Italian Sketchbook: Travel Writing and Digital Storytelling

Catalog description

This course will reference a wide range of forms—the essay, the journal, the sketchbook, the map, the photograph, the human voice—through which an author represents the​ thoughts and sensations of mobility.​ We will also explore many different authorial subject positions such as: cartographer, pilgrim, explorer, fugitive, and tourist. In our study of these forms we will focus on two primary impulses: ​observation​ and ​creation​. We will trace how traveling subjects observed and recorded the world as expressions of artistic representation, scientific discovery and comparative sociocultural analysis AND we will focus on the strategies and techniques, in particular the interchange between word and image, employed by authors and artists as we translate these familiar approaches into new digital forms. Italy, and in particular Florence, will serve as the most immediate conceptual and physical context for investigation. We will thus be able to link the textual and visual material studied in the classroom with the world beyond the boundaries of the La Pietra campus.