance Studies, her academic interests are early Christian social history and material culture, especially ancient graffiti, with a geographic focus on southern Italy. 

About the program she comments: “It was incredible to meet scholars from multiple universities and countries and build professional contacts and friendships. This Summer School challenged my current methodological focus and introduced me to others, while allowing me to practice my languages in an academic context.”

The professors who were responsible for the 2022 edition included Denis Ribouillault (Université de Montréal), Ingrid Rowland (University of Notre Dame), Heather Hyde Minor (University of Notre Dame), and Ginette Vagenheim (Université de Rouen-Normandie).

Yorio was very satisfied with the outcome of the school: “My favorite part of this Summer School was the scholarly atmosphere created by the attentive organizers and augmented by the diversity of disciplines, languages, universities, and nationalities represented by the students: it was amazing to receive so many helpful suggestions on how to better my research that I had never considered coming from my discipline.”

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