Venice: Becoming a Venetian

    For the past week and a half, I have been studying abroad in Venice, Italy, with Dr. Mehnaz Afridi's enriching RELS 300 program. My first experience with Italy and its culture came from my high school Italian teacher. From her, I learned a lot about the beauty of the Italian language, cuisine, and culture. For years I have desired to see Italy and the Adriatic for myself, a dream that has just been fulfilled. 

    Manhattan College and its students are fortunate to be based in an extremely diverse urban center where you can experience a small dose of just about every culture in the world. Yet, here we are on the 1600th anniversary of Venice's founding, doing a deep dive into its religious history and getting first-hand experiences with this city's rich culture. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the connected Abrahamic religions and Venice is a case study of how these faiths and their followers have interacted with each other over the years. A large part of what we have spent the past two weeks learning about is what it means to be Venetian. I now recognize that there is a historical legacy to Venice that distinguishes it from the rest of Italy. One of the guest lecturers we were visited by, Dr. Shaul Bassi, described it best- Venice is a cosmopolitan city that was once on the level of New York City in the premodern world. 

    Studying abroad has been such an amazing experience for me because I have been given the chance to continue my academic career while engaging in the culture of this beautiful city. There is such a deep multicultural and religiously diverse history to Venice that it can be felt to this day. From our trips to the Jewish ghetto to observing the adaptation of Ottoman architecture to touring the grand Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica, I feel that I have truly experienced La Serenissima. I owe this opportunity to a lot of factors and have much to be grateful for, not least of all the Michael '58 and Aimee Kakos Scholarship which has supported me in being able to make the most out of my cultural emergence abroad.