COURSE INFORMATION:

Students enroll in the following two courses:

ENGL 339: The Travel Memoir - Writing In and Of Place (3 cr.)
ENGL 360: The Italian Image in 19th Century American Literature (3 cr.)

PROGRAM INFORMATION:

This program will be a four-week intensive writing course in creative nonfiction (special emphasis: the travel memoir) and a special topics literature course.

The artistic ties the city of Charleston has with the town of Spoleto are of inestimable value, and the purpose of this program is to bring students to our sister city to write and study literature, and to meet with artists and writers living there, so that they may be inspired to continue their education with an even greater sense of the importance of art and of writing. Students and faculty will be staying at a villa compound just outside Spoleto, where they will share meals, hold readings, and spend quiet time writing and reading. One special group dinner each week will feature intensive and lively discussions of the craft of writing. In addition, there will be one three-day excursion to Florence, where students will take guided tours of such important artistic and historical sites such as the Uffizi Gallery, the Duomo, and the Galleria dell’Academmia; one evening will be spend in salon with an area painter, writer, and historian.

Further, because students will be in Spoleto while Spoleto Festival USA is going on here in Charleston, they will act as emissaries or ambassadors from the city of Charleston to the city of Spoleto, and hope to present to the city a message or proclamation from The College and from the major - all in an effort both to bolster the ties between our cities and to bring publicity to The College and its tradition as a center of liberal arts education.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS:

-Students must have an overall GPA of 2.5
-Students must already possess a valid passport, or be able to obtain a valid passport

PROGRAM DIRECTORS:

Bret Lott, M.F.A.
Department of English
lottb@cofc.edu
843-953-5664

Bret Lott is Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at the College of Charleston. The author of fourteen books, including two New York Times bestsellers, Lott’s work has been translated into six languages. He has traveled extensively, having lived in Ireland, Israel (where he served as Fulbright Senior American Scholar and Writer-in-Residence at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv), and France, where he taught creative writing at CofC’s Annot Campus. Since 2010 he has been director of the Spoleto Summer Study Abroad program. He is also director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the College.

Dr. Scott Peeples
Department of English
peepless@cofc.edu

This is the second time Professor Scott Peeples has taught in the Spoleto summer program. He is former chair of the Department of English, and teaches American literature and academic writing. He has published numerous articles on nineteenth-century literature and two books on Edgar Allan Poe. He is currently co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Edgar Allan Poe.

Note: For questions regarding on-site program details and course content, please contact the program directors. Any inquiries regarding application processing, billing, or scholarship opportunities can be directed to the Center for International Education (contact information listed above).

*A minimum number of participants is required for all study abroad programs to run.