May 2023 Travel Courses
Applications for May Term 2023 travel courses were due by the end of the day on Monday, October 3, 2022. As of February 6, 2023, all courses are closed.
We expect to open up applications for May Term 2024 travel courses on or around July 1, 2023.
[CLOSED] INQ-177-J Irish and British Theatre
Instructor: Dr. Nelson Barre
Prerequisites: Permission
Fee: $4,500
On location in Ireland and Britain: May 14-31, 2023, tentative
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs and Fortnightly Scholarships
How are cultural values of Ireland and England reflected in their art, specifically through theatre? This on-site course seeks to answer this question through travels between Ireland and England, focusing primarily on the experiences of theatre and art. All levels are welcome: for some it could be an introduction while others will deepen their understanding of theatre and its artistic forms. You will be expected to attend shows and explore the places where we are traveling. We will respond to plays on the page, through some analysis and discussion. Then we will attend performances, after there will be discussion of various aspects (from acting and design to content and the audience experience). The goal of the course is to cultivate your ability to write and speak critically about this art form and the many aspects that go into its production.
[CLOSED] INQ-177-K The Physics of Music in Austria and Hungary
Instructor: Dr. Daniel Robb
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $4,000
On-campus AND on location in Austria and Hungary: Likely May 15-May 30, 2023 – with the travel portion from May 20-30, 2023
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs and Fortnightly Scholarships
Austria and Hungary have strong scientific traditions, with Austria particularly strong in physics and Hungary in mathematics. Both countries have a rich musical culture, especially in the cities of Vienna and Budapest. We will travel in Austria and Hungary to explore the fascinating connection between physics and music, and to learn a little bit of the German and Hungarian languages. While enjoying the beauty of Vienna and Budapest, we will consider questions such as: How do the principles of physics underlie the creation, movement, and perception of sound? Does an understanding of the physics underlying sound enhance the aesthetic experience of music? No previous knowledge of physics or of the German or Hungarian language is assumed, and no mathematics is required beyond high school algebra.
[CLOSED] INQ/I.R./POLI 277-B Cooperation & Conflict: A Ground Level View of the Politics of the Middle East
Instructor: Dr. Jonathan Snow
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $6,020
On location in Israel and the West Bank: May 7 -24, 2023, tentative
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, Fortnightly, and Fowler Legacy Scholarships
This course explores the cooperation and discord between Arabs and Jews in the modern Middle East and offers a unique insight into the various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict through exposure to a wide range of sites, narratives, politics, and initiatives in this holy land shared and claimed by both sides. By visiting critical locations and engaging with a variety of actors, participants will acquire a broad understanding of the conflict, its complexity, and its possible resolutions or evolutions. Students will explore the central questions: Is this conflict as intractable as it is often presented? What changes will be necessary to effectuate a positive transformation of the status quo? And, how does the conflict affect the day-to-day lives of the region's inhabitants?
[CLOSED] INQ-277-F Basic Leadership Practices: Hawaii
Instructors: Dr. Michelle Hagadorn and Professor Jonathan Flittner
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $5,975
On location in Hawaii: May 9 - 24, 2023
Eligible for scholarship support: Fortnightly Scholarships
This course explores key leadership practices for accomplishing group and organizational goals. Leadership is learnable and through course readings, self-assessment, speakers, and site visits students will develop their leadership skills, as well as identify traits and styles of effective leaders. This course may count as an elective in the Business major and/or be substituted for BUAD 264 in the requirements for the Business major and concentrations.
Over 15 days we will visit 4 of the Hawaiian Islands, each with a focus on different aspects of leadership. Our first stop will be Kona where leadership and disaster preparedness will be highlighted with a visit to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Then on to Maui where leadership and tourism will be explored with a workshop at the 5-Star Four Seasons Resort. Next will be the island of Kauai where teamwork skills will be developed including a ropes course and outrigger canoe experience. The last stop will be Oahu with a visit to Pearl Harbor and the Pacific Air Command featuring leadership in the military.
[CLOSED] INQ/HIST-277-R The American Tourist in Rome
Instructors: Dr. Mary Henold and Professor Giuliana Chapman
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $5,300
On location in Italy: May 15 - 30, 2023, tentative
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, and Fortnightly Scholarships
This unique course, taught by an Italian professor and a historian, combines both language instruction and historical study to prepare students for meaningful travel to Rome. Students will spend a week on campus in language study to gain basic communication skills in Italian. They will then spend two weeks in Rome where they will have the opportunity to practice their skills. While in Rome we will read American travelogues and fiction from the 19th and early 20th centuries to explore how Americans have imagined and responded to "the Eternal City" in the past. Students will have the opportunity to experience the same sites visited by earlier American visitors, compare their responses, and write their own travelogues to articulate a twenty-first century perspective on being an American in Rome.
[CLOSED] INQ/HIST-277-S Japan in the Long Twentieth Century
Instructor: Dr. Stella Xu
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $5,500
On location in Japan: May 15 - 29, 2023
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, Fortnightly, and Fowler Legacy Scholarships
How did the Japanese people live through the turbulent course of events in the twentieth century? How have people remembered and commemorated this century? This course helps students take a close look at Japanese history and culture through the direct experience of visiting museums, historical sites, and conducting conversation with local people to learn about their experience and memory of the past century. We will visit three major cities, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. Important sites to be visited include the Tokyo National Museum; Yūshūkan, a modern history museum inside the Yasukuni Shrine; Showakan (National Showa Memorial Museum, a museum of Japanese history from 1926-1989); the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and the Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum. Through these visits, students will explore multiple layers of Japanese history, culture, and the daily life of Japanese people. We will also visit Kansai Kaidai, the Japanese university with which Roanoke College has a direct exchange program.
[CLOSED] INQ/HIST-277-T Pausanias' Grand Tour of Greece
Instructor: Dr. Jason Hawke
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $5,600
On location in Greece: May 15 - 31, 2023, tentative
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, and Fortnightly Scholarships
Pausanias, a 2nd-century AD Greek living under Roman rule, visited sites of past glory and wrote an informative travelogue and cultural history of ancient Greece. Students will travel in his footsteps, a journey that will take them to Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Delphi, among other sites. Students will experience firsthand the monuments of ancient Greece and the modern presentation of them and confront the landscapes that Pausanias describes. In reflecting upon their own reactions and Pausanias’ account of the ancient Greek past and its remains, students will interpret their responses to Greece ancient and modern. By immersing ourselves in Pausanias’ account, relevant modern scholarship, and visiting the landscapes Pausanias once beheld, we will be able to consider the interplay among the physical and imagined pasts, and think about the ways we construct identities through the conversations we choose to have with those pasts and how we conduct them.
[CLOSED] INQ/ARTH-277-U The Italian Grand Tour
Instructor: Dr. Julia Sienkewicz
Prerequisite: Permission
Fee: $5,850
On location in Italy: May 10 - 24, 2023, tentative
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, and Fortnightly Scholarships
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artists, scholars, and socialites alike embarked in a practice called the “Grand Tour,” as a crucial, and often the final, stage in their educations. Travelling through Continental Europe (and for American artists, also the voyage to the United Kingdom) allowed individuals to see significant sites and works of art, as well as to participate in vibrant communities of like-minded individuals. This course will consider the cultural, historical, and artistic phenomenon that was the “Grand Tour.” This intensive learning course is designed to immerse students in the experience of the grand tour, both by visiting sites central to the historical grand tour and also by inviting students to enter into the role of grand tourists.
[CLOSED] INQ/SPAN-377-A Walking the Camino de Santiago
Instructor: Dr. Lynn Talbot
Prerequisite: SPAN-202
Fee: $3,650
On location in Spain: May 8 - 31, 2023
Eligible for scholarship support: Measure of a Maroon, Cobbs, and Fortnightly Scholarships
Why did medieval peoples choose to walk hundreds of miles to visit relics? Why do people today choose to follow these same routes? Discover the answers to these questions as we walk the ancient Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across northern Spain. We will visit medieval shrines, study art, architecture, and history while sharing the path, meals and pilgrim dormitories with hundreds of other modern-day pilgrims. Instructor: Talbot. This course will be taught in Spanish.