student excursions, orvieto city and convent

Academics in Orvieto

Semester Calendar

Fall 2025 Semester
August 30–December 20

1st-month class:
September 1–September 25

2nd-month class:
September 29–October 23

3rd-month class:
October 27–November 20

4th-month class:
November 24–December 18

Spring 2026 Semester
February 21–June 13

1st-month class:
February 23–March 19

2nd-month class:
March 23–April 16

3rd-month class:
April 20–May 14

4th-month class:
May 18–June 11

The curriculum in Orvieto hinges upon the dialogue between the verbal and the visual. For millennia words and images have been the primary means of narrative and representation. Italy remains an origin point for this history as a crossroads of the arts and humanities. For this reason, our location in Orvieto is vital, providing the opportunity to study design, poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, and history from original sources in their original context. By being in this place we hope to inspire interdisciplinary collaboration and cultivate a model of learning that is place-specific.

During the first month, all students take Disegno, the course that orients us to the city by challenging us to look at, listen to, draw, and write about Orvieto. Through these first encounters, the class prepares students to engage deeply with their surroundings and lays the foundation for a semester of intentionality.

Following Disegno students are free to choose one studio art or humanities course each month. These courses are taught by Gordon College faculty, faculty from associated colleges and universities, and professional artists and writers. Working closely with teachers in a workshop setting provides unparalleled opportunities for our students. This echoes the relationships used throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance of forming sustained conversation and development of work. This course model between teachers and students has been a gift to everyone involved since the beginning of the program.

Though the curriculum is based on the arts and humanities, Gordon in Orvieto is open to all majors. Talk to your academic advisor to determine if this program fulfills your degree requirements.

Read about Program Director Matt Doll

"I loved that there was no such thing as working solely in the studio. The whole program is built around the idea of enjoying the wonderful resource of Italy. There's no way you're going to stay inside. The best place to draw is out in the city, drawing the architecture that you see, the church facades, the people—taking all you can from the life that's around you."
— Emily Friesen, Gordon in Orvieto

Spring 2025 Curriculum

Throughout the semester students without previous Italian language study will take ORV 101: Italian Language Studies, a course in conversational Italian with the central purpose of assisting students' full participation in the life of the Orvieto community. [2 credits]

Please note, courses are subject to change.

1st Month All students take:

ORV 270: Disegno in Orvieto (Instructor: Matthew Doll) This drawing-based course is taken during the first month of the semester by all students, both art majors and non-art majors. The course prepares each student to engage deeply with their surroundings, giving the visual language of description a lead role in forming a relationship to the landscape and townscape. [4 credits]

2nd Month Students choose between:

ORV 371: Painting Studio (Instructor: Philippe Fretz) Advanced studio in methods and materials of oil or tempera painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. [4 credits]

ORV 375A: (Selected Topics in Literature) Italy in Film and Fiction (Instructor: Mark Sargent) Modern Italian cinema and literature are renowned for their seasons of realism, but Italians have never relinquished a longing for the magical. The people who have lived through Fascism, world wars, political corruption, and economic whirlwinds have often sought renewal and escape through imagination. In the last century and a half, Italy’s novelists and filmmakers have pioneered forms of “neorealism,” but they have also given us some extraordinary dreams and illusions. This course will sample a wide variety of Italian writers and filmmakers—some Nobel laureates and Oscar-winners as well as several directors and authors who are deeply loved by the Italians. We will examine the cinema and literature in the context of recent Italian history. The Orvieto program has long seen beauty in connecting the past and the present, and the class will also explore how the artistic and religious heritage of medieval and Renaissance Italy infuses the cinematography and narratives of modern filmmakers and authors. Fulfills core literature requirement for Gordon students. [4 credits]

3rd Month Students choose between:

ORV 376: Special Topics in Art (Screen printing): Memory, Palimpsests, and Joy (Instructor: David West) In this course, primarily through the medium of screen printing with other media used as needed, we will look at how the things we build are containers for our past and indicators of our future. By looking at the architecture and landscape of Orvieto and it’s surroundings, we will pay attention to how the successive inhabitants have made use of the natural and man-made resources, what the histories of those usages recall, obscure, and point to. [4 credits]

ORV 379: Special Topics in History: Art and Spirituality in Medieval Italy (Instructor: Jennifer Hevelone-Harper) This course explores the intersection of visual arts, Christian doctrine, spirituality, monasticism and politics in the experience of lay Christians, clergy and monastics in premodern Italy. [4 credits]

4th Month Students choose between:

ORV 374: Design Studio at Orvieto: The Ethics of Intervention (Instructor: Kelly Foster) The work we do when we design things for the world around us – images, objects, spaces, experiences – affects the everyday lives of those who encounter our work. Our design process should therefore be embedded in the social realities, history, and culture of the communities for whom we design. In this studio we will work in multiple design media to explore how an ethic of loving our neighbors takes the social embeddedness of our work seriously, establishing a design process that includes sensitivity, care, and delight. [4 credits]

Piazza Ventinove Marzo is a public space in Orvieto that was touched in multiple ways by Italian Fascism in the first half of the twentieth century. We will analyze previous interventions in the space, its current culture and uses, and how the forms, spaces, images, and text in the piazza relate to its history and its present. We will then create designs in media such as environmental graphics, landscape design, or architecture that can imagine what grieving, healing, and joy might look like in this particular place. [4 credits]

ORV 377: Special Topics in Literature: Literature, Landscape, and Memorialization (Instructor: Jennifer West) In this course, we will engage with the question, how should we remember difficult history? We will practice interpreting a wide variety of genres that do the work of memorializing, including literary texts like poetry, fiction, and film, and visual texts like public spaces, monuments, and memorials. We will think together about cultural memory related to World War II and the Holocaust in Italy by visiting memorials and monuments, reading the works of Italian poet, essayist, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi, and watching the film Life Is Beautiful. Our questions will center around cultural and national identity, foreignness and exile, and the ways that narratives of the past shape our relationships to place, culture, and, ultimately, a vision of humanity. [4 credits]

Fall 2025 Curriculum: Semester Dates Aug 30 - Dec 20

Please note, courses are subject to change.

1st Month All students take:

2nd Month Students choose between:

ORV 376: Special Topics in Art: "Spatial Narratives: Mapping Italian Piazzas and Courtyards" (Instructor: Rose Van Grinsven) In this course, students will investigate the piazza and courtyard as cultural design motifs that shape how people live and relate to one another in Italian cities. They will immerse themselves in the rich urban fabric of Orvieto through a series of mapping exercises, using mixed media and collage to explore the qualities of these spaces—not only as objects to be observed but also as dynamic civic landscape typologies. Students will explore topics including materials, uses, scale, access, atmospheric qualities, volume, and topographic changes, among others. Over the duration of the course, we will observe how processes influence form and meaning in the spaces we encounter. By the end of the course, students will have the opportunity to consider different media and modes of representation for a space they design themselves. [4 credits]

ORV 370: Special Topics in Art History (Instructor: Lisa De Boer) A study of the arts in Renaissance Italy with a dual focus on the 14th-16th century contexts in which the works took on meaning, and on the later art-historical contexts in which they were, and still are, often interpreted. Students will come to appreciate the difference in the art worlds of then and now, as well as the challenge of studying the past in a modern context. [4 credits]

3rd Month Students choose between:

ORV 376: Special Topics in Art: Foundations of Hand Lettering and Typeface Design (Instructor: Jordan Grove) This course offers an introduction to the theory and practice of hand lettering and typeface design. Through calligraphy, sketching, and drawing, students will study the shape and form of the capital and lowercase alphabet. Studio workshops will provide a foundation for generating original lettering and type design concepts based on the classical forms prevalent throughout Italy. The class will specifically engage with the town of Orvieto by observing Roman and Etruscan inscriptions, researching historic manuscripts, and pulling inspiration from the rich local setting to create new and original work. [4 credits]

4th Month Students choose between:

ORV 371: Painting Studio (Instructor: Kari Dunham) Advanced studio in methods and materials of oil or tempera painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. [4 credits]

ORV 350: Poetry & Ekphrasis (Instructor: Mark Stevick) Explores the relation between poetry and pictorial arts in the classical Renaissance tradition of ekphrasis (poetry about art or visual art based on poems). Students both study tradition and practice of the craft of ekphrasis. [4 credits]

Spring 2026 Curriculum: Semester Dates Feb 21 - June 13

Please note, courses are subject to change.

1st Month All students take:

2nd Month Students choose between:

ORV 372: Sculpture Studio at Orvieto (Instructor: Patrick Marold) Recognizing the functional and symbolic qualities of local materials that define and articulate the natural setting and the urban context of Orvieto, this course will focus on creating sculpture that addresses the viewer in the broader context of the city and countryside. [4 credits]

ORV 375A: (Special Topics in Literature) Italy in Film and Fiction (Instructor: TBD) Modern Italian cinema and literature are renowned for their seasons of realism, but Italians have never relinquished a longing for the magical. The people who have lived through Fascism, world wars, political corruption, and economic whirlwinds have often sought renewal and escape through imagination. In the last century and a half, Italy’s novelists and filmmakers have pioneered forms of “neorealism,” but they have also given us some extraordinary dreams and illusions. This course will sample a wide variety of Italian writers and filmmakers—some Nobel laureates and Oscar-winners as well as several directors and authors who are deeply loved by the Italians. We will examine the cinema and literature in the context of recent Italian history. The Orvieto program has long seen beauty in connecting the past and the present, and the class will also explore how the artistic and religious heritage of medieval and Renaissance Italy infuses the cinematography and narratives of modern filmmakers and authors. Fulfills core literature requirement for Gordon students. [4 credits]

3rd Month:

ORV 322: Text and Image (Instructor: TBD) Text and Image considers questions of design through mapping in ways that link art with architecture, text with image, meaning with materials and the body attentive to space. Aided by the local setting and associated texts, this course will engage the mapping of space through projects utilizing 2-D and 3-D elements as well as video and sound recordings. With typography, color, physical design and other media, we will produce new interpretations of familiar spaces in and around Orvieto. [4 credits]

ORV 350: Poetry and Ekphrasis (Instructor: TBD) Explores the relation between poetry and pictorial arts in the classical Renaissance tradition of ekphrasis (poetry about art or visual art based on poems). Students both study tradition and practice of the craft of ekphrasis. [4 credits]

4th Month Students choose between:

ORV 371: Painting Studio (Instructor: Cherith Lundin) Oil Painting Advanced studio in methods and materials of oil painting with historical attention to narrative tradition of Renaissance painting. [4 credits]

ORV 379: (Special Topics in History) Jews and Christians in Italy (Instructor: Matt Lundin) This course explores the history of Jewish-Christian relations in Italy. We will seek to understand the roots and development of antisemitism—of discrimination, persecution, and hatred directed against Jews. But we will also consider long periods of co-existence and interdependence. One of our goals will be to understand how and why conceptions of religious, ethnic, national, and racial identity have changed over time—from the medieval period through the Italian Renaissance to the modern Italian nation-state. Using artwork, literature, film, and historical case studies, we will grapple with enduring questions about faith, belonging, identity, community, and tolerance. Individual stories will illuminate the human cost of persecution and witness to the urgent, ongoing task of defending human dignity. [4 credits]