Apprentice Jon Atkinson gathered materials for Professor Lovell’s new course, “The Idea of the Villa.” Atkinson collaborated with a research team, researching Antique, Renaissance, 18th-century British and American villas from antiquity to the present. The research focused not only on the structures but also on the literature, paintings, agricultural and political context of villas, and the economic base which makes these structures logical, desirable, and possible in so many cultures over such a long stretch of time. The team investigated the language of retreat with which so many of these structures are associated, and the gardens, parks, and agricultural fields with which so many are marked off from landscapes of production, industry, and commerce. Specific issues were explored, including civic responsibility, engagement, and virtue, as well as the opposing (and more obvious in the villa context) issues of private life, social retreat, and engagement with nature.