Come Study in Sicily!

Okay. Hello, My name is David Munson.

I am a lecturer in the communication department here at

Texas A&M.

And this is a short video advertising and talking to

those of you interested who would like to study abroad

this coming summer.

My in this video very short, I really want to

talk to you about three things.

1st. I want to talk to you about the study

abroad program itself.

Second, I want to talk to you about the two

credits that you will receive as classes for taking this

course if you choose to do so.

And third.

And finally, I'd like to show you a couple of

photos that kind of highlight the location, um, that we

will be staying at and the center that will be

studying as well as the little a bit about the

city itself.

So the first thing that I would like to talk

about is the program.

So this program, the study abroad program is a dual

credit course for Com to 43 income for 34.

For those of you who are unfamiliar.

That is argumentation and debate as well as topics in

rhetorical theory.

Now, for those of you that have already taken argumentation

and debate if you took it with me, that's fantastic

If you took over someone else, I'm sorry, but it's

okay if you've taken the class before because this section

has a dual designation Under come 485, which is a

special topics course.

So, um, if you've already taken to 43, it's okay,

you can take the exact same dual credits and receive

all of the credits.

But for a 485 course instead of the 243 course.

So having already taken debate does not prohibit you from

taking this class, but in the instance that you haven't,

this program will give you credit in both of those

classes. Um, first will be talking about the concepts and

the techniques of argumentation as a theory, as a thing

of study.

And then we'll be applying those concepts in the form

of uh form of formal debates, each in a different

format over topics which I will provide that will deal

with the current events of the culture and the time

and the place in which we are in the second

course is topics and rhetorical theory.

This very particularly is tied to the location that we

are going to this class.

This study abroad program is five weeks um, and it

will be in located in the field study center of

the global accent center in Syracuse, which is located in

Sicily, I did my masters program at Syracuse University, which

is in new york.

It's not abroad, however much of the tradition which focuses

on rhetoric and theory pays homage and tribute to the

actual place of Syracuse itself.

And the reason for this is because according to Aristotle,

the Sicily Syracuse, the city itself was the birthplace of

the study of rhetoric.

If you look back in the dialogues of plato, you'll

notice that sometimes the word rhetoric appears in conjunction with

a famous softest name, Gorgas who was a Sicilian people

who study math might be familiar with Archimedes, who was

from Sicily.

Not only is there a rich philosophical and rhetorical tradition

um in Sicily and Syracuse itself, but Sicily as well

as the city of Syracuse is a unesco world heritage

site and a home to ancient medieval and Baroque culture,

as well as monuments which today have numerous international research

associations with academic institutions across the world that come to

Syracuse very specifically, um to study topics of migration, human

rights, arts, design, philosophy and in this case rhetoric, The

center itself is located right in the heart of Syracuse's

historic centre, right the island of 40 Asia.

Now in general, this is a Sicily is an island.

Um so much of the environment.

I have a few pictures here.

The quality isn't the best, but it does kind of

represent the general situation, culture and context in which we

will be situated in a very beautiful place.

Um looking at google maps, you can see Sicily, I

mean Italy on the peninsula all here and then you

see the island of Sicily down here to give you

a larger understanding of where we're going to be.

The city.

Syracuse itself is located right down here and across from

the city is the island of morticia, which is where

we will be staying, which not only has a variety

of cafes and um great cultural shops and places to

eat and check out, but it's also surrounded by several

historical monuments, um, as well as a variety of accessible

tours trips and um kind of natural sites that we

can go visit, which we will both on the island,

which we will all be free to explore as well

as in the city of Syracuse itself along with one

overnight stay to the city of palermo for a little

bit of distance.

If we go back here, palermo is, it's not in

the picture but it's much further up here.

So there will be one overnight trip.

However, everything else, we will be centrally located on the

island itself.

One this is to give you a sense of consistency,

right of ritual so that we can be in class

together every single day.

But also as this is a five week course.

There are embedded several days concurrently in which we together

can either take a trip which um, the accent center

will coordinate for us or you want, if you want

to have a free day or two yourself to explore

on your own or go to the same kind of

places to read a book or something like that.

You can totally do that as I think much of

the experience is not only about learning things that are

educational right?

Like concepts and then being able to apply them through

activities and debates, but also exposing yourself, right.

The human that you are to the practices and the

rituals of other cultures.

Um, you don't learn much by going to major tourist

destinations in cities like Rome, but you learn a lot

by going into the countryside and talking to the samis

and the whatever the name of Sicilians are that you

might meet in a coffee shop talking to real people

about common, mundane experiences.

This is what teaches you about culture and this is

also how you get to understand what the kind of

cash value discussions are, the people who are not americans

but deal with our larger interconnected digital and global world,

what they have to say in the hopes that maybe

you can participate in those discussions as well.

So the center itself is a very historic site.

We will be staying, the accommodations are provided by the

global accent center and um, so you will not only

be provided with rooms and room and board and food,

but there will also be classrooms designated very specifically for

us. Alright, so not only for instance, you can see

here's one version of a classroom right?

Um, here's a smaller kind of breakout room that we

can do activities or smaller discussions in and if the

weather is nice, you know, it's very hot everywhere right

now in the summertime, but assuming that it's nice out

and we will even have the opportunity to have class

in kind of more open and beautiful areas, which I

think will catalyst the discussion um, in a much better

way than the typical, you know, uh fluorescent lighted boxes

that we find ourselves in every single day.

Furthermore, one of the most important things about Syracuse is

that it is located in the center of the piazza

Duomo and faces both the town hall as well as

the cathedral, which are large focal points of the city.

Both of these locations, the town hall and the cathedral

were erected on top of the ruins of greek temples,

which means that not only will we be able to

discuss the concepts that originated out of the region, but

we will actually be able to together go and visit

these local sites so that you can actually put your

hands on the ground in which these people stood as

well as feel the energy of the culture in which

these ideas were meant to be talked about at the

end of the day, we can take a debate class

or a rhetorical theory class on campus, but it's a

limited experience.

The truth is that rhetoric is a culturally situated practice,

which means that in order to do it in order

to understand it, we have to place ourselves inside of

something that we're not familiar with some kind of container,

right? Whether that be the box and blocker that you

will find yourself in all the time, right?

A big room in Harrington, right?

Or if you're lucky in the actual grounds of the

places in which famous individuals like the Borgias or are

comedians stood and with the people that they were around

deliberated and discussed the same ideas and concepts that still

plague and question our minds today.

Questions of fate, of chance of luck, a fortune.

Questions of truth, questions of fact, questions of probability, things

that deal with persuasion versus things that deal with compliance

and domination.

All of these concepts of persuasion and power originated in

the temples that we will go visit.

Not only are there large temples and many of them

that we can see, but there are some also so

fantastic natural sites as well.

One in particular is the um looking for the name

of the volcano itself.

I wrote it down here somewhere but I don't have

it Anyway, there's a huge volcano, right?

Um as you can see depicted in this picture, which

is a very common day trip that we can all

take to really connect ourselves not only with the history

of the actual places that were built in ancient times,

but also with the geography that gives off the same

energy that inspired the thinkers that we will be reading

and discussing about in class.

So those are just wanted to show you a few

quick pictures and I'm not going to go into crazy

detail about the nature of the class but in general

the idea will be that for five weeks we will

take these classes concurrently right?

Which means simultaneously.

So for one week we will focus on um theory,

right? Like com 4 34.

I'll give you some readings.

We'll talk about some concepts.

You'll have some short paper assignments and quizzes as well

as a final exam.

Eventually that you'll have to take.

And then alternating weeks after we talk about concepts in

theory, you'll have some free days, we'll take a trip

or to go to the beach and then the next

week we'll do the debate side of things where normally

on a normal semester I would bring in a variety

of random readings to discuss and have debate activities over

for topics that I make.

But here very specifically will be able to use the

knowledge that we're learning about in our theory course in

order to apply to the concepts of argumentation and then

if we're lucky, which will be my burden finding topics

that have real cash value in the the city of

Syracuse and the culture of Sicily itself.

So that we can learn to debate on topics that

don't just impact our own locality of aggie land or

texas or even our nation of America but the kinds

of problems, questions concerns and interests that the rest of

the world has maybe how they see America from the

outside or the kinds of problems that plagued them that

they think about, which might be relatable on a human

level but totally foreign on an american level surrounding ourselves

with this uncertainty is the only way that we can

gain a true holistic understanding of, not just what it

means to be rhetorical right?

To utilize words to move people to action and power

and persuasion and debate and skills of the word craft

and all of that good stuff.

But more importantly, to understand and figure out through an

italian lens through the language of the region and the

culture itself, what it means to be human and how

our humanity is fundamentally tied to the language that we

use. Not necessarily the meaning that we give to specific

words, like a fact or an argument, right or divine

providence, whatever these word means to us, But the actual

origins through language dating all the way back through Greece,

through Rome, even into latin um, in the ancient language

of latin itself, where these words originated and how they

have come to impact and influence the modern understanding of

humans today.

So I hope this is giving you a good introduction

to the class.

And I hope to see

Come Study in Sicily!

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