Summer 2013 was an exciting season for CHID’s study abroad programs, with both established and new programs taking place across the globe. With six summer programs, CHID continues to be at the forefront of rigorous, imaginative, and challenging global learning opportunities for students across the UW campus.
Among CHID’s established programs, Christoph Giebel led another successful trip to Viet Nam, and Anu Taranath brought students to Bangalore, India. At both sites, students combined their academic work with heavy community engagement and service learning, grappling with issues of social justice, global activism, and historical remembrance. Christina Wygant and Greg Guedel’s students explored “Das Deutsche Problem” in Bavaria, considering the fraught issue of German cultural identity in historical perspective. Norman and Zorica Wacker’s Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia program allowed students to witness an auspicious moment—Croatia’s official accession to the European Union—while discussing the continuing challenges for the region with policymakers, politicians, and other prominent figures.
CHID launched two new programs this summer, expanding both the geographical and interdisciplinary reach of our study abroad programs. Phillip Thurtle and his students travelled to the Faroe Islands, a small archipelago between Norway and Iceland (technically under Danish sovereignty). Students produced creative projects that explored the “sonic encounters” occurring at the intersection of the human and non-human worlds. Students were incredibly successful in engaging with local musicians and even live-streamed the islands’ biggest music event, the G! Festival (for pictures, videos, and more, see CHID student Alaia D'Alessandro’s blog project at www.phonicearth.com).
Finally, Stacey Moran and Adam Nocek’s students researched Dutch design in Amsterdam and the role of human creativity in the construction of the worlds around us. There, too, students developed their own design projects, and, like Phillip’s students, questioned the simple division between the “natural” and the “constructed.”
Of course, study abroad happens year-round in CHID, with Vera Sokolova and her husband Michael Smith leading their long-running Prague program right now. We are also excited to have next quarter mark the inaugural run of our new “Legacies of Empires: Power and Diversity in Rome, Budapest and Istanbul” that will take students to Rome, Budapest, and Istanbul with Ruggero Taradel and Erin Clowes.
As always, we have a full roster of programs lined up for the next year and we continue to take pride in the fact that CHID still holds the UW title for the academic unit that sends the most students abroad. To learn more about what we have coming up, please visit our study abroad page.