For this degree component, each student independently attends and reviews at least ten scholarly lectures, conferences, exhibitions, or other approved events over the course of the academic year: five events in Fall semester and five events in Spring semester. Rome is especially rich in opportunities for extraordinary intellectual expansion and enrichment thanks to its unique wealth of scholarly academies, learned societies, universities, embassies, museums, and libraries, each with its own public programming. Talks, conferences, and special exhibitions outside of Rome are also acceptable objects of review, provided they are pertinent to the foci of our MA: the arts of Rome and the Mediterranean; and art-historical research conducted from the primary record. Reviews should be 350—700 words long; written in formal, correct, carefully proofread scholarly English; footnoted where appropriate; and uploaded to the course website no more than ten days after the event reviewed takes place. The five reviews for a given semester must be submitted no later than the last day of classes of the semester in question. All first-year students must register for and complete this component in Fall and Spring semesters.