Announcing the Penn State International Program in Communication Arts and Sciences Rome 2007

In the summer of 2007, the Department of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University will offer a seven-week study-abroad program in Rome. The International Program in Communication Arts & Sciences offers a unique opportunity for students to explore the sights and sounds of contemporary Rome while taking courses in Italian film, the rhetoric of travel and tourism, and the arts and architecture of Rome and Italy.

Classroom work is enhanced by guided explorations in Rome and throughout Italy, so that students may experience for themselves the complex layering of history, art, and culture that has drawn travelers to Rome for centuries as pilgrims and tourists.

Students will visit archeological sites, streets, buildings, piazzas, and museums. The central focus of the summer will be on Rome, with added travel to Pompeii, Paestum, Florence, Venice, and Tuscan hill towns, where we will study the art, architecture, and culture of Rome and Italy over the centuries, from ancient Roman and Etruscan times through medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, the Risorgimento, twentieth-century and contemporary Rome, Florence, and Venice.

For more information, visit our web site at

Thomas W. Benson,Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric
Department of Communication Arts & Sciences Penn State University
227 Sparks Building
University Park, PA 16802

814-865-4201 (office); 814-238-5277 (home)
t3b@psu.edu