This summer course offers students a dynamic blend of lectures, labs, and experiential learning through visits to local NGOs and community organizations. Students will creatively document their experiences through photography, drawing, video making, and creative writing. Guided tours of historical sites, guest lectures from artists and professionals, and curated readings on ethnographic, historical, and political perspectives will provide critical frameworks for understanding the artistic process. The course culminates in the creation of a personal monument reflecting each student's lived experience in Sicily. Key units include the Historical and Geographical Vision of Sicily, Geopolitics of Sicily, and Rethinking Sicily through Art, complemented by immersive, community-based activities in Syracuse.

The Southern Mediterranean Basin has been a cradle of world civilizations since the first settlements in Jericho around 9000 BC, serving as a crossroads where religions, economies, and political systems have met, clashed, influenced, and absorbed one another. At the heart of this region, Sicily has stood as a pivotal gateway between Europe, Africa, and the East for over 2,000 years. Positioned at the frontier between Western civilization and the broader world, Sicily has been shaped by the Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Habsburg Spain—yet it remains uniquely distinct. This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to Sicily’s history and people through the lens of modern Migration Studies, examining themes from geographic, historical, philosophical, and political perspectives. Beginning with fundamental questions like “What is a map?” and “What is a territory?” students will explore topics such as the Mediterranean Basin as a cradle of civilization, the concept of islands in philosophy, migration and navigation, theories of the "New Barbarians" (T. Negri), "Stateless Persons" (G. Agamben), the contested Mediterranean, and the “Philosophy of the Sea.”

This course includes the development of basic conversational, reading, listening, and writing skills. Focus will be given to the development of a vocabulary that will enable students to have simple but useful everyday conversations, which will be a support to their Italian experience. The course will give students the basic elements useful for everyday conversations, such as at the cafe, the train station, the post office, the restaurant, etc.