NEU 119 - The Imagination of Italy

3 credit(s)
Explore and tour Italy from the Renaissance period until present day in this course. Discover how cultivating creativity and imagination promotes human progress, with a special focus on our understanding of the brain. Students will learn alongside European students while enrolled in a two week short-term course at the University of Padua, Italy’s second oldest University, the world’s fifth oldest, known for contributions to advancements in the sciences. The course will be co-taught by Professors from UHart and the University of Padua (Unipd) in English in the mornings with free time and/or planned excursions in the region for UHart students on scheduled days and afternoons. Topics covered will include Italy’s creative developments in the arts and sciences, from Dante and Petrarca’s humanism and discovery of lost texts at the end of the Middle Ages, to da Vinci and the Renaissance, Galileo’s Scientific Revolution, through Galvani’s Age of Enlightenment, into Camillo Golgi’s work and influence in the 19th Century, and to our modern understanding of the brain today. Students will have the opportunity to visit sites where great thinkers were inspired, and see their original work filled with the advancement of new ideas ahead of their time. Padua, Florence, Venice and Bologna will be explored, with options to other cities in the area during free days and afternoons. This course fulfills the Interdisciplinary general education requirement.

Click here for Spring 2026 course scheduling information.

Click here for Fall 2026 course scheduling information.