Global Experience Seminars are short, study-away opportunities led by Beloit College faculty in the summer.
Beloit professors and students climb down a steep trail along the Yellow River in China. Credit: Ziming (Simon) Wu'20
Take your first step toward a lifetime of global engagement through a Global Experience Seminar: a3-week summer course where students have the chance to study off-campus, often internationally.
Students receive 1.5 units of Beloit College credit.
Location: Beloit College and San Juan, Puerto Rico
Dates: May 15th-June 5th
Faculty leader: Prof. Michael Dango, English
Credit: 1.5 unit
This course looks at the history and literature from and about U.S. territories beyond the 50 states, with a special focus on Puerto Rico in the 20th and 21st centuries. The writings of these territories document, reflect, and interrupt the history of U.S. imperialism and migration—a global history that is not as frequently covered in U.S. textbooks.
We look at the legacies of colonization and efforts by writers and activists to decolonize literature and lands alike. In Puerto Rico, we consider how these legacies and efforts have left their mark on the local landscape, economy, and culture
Rome is a city of ghosts, of sharp juxtapositions between ancient and modern, then and now. It is haunted by a past that also sustains it, culturally and economically. Some ghosts are sanctioned, others are not; some are displayed, some reveal themselves, and others have to be sought. This course engages students in an imaginative approach to the ancient and modern city, exploring its past and present and learning how our own experiences (of history, urban spaces, culture, and even college itself) inevitably change the landscape of our investigation.
Students spend a week in Beloit immersing themselves in Roman history, calibrating approaches to on-site study, and planning for study abroad. The class then travels to Italy, where we spend ten days hunting the ghosts of Rome—those that live there, and those we bring with us.
See photos from students who have participated on this program: @beloitinrome
Location: Beloit College, Berlin, Germany and Krakow, Poland
Dates: May 15th-June 5th
Faculty leader: Prof. Eric Boynton, Philosophy
Credit: 1.5 unit
This travel course is an investigation of various monuments and museums in Berlin, Germany and Krakow, Poland that commemorate the atrocity of the Holocaust. These public commemorations serve as compelling examples of a nation’s attempt to acknowledge the profound failures of their past and work through them to imagine a less violent future.
We study how these public monuments and museums help a nation reckon with its past and consider their architectural relationship to the urban environment. We analyze the many strategies used to grapple with the commemoration of mass death in monumental form—what artists include and ignore, their methods of presentation within the built environment, and the evolving ways specific monuments and museums have been received and understood over time.
We consider the motivation for commemorating past atrocities and how memorials can pose questions that are sometimes more important than answers when fashioning a different, more just future, and coming to terms with national and cultural failures.
