Division of Arts and Cultures

The study Nature Conservation for Everyone: New Actors for Biodiversity in Switzerland by Professors Caroline Wiedmer and Christoph Kueffer advocates for integrating biodiversity conservation into society and the economy in Switzerland. It proposes participatory and transdisciplinary methods, emphasizing the role of humanities like literature and art in conservation efforts. The study highlights the importance of involving youth, health experts, and start-ups in nature conservation to foster a biodiverse green economy. This interdisciplinary approach aims to address the challenge of decreasing biodiversity through collaboration across various disciplines.

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Professor Gabriel Gee (Franklin University, TETI Group), with the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” curated a digital series of seminars entitled Artists and Maritime Technology.

Going out to sea was long a perilous affair. Whether to secure access to fishing grounds and trade routes, to satisfy curiosity about the distant and the unknown, or simply to enjoy a day out on the deck in choppy waters, maritime spaces required specialized skills and technologies.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, a community settled at Monte Verità in Ascona, advocating for an alternate way of life to be conducted in harmony with nature. The countercultural project became a magnet for experimental and progressive practices, aiming to disrupt inherited social hierarchies, and to foster a liberation of mind and body. Performative gestures were of particular  importance in the search of a new freedom, exemplified in the development of radical modern dance associated with figures such as Rudolf Laban and Isadora Duncan.

The story and aspirations of Monte Verità are explored this year by the Lugano Arte e Cultura Dance Project – to which Franklin University is associated –  culminating in a series of performances created by contemporary choreographers Annie Hanauer, Lea Moro, and Virginie Brunelle. In parallel to the LAC Dance Project, the works presented by the VCA course on Creative Practices engage with the history of Monte Verità in Ascona, as a cradle of modern dance and inspiration for alternate social, political and environmental construction. Through diverse mediums ranging from the performative, drawing and painting, photography and video, design, publication and writing, the works propose a journey into embodied awareness and collective consciousness.  

With contributions from Ana Centeno Diaz, Aurora Nelson, Beth Paolini, Calysta Warner, Cameron Rodriguez, Daniela Perezchica-Trancoso, Grace Bacon, Grace Meller, Gretchen Manderfeld, Josephine Gammill, Lara DeCastecker, Morgan Carlson, Noah Guerin, Sydney Ruth, and Zoe Jordan. 

FUS Students have further opportunities to engage with the Lugano Dance Project through the pilot course in Creative Practices (a pilot for a new upcoming major in the Division of Arts & Culture). The course takes the performing art and the historical framework of the Tessin dancing legacies as a common ground to approach creativity, which the students are asked to respond to in a personal practice-based project using a medium/a of their own choosing. These personal projects are finalized at the end of April, early May.

On 20 April 2022 at 19:00 in the Kaletsch Conference Room, DEI and the Division of Arts and Cultures (DAC) hosted the committee’s fifth and final university-wide POWER dialogue event of the academic year.

The themes we focused on are community and communication: two intersecting topics that have been flagged as requiring deeper exploration through open, university-wide exchange.

Feeling empowered to confidently speak up and speak out through civil discourse, with all community members, is a practice we at DEI continue to strongly support.

What purpose does the POWER dialogue series serve at our university?

DEI would like to recognize here how Franklin’s Office of Student Life, in particular, has helped pave the way, for all university stakeholders, on how to turn words into action. The OSL been extremely responsive to taking on board concerns raised during dialogue events and has distinguished itself in campus leadership by providing concrete solutions and in communicating their solutions clearly through multiple channels. We want to recognize the specific efforts of the OSL at the start of our final dialogue event.

The dialogue forum encourages questions of all kinds as they relate to DEI innovation, the expression of concerns, recognition of achievements, gratitude for institutional improvements, constructive criticism, new ideas for how to move forward.

DEI wants to hear from you, the FUS community, all of you, about what makes our diverse learning community unique. We want to hear what changes you - as student, staff or faculty - would recommend for strengthening the Franklin community through innovative communication efforts.

Students of the CLCS and MUS classes, together with Prof. Hrisanta Marin, attended a concert by the Filarmonica Della Scala at the Lugano Art Center on Sunday, February 6. The concert was directed by Andris Nelsons and featured pieces from Richard Wagner's Lohengrin and Parsifal, followed by the execution of Ludwig Van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92. 

One of our Film Studies Minor's students, Arpi Khachatryan, has been entering her films into cinematic festivals and is earning growing recognition. "10 Days of Cinephilia" (2020), filmed in the FUS residence halls during lockdown, was a Semi-Finalist at Baliwood Bali - World Independent Short Film Awards. "Don't Trust Tarkovsky" (2021), the Honors project for Professor Ferrari’s CLCS 230 Science Fiction and Film class became a Finalist at the Paris International Short Festival; a Semi-Finalist at Hollywood International Golden Age Festival.

Arpi was also recognized with the Best Female Student Director award at Tokyo Shorts. Arpi recently declared her CLCS major is currently working on “Nothingness Overdose” for “Performing Happiness,” the CLCS first-year seminar for which she is the Academic Mentor.

Congratulations, Arpi! We are all looking forward to your leadership role in CLCS 370, Advanced Reading Film, together with Leo Williams, another creative practitioner majoring in Visual Communication Arts, who currently applying to some very prestigious graduate programs in Film for next year. Good luck to both of you, and also to Alex Nuñez who is working on compiling his Film Studies senior portfolio! We are very proud of our DAC student accomplishments and plan on a public screening of FUS Film Minor student work during the University Day celebrations next Spring.

The Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainable Futures organized and hosted the three-day international symposium “Retooling Knowledge: Sustainable Development Goals from the Perspective of the Environmental Humanities,” funded by the Swiss Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities (SAGW), the Swiss Academic Society for Environmental Research and Ecology (SAGUF), The Environmental Studies Department of the University of Zurich, and FUS.

The Environmental Humanities are a growing movement towards integrative and problem-oriented research for societal transformation rooted in the critical social sciences, humanities, and arts. At the same time, sustainability research and the SDGs are gaining importance in academia across the globe. 

Against this background, the conference had two main objectives:

- to foster reflection about the relevance of the critical social sciences, humanities, and arts for a societal process towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
- to strengthen existing networks and initiatives of the Environmental Humanities (and related approaches) in Switzerland and to build new ones.

Because of Franklin’s focus on global learning, the university naturally attracts first-year students who already speak more than one language fluently. It isn’t uncommon in the FUS classroom to hear students speaking among themselves in Arabic, Russian, or Spanish. Different English accents, from India to Ireland, also characterize the distinctively FUS classroom experience.

The Division of Arts and Cultures celebrates linguistic diversity at the global level, while asking all students to focus on a Swiss language. This fosters local integration and opens doors for numerous opportunities, such as internships, grants for graduate study and professional networking. The student investment in the Swiss language pays off in many ways, and our alumni have been wonderful in sharing their stories with us at DAC about exactly how learning German, French and Italian at Franklin positively impacted their lives in ways they never would have expected.

To achieve our language Core learning objectives in a distinctively FUS way, Swiss language teaching embraces different methodologies; with digital literacy innovation and experiential learning having increasingly taken shape in both the pre-pandemic and pandemic years.

The Italian program is particularly proud of its project-based initiatives and Travel courses. Last Fall, Professor Ferrari’s ITA 100T students spent a week in Naples and the Amalfi coast and researched topics that ranged from cuisine and culture to fashion and street art.

Back on campus, all ITA 100-301 feature multimedia and/or “tandem” projects, where FUS students have been partnered with other Italian-language students studying in Switzerland, and elsewhere at other European universities such as the American College of Greece.

The underlying principle in DAC is to take language learning out of the classroom, and translate skill acquisition into action whenever possible, with an eye to interdisciplinarity to amplify both our instructors’ professional expertise and the broader learning goals of our students.

Professor Giulivi’s research in theater arts and language pedagogy has brought her to frame her student projects around both music and voice, in collaboration with Professor Marin; while Professor Della Croce is currently experimenting with short story adaptation and video making.

Professor Mottale draws inspiration from an existing Lugano-based digital project that maps and investigates the history of local landmarks; Professor Targa-Cerclé asks her students to publish an online Italian-language newspaper focusing on local history, culture and current events.

DAC also offers intensive language learning and culture experiences in Zurich, organized by Professor Wiedmer, and summer study in Morocco, with Professor Saveau. Professor Roy’s research includes translation studies: "she coordinates digital learning and the language tutoring program at Franklin," in addition to having successfully piloted our first interim J-Term class (now in its second year), “Halls of Mirrors,” on translation theory and practice.

Please feel free to inquire about any of these “language in action” initiatives by contacting the DAC Division Chairs or writing directly to our instructors.