Study Abroad
Oxford | Cuba | Germany | New Zealand | Italy
This is a summer program designed to provide students with the opportunity to take classes through Wadham College, Oxford. Trips that can include visits to Stratford, London, Blenheim, and the Lake District allow student to approach English literature through its geographical and historical contexts.
Contact Dr. Tricia McElroy for more information.
Click here for more information and to register.
"Cuban and American Literary Encounters" - Professors Emily Wittman & Nikhil Bilwakesh - Interim 2012: May 7-25; Cuba Trip: May 17-26
In this unique international interim offering, we will explore literary and personal exchanges between the United States and Cuba. The course will consist of an intense preparatory week and a half of coursework on the U of A campus, followed by ten days in Cuba. The fraught history of the United States and Cuba features a long and rich politically refracted literary conversation. In this course, we will research this multifaceted conversation, with particular attention to novels, stories, essays, letters, poems, and films that consider the encounters and expatriate experiences of North Americans in Cuba and Cubans in the United States.
In Cuba, we will stay at the historic Hotel Nacional- an object of study in itself - in central Havana. Our trip will include excursions to the village of Cojimar (site of Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea), Hemingway's residences at Ambos Mundos, and Finca Vigía—Hemingway's home of twenty years—and the site of the celebrated Hemingway Museum. We will also visit and examine memorials and monuments in Havana that reflect the long and changing relationship between the United States and Cuba. Guided events will include a visit to the Yoruba Cultural Center and guest lectures from some of the foremost scholars and historians in Cuba. We have also planned several outings to dance and musical events that will expose students to contemporary Cuba's vibrant literary and cultural scenes.
Readings will include numerous works by Ernest Hemingway and Cuba's literary hero, José Martí, as well as works by Nicolás Guillén (as translated by Langston Hughes), Allen Ginsberg, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Cirilo Villaverde, Reinaldo Arenas, and Cristina García, as well as Cuban and American films, photography, and music.
Requirements include a term paper that will involve independent research in Cuba, a travel journal, and two creative/scholarly assignments: a "Dispatch from Cuba" and a Hemingway pastiche.
The program is open to students from all disciplines. Prior knowledge of Spanish is not required. The admission process involves an interview. Interested students should contact Drs. Wittman (ewittman@ua.edu) and Bilwakesh (nbilwakesh@ua.edu).
Click here for a brochure with more information.
The AL in Germany program is based primarily in Berlin and a collaboration between the German program and the Department of English. The last week of the 5-week course of study features travel to Munich and other areas in Bavaria. Throughout the program, the group will visit sites relating to the history of Nazi Germany and East Germany's Communist past. Students at all levels of German language study, including beginners, are eligible to apply for the program. All students will be required to take a least one of the content courses that will be taught in English; Nazi Germany-Past and Present (Dr. Thomas Fox) or Communist Germany-Transnational Transgressions (Dr. Steffen Guenzel).
At a time when literary scholars emerge on both sides of the Atlantic to reevaluate the status of European and American literatures historically tied to ideologies of the nation-state, this class offers opportunities to explore and conceptualize issues and tendencies in the area of global literary studies. Responding to the consequences of globalization, both literary criticism and comparative studies create a space in which we can address new conditions and their impact on literature. What happens when authors leave their native countries in search of understanding the larger world? How does their view of the place they have left behind change? How do they view the place where they write?
Students will study a variety of texts helping them to understand a theoretical framework that puts various literatures and cultures in a new context. Based on new theoretical perceptions, students will explore texts by W. G. Sebald, James Baldwin, Christa Wolf, and Bruce Chatwin, and will use them as models for their own writing. Applying theories from the study of critical essays, students will learn how changing one’s physical space can change one’s world view as part of an individual’s quest for understanding the world.
Contact Dr. Steffen Guenzel for more information.
Click here for more information and to register.
The University of Alabama will conduct its third annual summer program to New Zealand from June 6 through June 29, 2012. Students will be based in Wellington, New Zealand's cosmopolitan capital, named by Lonely Planet as "the coolest little capital in the world" and the world's 4th best city to visit. It's also home to Peter Jackson's film studios. In addition to class time, students will have the opportunity to attend a Lord of the Rings day tour, a live session of New Zealand's parliament, a Super 15 rugby match at Westpac Stadium (subject to home game availability), spend a day at the Kapiti Island bird sanctuary, visit New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa, and attend professional live theatre at one of Wellington's three professional theatre companies.
During the middle of the program, the program will fly to Queenstown, in the heart of the South Island and spend five nights in the world's outdoor adventure capital. In Queenstown students will have a two-day break from class and have the opportunity to take day trips to the South Island fjords (Milford Sound or Doubtful Sound), go skiing (subject to snow), and other outdoor related activities.
Students participating in the University of Alabama in New Zealand program will have the option of taking two of the following three classes:
EN 311/UH 300/ BUI 301:
The Final Cut: Exploring Philosophies of Content in Tolkien's (and Jackson's!) Lord of the Rings, a study of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as his current work on The Hobbit.
EN 408 / JN 491 / EN 455 / BUI 301 / UH 300:
Travel Writing, a class on the theories and practices of travel writing whilst studying abroad. Students will write and respond creatively to class readings including producing a lengthy final critical or creative essay.
EN 208 / WL 208 / EN 329 (independent study):
A survey class on World Literature from the Enlightenment to the present day, including such writers as Moliere, Voltaire, Dostoevsky, Rilke, Baudelaire, Ichiyo, Pirandello, among others.
Watch the program video on YouTube.
Contact Tim Croft for more information.
Click here for more information and to register.
This summer program provides students with the opportunity to take classes in English literature at the University of Florence, Italy.
