Art, Culture, History in the Eternal City
Melissa Demos
French and Italian
Ciao a tutti! My name is Melissa Demos; I am a Lecturer and Program Coordinator of Italian language at UC Davis. I am originally from northern California, but I spent 13 glorious years living in Florence, Italy, where I worked within the realm of study abroad, and guided tours of the major monuments and museums. Since returning to the US, I have taught Italian and Italian cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh, UT Austin, Hamilton College in New York, and at Illinois State university before arriving at UC Davis. For the past 15 years, I have had the pleasure of coordinating and directing summer abroad programs in Florence, Rome, and Siena. Venite con me alla Città eterna! Join me in the Eternal City!
A Message to Student and Parents
My first 10-day trip to Italy, at age 16, resulted in a complete redirect of my life trajectory; I went from wanting to study marine biology to focusing on Italian Renaissance and Italian language overnight. What drew me in was the impact of Italy’s wealth of historical sites and artistic treasures, its natural beauty, its cultural variety and its people. Some might think that Italy’s culture is homogenous, but each city/region developed independently for over a thousand years, and as such, everywhere you go, you find unique identities, histories, dialect, customs, and foods.
Rome, known as the “Caput Mundi” (capital of the world) is the quintessential cultural “onion”; a place where you can simultaneously see the layers of thousands of years of civilization. Rome is a city of pilgrimage and place where all roads lead, a multicultural city and seat of political power and faith. We will use the city as our classroom, to explore the ancient, the modern, and the contemporary, and perhaps we will discover that we are not so very different."