| Topic and Destination | Leader |
|---|
| Harbor Cities: Architecture, Vision, and Experience: Hamburg | Gee |
| Oceans, seas and rivers have long provided resources favorable to the growth of urban settlements. Cities built on water shores use natural fluxes as passageways for bodies, goods and ideas from a privileged position. Their harbors became gateways to both wealth and the unknown. This course will focus on the modes of representations of the harbor city in the 20th century, placing particular emphasis on the role of imagination in its past, present and future construction. In the 19th and 20th centuries, radical and rapid changes in maritime technology and the geographies of the world economy prompted dramatic transformations in the functionalities and the identities of harbor cities across the globe. The proud jewels of the ‘economie-monde’ in the Mediterranean as well as many of the industrial bastions of the 19th century empires fell into decline, while emerging economies prompted fast-paced development of their sea-linked cities to accommodate emerging trade. Throughout this process, the relation of harbor cities to their self-perceived identity significantly evolved. A sole focus on a city’s desires and assets has become unviable. For the once remote outside world has found multiple paths of its own making to gain access to the city’s shores. The course will consider the array of visions drawn by artists, poets, architects, urban planners, politicians, entrepreneurs, and everyday inhabitants in informing the modeling of harbor cities in the context of rapid and drastic physical and mental changes. The travel part of the course will include on-site visits and observation in Hamburg, Germany, with possible day trips to Kiel and Bremen. |
| Alpine Ecosystems | Hale |
| This course examines the ecology and the management of the European Alps. It introduces students to the natural history and functions of these important ecosystems. It examines how the climate, fauna, flora, and landscapes have interacted and evolved over time. Further, it provides students an overview of threats facing these systems today, such as climate change, human use, and non-native species. It introduces students to research methods used to study mountain environments and impacts of management activities. The travel portion will visit sites in the Central and Western Alps to study natural environments in situ and connect students with local researchers and organizations active in the field. Students will spend significant time outdoors in the field in a variety of weather. Access to some sites will require moderate amounts of hiking in mountainous terrain. Previous coursework in biology or environmental science encouraged. |
| Marketing for Movies (Italy) | Miniero |
| This course will expose students to the challenges of creating a market for artistic products, in particular for movies. Marketing movies requires a deep understanding of the needs consumers are trying to satisfy when deciding to consume an experience. At the same time, dealing with artists and managers of artistic institutions requires a solid understanding of their mindset and the intrinsic motivations for creating artistic pieces. There is thus a constant trade off between market orientation and product orientation. This course will focus in particular on understanding the specifics of creative production and aligning it with the right audience. Students will learn how to create a marketing plan for such an endeavor.
The travel component will explore two cities in Italy, Rome and Bologna, so as to take advantage of the Rome Film Festival and the Cineteca (in Bologna). |
| Reading the Postcolonial City: Berlin and Hamburg | Roy |
| Colonialism has left its traces not only very obviously on the former colonies themselves but also on the face of the cities of the colonisers. Host of the “Congo Conference” that carved up the continent in 1885, Germany was late into the “scramble for Africa.” However, it has long been implicated in colonialism through trade, scientific exploration, and Hamburg’s position as a “hinterland” of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Seeking to explore colonial echoes in less obvious places, namely in contemporary Berlin and Hamburg, the course asks how we can remember colonialism in the modern world, become conscious of its traces, and encourage critical thinking about the connections between colonialism, migration and globalization.
As an Academic Travel, this course will include an on-site component where the class will team up with postcolonial focus groups in Berlin and Hamburg, going onto the street and into the museum to retrace the cities’ colonial connections, and to experience and engage with the colonial past through performance-based activities. |
| European Food Systems: You Are Where You Eat | Steinert Borella |
| In this course, students will explore the cultures that produce and are reproduced by our current food systems in Europe, touching upon the local, national and global dimensions. This course will examine the cultural, ecological, political, and geographic forces at work influencing the chain of production from farm to table. In particular, students will consider the contemporary food systems in Italy and Switzerland as well as their cultural and historical roots. Students will learn more about what it takes to become an active food citizen as the class considers where food comes from here in Europe and how the food we eat shapes who we are, both literally and figuratively. This course includes a travel component to Italy and Switzerland where students will study first hand some of the concepts discussed, including terroir, slow food, and local farm to table movements. |
| Communication, Fashion, and the Formation of Taste (Italy) | Sugiyama |
| The sense of taste, whether it refers to the metaphorical sense of taste (aesthetic discrimination) or the literal sense of taste (gustatory taste), is a fundamental part of human experiences. This Academic Travel course examines various ways that communication processes shape our sense of taste in the contemporary society. It will explore topics such as the taste for food, clothing and accessories, music, and other cultural activities applying key theories and concepts of communication, fashion, and taste. Ultimately, the course seeks to develop an understanding of how interpersonal, intercultural, and mediated communication in our everyday life plays a critical role in the formation of individual taste as well as collective taste. In order to achieve this objective, field observations and site visits will be planned during the Academic Travel period. |
| Central Europe: An Urban History (Italy, Switzerland, Germany) | Pyka |
| This Academic Travel course seeks to explore urban development and urban planning of Central European cities from Antiquity to the Present. The course investigates the specific development of cities in Central Europe, both north and south of the Alps, with an emphasis on the legacies of Roman antiquity, the Christian (and Jewish) legacy of the Middle Ages, the role of princely residences, and of bourgeois middle classes. An important part plays also the various political movements of the 20th century, including the architectural fantasies of National Socialism, and the attempts post-World War II to deal with this legacy in a democratic society. The course asks in which way the interplay of tradition and modernity over time has structured not only the physical shapes of cities, but even the mindsets of the population. The travel component of this course features day trips to the Roman foundation of Como (Italy) and the oldest still standing structure in Switzerland in Riva San Vitale (Ticino), and a major excursion to the three most important cities in Bavaria: Nuremberg, Regensburg, and Munich (Germany). |
| Measuring the Alps | Prisner |
| People live in three-dimensional space but are restricted to the earth surface which is usually locally flat, two-dimensional. But when entering the Alps, the third dimension of height becomes important when describing location or movement. This is also expressed by the fact that in the mountains a map is not too useful---rather a topographic map is needed. Starting with a description of the Alps or any mountains by topographic maps, or mathematically as functions with two independent variables, students will investigate how certain well-known features are reflected by the topography of the area . Examples are the location of mountain brooks, watersheds, movement of glaciers, avalanches, and rockfall. Students will also investigate the question of visibility in the mountains, whether and how it is possible to predict what can be seen from where. A further aspect is GPS technology. During the travel, the class will visit various places in the Swiss, Austrian, and Italian Alps, such as Davos, Innsbruck, Villnoess. Students will hike and measure, but will also discuss questions relevant to Alpine life, such as glaciers, avalanches or rockfall forecasts. If possible, the class will also visit places where such research is conducted. The course includes one mandatory weekend hike in September in addition to the ordinary travel in October. Hiking boots are required. |
| Spain: Politics, Culture and Society | Mottale, Schwak |
| This course will introduce students to the contemporary politics of Spain and the issues that are confronting its policy makers and people. The focus will be mainly on the evolution of Spanish society since the Spanish civil war and the cultural, economic, and social trends that have shaped its political system to date. The travel component includes areas of neighboring France and Northern Spain. The purpose of this course is to help students develop deeper insights into the political origins of contemporary Spanish society. Recommended POL 100. |
| International Environmental Politics (Switzerland) | Zanecchia |
| The resolution of global environmental problems has been problematic for nation-states. Hence, international cooperation is essential for exploring and applying solutions. This course will first examine the origins of environmental problems facing nations such as climate change, desertification, pollution, and international trade in endangered species. Further topics for investigation will include the impact of globalization and the feasibility of sustainable development in the industrial north and developing south, as well as the effectiveness of international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and CITES. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Fall 2020 semester course will include an academic travel destination in Switzerland (instead of Southern Africa), including planned visits to Pro Natura nature reserves, the WWF in Zurich, the Swiss Climate Alliance, and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. The experiential component may also include site visits to examples of sustainable development within Switzerland as well as overnight hikes to Swiss alpine habitats. |
| Documentary & Street Photography on Location: Berlin and Munich | Fassl |
| This course will investigate the particularities of both documentary and street photography through readings and studio projects. It will shed light on the history of photography; how the visual world communicates, studying the interaction of photography with other visual media; and will pay specific attention to the semiotic potential and challenges of photography. Students will engage in a project that relates to the location of the travel component of the class, documenting a subject of their choice. The Academic Travel destination will be Munich with additional day excursions to Bavaria and Austria. |
