Each year, students from this class put together and publish a book of photography. You can see 2025’s book here!
We encourage students with a passion for travel and photography to apply for this course. No prior experience required. Please notes that a digital camera will be provided for the duration of the class.
Program Dates: June 3rd – June 28th, 2026 Program Cost: $4,150 + Tuition (This includes housing, excursions, health insurance, and local transportation.)
Application Deadlines:
Priority Deadline: January 15, 2026 Final Deadline: February 1, 2026
To find out more about our Summer in Rome program, click here.
I am proud to announce the release of the 2025 Summer Session One Documentary Photography: Italy class book. At 150 pages, Annamo is Roman for Let’s Go!,is a pleasure to behold. The volume is rich in variety and sharp in perception, thanks to the class participants’ clever brains, quick wits, and indefatigable feet. Also, all those espressi certainly helped.
Çağla, Katherine, Molly, Cat, Bailey, Camille, Grace, and Chelsy—Rome may seem like a beautiful and distant dream at this point in the fall; however, by the time you are several pages into your book, you will undoubtedly hear the clanging of church bells and clinking of espresso cups, smell the glorious truffle pasta (that’s Orvieto, actually), and be transported back to our beloved Eternal City of summer 2025. The phrase “Experiential Learning” frequently pops up in academia, but now it probably makes much more sense after all that glorious gelato.
Your over-caffeinated-image-obsessed guide, Stephano Apicella, would like to invite you to the book release party on Thursday, October 30th, 5 pm in Keating 1st (just before the screening of The Exorcist at 6 pm). Come see your images on the big screen, billboard-sized, and enjoy all your smart & hard work. In the meantime, if you can’t wait, you can preview your entire book here. Enjoy!
Grazie mille!
Stephano
Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult: Halloween Edition: The Exorcist ?>
The Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean and the Visual Arts Program present: Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult: Halloween Edition: The Exorcist
The Exorcist
Directed in 1973 by William Friedkin, based on the 1971 novel by William Peter Blatty. Thursday, October 30th, 6 pm, Rose Hill Keating 1st. All are welcome, so invite your friends. Pizza will be served on the early side.
Featuring:
Dr. Rachel Annunziato, Professor of Psychology, Vice Dean for Arts & Sciences; Father David Marcotte, S.J., Associate Professor of Psychology. Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Clinical Professor, Head of the Visual Arts Program, Dean Fellow, will moderate if things heat up. Two randomly chosen lucky winners will take home a terrifying prize.
About the film: The Exorcist is a horror film released in 1973, directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, who adapted the screenplay from his 1971 novel of the same name. The story chronicles a single mother’s struggle to save her daughter from a mysterious ailment later revealed to be…
Spoiler alert—read no further!
…demonic possession. She enlists the help of two Roman Catholic priests, who attempt to perform an exorcism. The Exorcist was a massive commercial success, bringing in $428 million in its box-office run. It also earned 10 Academy Award nominations, including for best picture and director (the film would win two Oscars, for sound design and adapted screenplay). The Exorcist is a stylistic landmark for the supernatural horror genre and widely considered one of the greatest—and most unsettling—horror movies ever made.
Beyond the highly viceral and disturbing nature of the film, it is also a story about the challenges of modern medicine, the power of faith, doubt, sacrifice, redemption, love, and—of course, it is also about adult anxiety regarding teenage sexuality, loss of identity, motherhood, and the disintegration of the American family—you know, scary stuff—oh, and pea soup (you will know what I mean later).About the series:
For the Films Worth Talking About, Even If Difficult film series, we ask professors, administrators, and staff from across the university to present significant films to the Fordham community that might be unfamiliar or challenging. At screenings, we enjoy pizza together, watch a film, and then discuss it afterward.
As the series title suggests, the films selected, both old and new, are not always easy to digest or understand, and would benefit from thoughtful unpacking by people familiar with the film’s content. Our guest leaders guide attendees in exploring the film’s themes, characters, context, social impact, and stylistic choices. Ultimately, this is a communal exercise where we discuss, discover, and disagree sometimes—which is all part of the experience.
The Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean invites you to step outside your regular streaming queue, experience something different, and join a community of curious cinephiles throughout the year. Please bring your friends, an open mind, and be ready with a question. Additionally, to sweeten the deal, we offer raffle items connected to the film. You could walk away with a special prize AND a different point of view.
Up Next:
Coming in November is Mati Diop’s film, Dahomey, with special guests Associate Professor of African & African American Studies Professor Laurie Lambert and Associate Professor of Art History Maria Ruvoldt.
Previously:
Akira, directed in 1988 by Katsuhiro Otomo, and based on his 1982 manga Akira. Sponsored by the FitzSimons Civics and Civility Initiative in collaboration with the Office of the Arts & Sciences Dean and the Visual Arts Program Faculty panelists: Nushelle de Silva, Assistant Professor of Art History; Terrence Mosley, Adjunct Professor, Theatre Program; Anthony A. Berry, FitzSimons Fellow; and Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Clinical Professor, Head of the Visual Arts Program
Certain abstract paintings live as maps towards our interior labyrinth. Through their silent direction we might arrive into our deepest accommodations.
Not far from our front door on 60th Street towards the Hudson River was a hill which led to a tunnel. We would enter through a hole in the metal fence. Passing trains rolled by. People lived there. Each visit was mysterious.
On one occasion a man walking on the train tracks stopped and spoke with me as he was headed deeper into the tunnel. His eyes were experienced. The conversation was brief. I am grateful for his words.
Moments of surprise ferry oxygen to my internal incandescent candle. These paintings are some of its light. — Mason Saltarrelli
Mason Saltarrelli navigates a bridge between beings and spirit by engaging with a succinct collection of discovered and abstracted characters and syllabaries. Painting and drawing intuitively—his expressiveness articulates continuing, woven motifs which invite unlimited exploration from the watcher. Saltarrelli’s jubilant work transforms human, animal and inanimate beings into buoyant embracing remembrances in an ever-evolving carousel of shape and color.
Mason Saltarrelli (b.1979, New Orleans, LA) graduated from Fordham College Lincoln Center with a B.A. in Photojournalism in 2001. His work has been shown at Turn Gallery, NYC, Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, Los Angeles, Ca, The Mass, Japan, Meessen De Clercq, Belgium, Guild Hall, East Hampton, Ace Hotel, New Orleans, Marvin Gardens, NYC, Galleri Jacob Bjorn, Denmark, Shrine Gallery, NYC, and Gallery 9, Australia among many others.
Ulrike Ottinger is described by Richard Brody of the New Yorker as “One of the crucial modern filmmakers… For Ottinger, the play of imagination is an essential realm of freedom, a way for women to defy and liberate themselves from the misogyny that’s embedded as deeply in consensus styles as in consensus politics.” As part of her New York tour, Ulrike Ottinger will screen an hour-long excerpt of her 12-hour long film, Chamissos Schatten (Chamisso’s Shadow, 2016) and then take part in a short conversation with scholar Dr. Nora Alter, who has written extensively about Ottinger’s work. More event info here.
Chamisso’s Shadow (Germany 2016, 720 min [excerpt is 53 min])
Adelbert von Chamisso accompanied the Romanzow research expedition on the Rurik from 1815 to 1818 as a botanist. Inspired by his descriptions as well as those of the other great explorers such as Forster and Anderson with Captain Cook, Steller with Bering and Humboldt I came up with the idea to create a cinematic evocation of these travel experiences, both past and present. I believe the past and the present of these journeys belong together and can’t be separated just like poor Schlemihl and his shadow in Chamisso’s ‚Wondrous Story’, where Schlemihl seeks to recover and reinstate his lost shadow as he travels through the world.
“But there on the sunny sands, a human shadow, not unlike my own, slid past, wandering alone and seemingly strayed from his Master. This sight awakened in me a powerful drive: shadow, thought I, are you looking for thy Master? Your Master I will be.” – From Schlemihl by Adelbert von Chamisso
Readings from the many, very vivid, observations from those early explorers will be combined with my visual materials. Together they contrast and complement and enter into a dialogue that tells of the loss of knowledge of ancient cultural techniques and about learning a new. The desperation and the disintegration will be manifest but maybe, in some cases, this will provide a sense of relief, for it may show that it is only through comparison with the past that progress and change can be made visible.
This event is presented by Fordham University and Microscope Gallery as part of the Fordham course Intro to Art & Engagement: Protest, Participation, the Public, and Other Performance Practices, taught by Catalina Alvarez.
Admission is free for all Fordham students with ID.
The event is conceived and organized by Catalina Alvarez, with co-organization by Jennifer Moorman. Support comes from Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning and the Departments of Theatre and Visual Arts, Communication and Media Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. The film excerpt is courtesy of the Arsenal – Institute for Film & Video Art.
In a garden, I kick at a cobblestone path. I ignore the other children and move toward my favorite plant. My licking leaf tree. I pull one of the leaves away and raise it to my mouth like a question. I turn it over, feeling the hairy side with my thumb as I run my tongue over the back of the leaf until it is floppy and creased, relishing the magic of sensation, absorbing fascination through my mouth and fingertips. Having always explored my world sensorially, I build spaces of color, light and material through multilayered painted and collaged surfaces.
The nature of things is more or less based on a binary. In my work I explore the inseparable combination of anxiety and joy I feel while anticipating the nature of things oscillating between two points, visualizing a way that binary space can be punctured and trespassed. Paint becomes an object when I cut from the cloth or page allowing me to try endless placements. Working symmetrically means each mark becomes conversational, and the subject or figure can rest behind the static. All of the swatches affixed to my paintings and installations bring the body and mind into question as structures of bondage. I imagine the compulsively wrapped and strapped edges of my paintings as corporeal and contemplative armatures that hold spectral displays inside, visions of transcendence, clarity through chroma. JAW
Artist Bio
Born, 1990 in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Jack Arthur Wood Jr. is a visual artist, writer, curator and educator based in Ridgewood, Queens. Wood studied at Guilford College, in Greensboro, NC, receiving a BA in printmaking in 2012, and earned an MFA in printmaking from Texas A&M University — Corpus Christi in 2017. Wood received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting in 2024. He has been a resident at The Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, The Wassaic Project, The Jentel Foundation, Little Bear Hill, and Tiger Lily Press. Wood has had solo / two-person presentations at Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY; My Pet Ram, New York, NY; Conduit Gallery, Ridgewood, NY; His work has been exhibited at Chozick Family Gallery, New York, NY; Chart, New York, NY; Geary Contemporary, Millerton, NY; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; 5-50 Gallery, Queens, NY; Field of Play Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Ortega Y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY; No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH; Heaven Gallery, Chicago,IL. He currently teaches at Montclair State University, in New Jersey.
Ground Meets Water: Photographs by Michael Chovan-Dalton ?>
The Fordham University Galleries Ildiko Butler Gallery June 9 – September 7, 2025 Fordham University at Lincoln Center map 113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue New York, NY 10023 fordhamuniversitygalleries
In 1993 I moved to Hoboken, New Jersey and began to explore what this latest version of home was going to mean to me. After travelling along different NJ Transit rail lines, and wandering around different train stations, I found myself being drawn to ponds, reservoirs, and rivers that had become fishing holes for families. The spiritual and adventurous interactions between parents and children, along with the feeling that a tradition or an important skill was being passed along, was fascinating and beautiful to me.
I call this work Ground Meets Water because I always felt that there was a coming together at these fishing holes, a kind of “levelling of the playing field” with me and with others. People were generous with their time, their food, and their conversation and I am grateful for that. — Michael Chovan-Dalton
Michael Chovan-Dalton is a photographer and Professor of Photography at Mercer County College in New Jersey and the Director of the JKC Gallery in Trenton NJ. He is the producer of PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf and the host of Real Photo Show podcasts. He is also a founding member and curator of the Homecoming Biennial at RIT and the media partner for the Chico Portfolio Review in Montana. His work is in the collections of SF MOMA and The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma. Chovan-Dalton received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts and his MFA from Columbia University.
Stephano
