Gail DeBell had one important suggestion for the 26 Seattle Pacific University students who studied abroad in Rome this summer: Step away from the computer.

"Get out," the study abroad coordinator told the group, urging them to cut digital ties to better enjoy the art and culture of the eternal city. "Don't stay so tied to back home!"

Students who traveled on the monthlong "Art and Incarnation" program with Katie Kresser, assistant professor of art history, and Jennifer Maier, professor of English, plunged headfirst into the city with a photo scavenger hunt on their first day.

Once they got their bearings, the group learned about art, architecture, and literature by visiting historical sites each day – Hadrian's Villa, St. Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum – with accompanying lectures from Kresser.

"I felt like I was really able to picture how the Colosseum was in its prime, all that it saw in history, and also understand where its place is today," says Beth Bollinger, a senior English and communication major.

The architecture was a highlight for Leslee Humphrey, a senior interior design major. "No matter the intention of opulence here in Rome, the beauty of it all has a God-intended effect upon me," she wrote, on a blog she created with several other students. "The grand scale makes me feel humble and small, while also reminding me how wonderfully huge and glorious God is through these works created by mere men."

Meanwhile, students in Maier's creative writing class wrote short pieces in response to the location: a poem about Constantine's foot, or an essay about watching a woman alone in a restaurant.

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Tour Rome by Book

For Armchair Travelers

“Methinks I will not die quite happy without having seen something of that Rome of which I have read so much.”
— Sir Walter Scott

Seattle Pacific University students who took “The Eternal City in Art and Literature” with Jennifer Maier, professor of English, read works ancient and modern about Rome, pairing their readings with visits to the places they read about.

Here are a few items from their reading list:

• The Smiles of Rome: A Literary Companion for Readers and Travelers edited by Susan Cahill (Ballantine, 2005).
• Selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
• Romans and First Peter, from the New Testament.
• Daisy Miller: A Study by Henry James (first printing 1878, Penguin Classics, 2007).
• “Roman Fever” by Edith Wharton, from Roman Fever and Other Stories (first printing 1934, Scribner, 1993).
• “Boy in Rome” by John Cheever, from The Stories of John Cheever (first printing, 1978, Ballantine, 1980).
• Poetry by William Carlos Williams (“The Fall of Rome”), C.P. Cavafy (“Waiting for the Barbarians”), W.H. Auden (“The Fall of Rome” and “Musée des Beaux Arts”), Kristen Fogdall (“Demas, in Love With This Present World”), and John Keats (letters, odes, and sonnets).