Winter Session 2009
We anticipate offering the following programs for Winter Session 2009 - 10. More information will be available on our web page in August. Until then, you may review information about the classes offered during Winter Session 2008-09, and/or contact the Office for Study Abroad for updates and information, especially about our new programs.
BRAZIL: Carnival, Music & Dance
This program offers students the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary and foundational learning in the area of dance through interaction with and exploration of two main aspects of Brazilian popular culture: Samba and Carnival. Students gain first-hand experience with all aspects of preparation for Brazilian Carnival by exploring dance, music, historical and social contexts, production, critical theories of performance, religious backgrounds and theater making in the Carnival Parades, from current to centuries-old tradition. The program is led by faculty director Prof. Armando Duarte of the University of Iowa Department of Dance.
ENGLAND: Literature & Culture of the Middle Ages
NEW! for Winter 2009-10:
This course will combine reading and analyzing some of the greatest medieval literature and an exploration of the culture within which it was produced. Major readings will include excerpts from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Beowulf and other Old English poetry, Anglo-Saxon charters and lawcodes, excerpts from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and Margery Kempe’s Book. Literary and historical readings will be grounded and contextualized by visits to historic sites and museums. While some previous knowledge of medieval literature is desirable, it is not required. The course will be the equivalent to 008:101/162:101 Literature and Culture of the Middle Ages and the 3 s.h. credit will transfer to that course, with special arrangements for students who have already taken a different version of that course at Iowa. The course will be taught by Prof. Jonathan Wilcox of the University of Iowa Department of English.
ENGLAND: Undergraduate International Business:
The Henry B. Tippie College of Business sponsors this intersession course each winter. It is designed to provide students with an international experience in London. During the two-week course, students attend class, hear guest lectures, and explore business issues through field trips. Students also have free time to visit historic and cultural attractions and experience what's trendy in shops, restaurants, and theatre and entertainment venues. The experience is memorable for both seasoned travelers and those who have not traveled abroad. It also provides an opportunity for students with demanding academic schedules who may not be able to study abroad during a year-long or semester-length program to gain a valuable international perspective.
This year's program will feature two classes, one in London taught by Ty Leverty (Finance & Risk Management) and one in London & Madrid taught by Cathy Cole (Marketing). Download the application here.
GREECE: City of Athens
NEW! for Winter 2009-10:
The “City of Athens” course examines this city from the Bronze Age to the present. The course examines archeological, literary, and other evidence in order to reconstruct the narratives that gave this city and its inhabitants their identity over time. In a course of this nature, the ideal situation is for the students actually to walk through the city and in so doing gain a first-hand knowledge of the relationship of its ancient and modern layout. This study abroad winter session program affords an opportunity to do just that. For example, students will get a vivid sense of the relationship of the fifth-century-Pnyx, where the first democratic assemblies in the western world took place, to the Acropolis, where the city worshipped Athena, the symbol of its particular type of politics and identity. Seeing the vistas provided from each site, and the spatial relationship of these and many other sites examined in the course will make sense out of the most basic elements of the curriculum, and will provide students with the broadest possible understanding of the history of this fascinating city that was so important in the development of the western ideas and institutions. The course will be taught by Prof. Mary Depew of the University of Iowa Classics Department. She can be contacted with questions about the academic content at mary-depew@uiowa.edu
The City of Athens winter 09-10 program fee has been tentatively set at $1732 per student, with 1 s.h. of credit offered. The program fee includes tuition, housing, scheduled meals (all breakfasts, some dinners,) on-site orientation activities, program-sponsored activities and excursions, most local transportation for program-sponsored activities and study abroad administrative fees. The program fee does not include the non-refundable application fee of $50, round trip airfare (approximately $1100,) passport fees ($100,) recommended immunizations, health insurance coverage, some meals during excursions (approximately $454) and any personal expenses.
INDIA: International Development
This winter session course allows students to explore their interests in social entrepreneurship, global health, microfinance, ecological sustainability or other development issues in Tamil Nadu, India. Four sections—in business, social work, geography/sustainable development, and public health—were offered during 2008-09. 64 UI students participated in the program, working with Indian NGOs employing a diverse variety of techniques to address social problems such as child labor, unemployment, poverty, healthcare for the poor, illiteracy, community waste management, and schools for the handicapped. The sections offered during winter 09-10 will be announced early in the fall semester.
JAPAN: Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima
NEW! for Winter 2009-10
This course explores competing narratives of the Pacific War during World War II in the public spaces of war and peace memorials and museums in America and Japan. The goal of the course is to examine how World War II has been remembered and written into each nation’s history in diverse and often contrasting ways. The program begins in Oahu, Hawaii where students will spend a week at the East West Center in Honolulu and visit the USS Arizona and USS Missouri War Memorials at Pearl Harbor. In Japan students will be based in Kyoto, the center of the “old Japan,” where students will visit the Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University and tour cultural sites not destroyed by the war. From Kyoto students will take trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities on which the US dropped atomic bombs, visiting their Peace Parks and Museums, and to Tokyo where students will visit Yasakuni Shrine, the controversial Shinto site where the war dead are venerated by the state, and The Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages, which memorializes the American B-29 firebombing of Tokyo. This course will be team taught by Prof. Mary Ann Rasmussen of the Department of English and Prof. Stephen Vlastos of the Department of History.
ST. LUCIA: Community-based Health Care:
Program participants will learn about St. Lucian health care issues and health care practice through conducting a modified community assessment. The focus of this program will include provision of a culturally appropriate diabetes education program. This will include training Health Centre personnel as well as implementing a health clinic in the community setting. Non-nursing students will work with Dr. Skemp and their disciplinary advisor on objectives and expectations prior to departure. This program is open to graduate and undergraduate students in good standing with an appropriate academic background. Ideally undergraduate nursing students should have senior standing in the College of Nursing and have taken 96:154.Non-senior nursing students are eligible upon obtaining special permission from Dr. Kelley. Students from other disciplines must have requirements approved by their discipline faculty advisor/sponsor.
TANZANIA: Introduction to Africa
NEW! for Winter 2009-10
The course provides students with a closely guided initial experience in Africa. UI professors with extensive experience in Tanzania will take students there for three weeks during the winter break. Instruction will focus on East African history (including the precolonial, colonial and contemporary periods) on the various cultures of Tanzania (including its Islamic heritage), and on Tanzania’s national language, Kiswahili. Students who have prior coursework in Kiswahili will concentrate on conversational proficiency, but will also gain an introduction to history and culture. Students who have prior course work in African history will concentrate on history and culture, but will also learn a basic survival vocabulary in Kiswahili. The course will be based in Dar es Salaam, East Africa’s largest city, and will include visits to historical and cultural sites in the Dar es Salaam region. Students will live with Tanzanian families in a residential suburb of Dar es Salaam, and will be able to become familiar with everyday neighborhood life. The course will also include one trip outside Dar es Salaam, either to the island of Zanzibar or to a village in rural Iringa region.