Teaching Through Italy: A Guide to In Situ Studies

In this richly visual course, Dr. Christopher Perrin welcomes Karen Moore and Dr. Grant Horner as they guide teachers through the living classroom of Italy, where art, literature, history, and language meet in their original settings.

The journey begins with peripatetic lessons through Rome, Florence, and Venice, showing how to teach “on site.” From the Pantheon and Forum to Brunelleschi’s dome and Venice’s canals, educators learn to read cities as layered texts of monarchy, republic, empire, and faith. A visit to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Ostia Antica models how to help students interpret ancient streets, houses, and shrines as expressions of Roman order and imagination.

Later lessons turn to masterpieces that unite art, theology, and literature: obelisks, the Ara Pacis, frescoes, mosaics, sculpture, columns, and arches. Primary Latin sources—Pliny, Vergil, Vitruvius, Tacitus, Josephus—are read alongside these works to demonstrate how text and artifact together reveal the ancient mind.

Throughout, Moore and Horner show how in-situ learning can happen both abroad and at home, providing models and resources for teachers who wish to make Italy—or their own classrooms—a setting where beauty, story, and design form the moral imagination.

Karen T. Moore holds a BA in Classics from the University of Texas and an MSc in Classical Art & Archaeology awarded with distinction by the University of Edinburgh. She is an author of the Latin Alive! textbook series and the Libellus de Historia History Reader series, both published by Classical Academic Press as well as multiple other resources for Latin educators. Karen has served as Chair of Classical Languages at Grace Academy in Georgetown, Texas, since 2002, where she built the 3-12th grade classical language program. In addition, Karen also teaches courses as an adjunct professor of Classics with Houston Christian University. She has also served in a variety of administrative roles including upper school lead teacher and director of curriculum and instruction. Karen continues to teach classical languages and ancient humanities at Grace Academy and serves as the director for their annual Senior Tour of Italy. As a teacher, she has a unique ability to instill an enthusiasm for classical literature and languages in students of all ages and skill levels. Karen and her husband Bryan are the proud parents of three Grace Academy Alumni.

Professor Grant Horner is a scholar of Renaissance and Reformation literature, theology, and philosophy with a PhD in literature from Claremont Graduate University. His research centers on Christian Humanism and the interplay between emerging Reformed thought and classical Graeco-Roman myth and philosophy, with primary concentrations in Milton, Shakespeare, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin. Mentored at Duke by Stanley Fish, he has published on theology and the arts, Milton, and Calvin. His books include Meaning at the Movies (Crossway, 2010), John Milton, Classical Learning, and the Progress of Virtue (Classical Academic Press, 2015), and shorter works on Dracula and Paradise Lost. At The Master’s University he twice received “Professor of the Year” (2001, 2007) and founded and directs the six-week Italy Program in Florence, with study in Rome and Venice around the humanist question quid est homo?  An Alcuin Fellow, he helped establish the upper school and designed the original Humanities program for the Rhetoric School at Trinity Classical Academy in Los Angeles, where he later served as chair and continues to mentor teachers. He also holds an appointment as Visiting Assistant Professor of Latin at Fuller Seminary and works with early printed books and rare manuscripts at The Huntington Library. A frequent speaker on theology, philosophy, and popular culture, he has made 100+ radio and TV appearances and has lectured at Berkeley and Caltech. He and his wife, Joanne, live in Santa Clarita, California, enjoy watching and discussing films. When not sailing the Channel Islands—he pursues world-class climbing, including multiple one-day ascents of Yosemite’s El Capitan and a sub-24-hour “Nose” ascent in 12:52.

To learn more about earning a certificate for this course, please visit “How do I Obtain a Course Certificate?” on our FAQ page. Our course certificates are valued by classical schools and co-ops worldwide. Teachers certified with either ACSI or ACCS will see continuing education unit (CEU) credits listed on our course certificate for you to submit to either organization (with more information on certification credit here).