The Giubileo and Rome: A Marathon Tug of War Between the Sacred and the Profane

Class Description

Rome, Italy, has been pulled between the sacred and the profane for thousands of years. This Fellinesque dance has come to center stage during the 2025 Jubilee. The holy year has put extra strain on an already strained Rome with the prospect of 40 million pilgrims descending on the city. The New York Times has described what many Romans fear, that Rome will lose its soul. This backdrop is the perfect opportunity to explore anticlerical sentiment in Rome as espoused by some of history's most notorious leaders and thinkers. From Napoleon, to Garibaldi, to Gramsci and Mussolini, dive into the complexities and the duality of the city under the veneer created for tourists.

All virtual classes are recorded and made available to participants registered in the class. These recordings are password-protected and available for up to two weeks after the class ends.

Christine Contrada earned a PhD in history from Stony Brook University. She teaches history at Northern Virginia and Germanna Community Colleges and trains teachers in an Erasmus program in Rome, Italy. She writes about intersections between history and popular culture and has a podcast called Christory: History Where you Least Expect it.

What to Expect

Format: Virtual

Class Capacity: 18

Class Style: Mix of lecture and discussion; participation encouraged

Materials List

Required

• Instructor-Distributed Materials—this class will use the platform Padlet to distribute materials and provide a space for asynchronous discussion outside of class time

First Reading

• Ahead of our first course meeting, please read The New York Times article "As Rome Prepares for a Tourist Surge, Residents Fear Losing the City's Soul." You will find the article and some questions for us to discuss in our class in our course Padlet.
• Please note that there is a space in Padlet if you have thoughts about the article ahead of time. Please feel free to share your ideas as they will help us launch into conversation and debate during our time together.
  

Outline of Topics

1. The Giubileo
2. Napoleon
3. Garibaldi
4. Gramsci
5. Mussolini
6. Popular Culture

Cost and Registration

5 Sessions, $200 ($180 for Newberry members, seniors, and students). Learn about becoming a member.

We offer our classes at three different price options: Regular ($200), Community Supported ($185), and Sponsor ($215). Following the models of other institutions, we want to ensure that our classes are accessible to a wider audience while continuing to support our instructors. You may choose the price that best fits your situation when registering through Learning Stream.

To register multiple people for this class, please go through the course calendar in Learning Stream, our registration platform. When you select the course and register, you’ll be prompted to add another registrant.

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