Roman Holiday, with Work When Nancy Ramage, professor of art history and Charles A. Dana Professor of the Humanities and Arts, first heard of the Emerson Humanities Collaboration Awards, she immediately hatched an idea. The competitive awards are given to outstanding IC humanities students to support interesting faculty/student projects during the summer. Ramage’s idea was to try to find a way for her student Patrick Rodgers ’02 (in photo, with Ramage), a double major in art history and English, to accompany her to the National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar in Rome to which she had been invited. She thought it would be a fantastic opportunity for him to be an assistant on her project, participate in the seminar, and learn about Rome. The first task was for Ramage to get permission to bring an undergraduate to a seminar that was intended for college professors and scholars who had already been selected on a competitive basis. (It is highly unusual to have an undergraduate participate in such a seminar.) After several communications back and forth with the NEH seminar director, in which Ramage pointed out Rodgers’s qualifications and preparedness, and after many weeks of waiting, the word came back that Rodgers would be allowed to serve as a student assistant. The second task was for Rodgers to win one of the Emerson grants. He succeeded. The theme of the NEH seminar was "Topographies of Collecting." The group of 15 scholars and 2 directors (and Rodgers) would investigate all aspects of collecting, from antiquity to modern times. How, for example, did an ancient collector go about putting together a sculpture collection, and why would he have chosen to have three busts of a single Greek philosopher in his house, as was the case in a villa near Pompeii? Why did Freud collect antiquities and display them in the rooms where his patients came to see him? How did the Fascists under Mussolini determine which artists should be encouraged to work for their ideology and which were not acceptable? Such issues, and many more, served as a wide-ranging series of questions addressed by members of the seminar. Ramage’s particular topic of research was Luciano Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon and self-exiled Frenchman who, after being instrumental in bringing Napoleon to power, left Paris because of a serious rift with his brother over his own "unauthorized" marriage to Alexandrine de Bleschamp. (Napoleon had had dynastic ambitions for his brother’s marriage). Ramage was interested in how and what Luciano collected in the way of paintings, sculpture, and antiquities and how his role as archaeologist fit into his life once he had moved to Italy. As Rodgers has a deep interest in 17th-century baroque painting, and Luciano Bonaparte collected paintings from this period, it seemed logical for him to take on that aspect of the research while Ramage concentrated on the antiquities and the archaeological activity --- her specialty. Together, the two gathered a large bibliography and read as much as possible from the rich sources of the library of the American Academy in Rome. Ramage also spent many days reading original material in the Vatican archives and at the University of Rome. The undergraduate and the professor also made a point of visiting as many museums and monuments as time allowed. One day Rodgers spotted the Palazzo Bonaparte, palace of Napoleon’s and Luciano’s mother. Ramage talked their way into the building, which today houses bank offices, and persuaded one of the staff to show them around the whole place, including the room that had a 15-foot-high plaster copy of Canova’s statue of a naked Napoleon. One day the two visited Vulci, the Etruscan city where Luciano Bonaparte excavated, and Canino, where he lived (with the title "Prince of Canino"). One of the highlights of the summer was hardly academic, but no less exciting: being there on the day Rome won the national soccer tournament. The whole city went wild, with people racing around on motorcycles with flags flying and horns blowing. Overall it was a splendid experience for both seminar participants. Ramage reports that Rodgers held his own with the older scholars and gave an exemplary presentation on his research. When he had finished, she says, one of the professors stood up and asked, "Wouldn’t we all wish to have a student like Patrick?"
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A. Ozolins, Ithaca College Office of Publications, 21. Mar. 2002