Highlights from Fall 2016 Term

           
Since September 5, 2016, 106 students of 21 different nationalities coming from the member universities of VIU have been attending courses taught by 21 distinguished professors.
Besides core courses on Italy, Cultures of the World and Global Challenges, the fall term has focused on Economics, Management And Digital Technologies Applied To Cultural Heritage. Additional courses based on common principles of research through parallelisms and complementarities have enriched the range of educational possibilities on interdisciplinary themes such as “The Ethics of Technological Society”, “Cultural History of the Jewish Diaspora”, or “Contemporary Migration and Refugee Crisis”, and non-Italian students have improved their interaction with everyday life in Venice thanks to the Italian as a foreign  language course.
Learn more on VIU courses with our video presentations

Open Lectures
On September 7 we inaugurated the season’s academic activities with a lectio magistralis about “Venice, a Cosmopolitan City. The Places of the Minorities and the Jewish Ghetto”, delivered during the opening ceremony by the honoured guest Donatella Calabi.
Prof. Calabi is the curator of the exhibition "Venice, the Jews and Europe 1516-2016" (19 June – 13 November 2016 at Venice Palazzo Ducale): drawing inspiration from some images and videos exhibited, she discussed the geographical distribution of the different foreign communities in the city of Venice at the beginning of the XVI century, that is, around the date of the institution of the Ghetto, and on the regulations introduced for them by the Venetian Republic.

Other guest speakers were invited to debate interesting, topical issues in the VIULECTURES series, an initiative promoted by VIU and open to the public:
Prof. Sébastien Chauvin, invited from the University of Lausanne by VIU professor Martina Avanza, rouse critical questions on “The Myth of Humanitarianism: Migrant Deservingness and Neoliberal Reason”; and Prof. Mariusz Finkielsztein, invited by Prof. Guido Borelli from Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology of the University of Warsaw, drew an exhaustive picture on one of the most widespread and ambiguous feeling: boredom.
 
Internships and mobility
VIU promotes international mobility by providing internship opportunities and scholarships to students of the member universities who attend the Globalization Program. During the Fall 2016 term, 15 candidates applied for an internship in one of the agreed host institutions in Italy; whereas 6 candidates are competing to carry out research for their final master’s thesis through the international mobility channels offered by VIU: their research proposal and curricula are currently under examination. The winners will be offered a scholarship to partially support travel and housing expenses.

The  winners of the scholarship to support their internship experience in Italy  and mobility abroad have been announced during the Closing Ceremony of the Fall 2016 term: here more details, names and faces.

Former students who have already benefited of this internship and mobility opportunities shared their testimony and suggestions in these video interviews.

Excellence and Internationality
VIU strives to promote excellence and diversity in the Globalization Program and to provide a powerful learning experience in which students develop their capacity for critical thinking and creative problem solving.  
Since Spring 2016, a new Scholarship to support Residency has been awarded to talented students to contribute to the cost of living in Venice for a semester. Among these students, three were selected as winners of the Residency-Excellence Scholarship:

Julia Amatuni, Phd Candidate In Anthropology, Eusp
Thomas Ikeda, Ba Candidate In Finance/Data Analytics, Boston College
Ryun Song, Ba Candidate, School Of International Liberal Studies, Waseda
They will soon present the blog “Time Capsule” created with Prof. Luca Pes to encourage discussion among present and former VIU students on current and topical issues.

During the Closing Ceremony, 7 students were awarded an Excellence decoration for their evolving performance and achievements in the different courses attended:

Florian Dobmeier, Ludwig-Maxilimians-Universitaet, Germany
Jackson Reed McLaurin, Duke University, USA
Thomas Ikeda, Boston College, USA
Lisa Hoehn, Ludwig-Maxilimians-Universitaet, Germany
Caroline Fernelius, Duke University, USA
Anna Gussoni, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy
Greta Albertari, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy

Co-curricular program
Not just academic duties, but also an opportunity for travel, discoveries and funny moments: the Globalization Program offers a calendar of co-curricular activities, proposed by the professors or by VIU staff. An opportunity to discover and relate to the city of Venice, the lagoon and the Veneto region, taking teaching out of the classroom and into the field, and creating opportunities for students to socialize with their peers. The 35 activities in the program included site visits related to the courses, including a visit to the Veneto urban sprawl, the industrial port and the Venice lagoon, tours of cultural sites of interest, a weekly movie series, the exhibition by the Unesco granted artist Han Meilin, a visit to Venice Biennale of Architecture and trip to Florence with Professor Annarita Paolieri teaching the Supplementary Art Course: Introduction to Renaissance Painting.
A special thanks to Karina Velikova, for holding the photographic workshop on “David Hockney Collage Workshop” and presenting the posters of the final works during the Fall 2016 Closing Ceremony;
to Professor Martina Avanza and to the association for migrants "Noi migranti della Venezia Orientale", who actively collaborated with the students in organizing interviews to the migrants volunteering and creating beautiful posters about the difficulties, joys and experiences they met during their journey and in Italy.

Thanks to all the Fall 2016 students, professors, as well as to our interns: Arianna Pasqualin and Celeste Carenini at Front Office and Co-curricular activities, Martina Vacca in the library and to Yang Liu who created beautiful videos of the life and activities at VIU!

You can find them and many more on VIU YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/univiu

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences thanks all participants for this intense semester and wishes you happy holidays!

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