Travel Courses
Each year the UHP offers a number of special “travel” courses that transport professor and students to the areas studied in the classroom over the semester.
Past course trips have studied Medieval Spanish Religion in Toledo and Madrid; the Italian Renaissance in Venice and Florence; the Supreme Court by traveling to Washington, D.C.; Slavery in Colonial Virginia; the contemporary art scene through a trip to New York City’s museums and galleries; Roman Emperors and French Monarchies in Rome and Paris; and Inca art and culture in Peru.
New Honors travel courses will be listed at the release of the Honors Spring 2019 course list. Stay tuned to see where Honors students will be traveling next!
Previous Travel Honors Courses:
Summer 2023:
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HRTS 4391-001: IRELAND taught by Professor Brad Klein The SMU Honors and Human Rights Programs will be facilitating a trip to Ireland, 2023. The trip will center on the Troubles, a period of religious and ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. Participants will explore the origins and development of the conflict, the process of conflict resolution and transformation, and connections to other global struggles. Irish culture and history will also be addressed in a broader fashion through a visit to the Seamus Heaney HomePlace and a bus tour of Belfast. The trip will be co-led by two internationally renowned leaders: Don Mullan, who authored the award-winning book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday and co-produced the film Bloody Sunday based on his firsthand experience of that massacre; and Desmond Doherty, an international human rights lawyer who spearheaded a number of legal efforts related to the Troubles, including the inquires into Bloody Sunday and the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings. |
| SMU in Rome-Paris Study Abroad: Rome of the Emperors, Paris of the King
HIST 3361: Roman History and the Roman Mind taught by Professor Melissa Dowling
Ten to twelve Honors students will travel with Professors Kathleen Wellman and Melissa Dowling (both in the Clements Department of History at SMU) to Rome and Paris in two special hands-on research courses. There will be required common readings before the students depart from both professors, as well as individualized readings that reflect the student’s area of interest. From 17 May until 1 June, the students and professors will tour important historical sites in Rome (the Forum Romanum, Colosseum, Pantheon, Mausoleum of Augustus, as well as a tour of the Villa Hadrian). Throughout lectures and supplemental readings will provide context. Beginning on 1 June and until the 11th of that month the class will conduct similar tours of Paris (Notre Dame, Baths of Cluny, along with other cathedrals and palaces). For both cities students will be required to focus on one particular aspect of the city or the civilization—in addition to the common reading that all pursue. After returning to the United States on the 12th of June each of the students will work with both professors and complete a short research paper on each of the two cities. Following multiple drafts, the final product will be due on the first day of classes of the fall semester.
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SMU in Oxford Study Abroad WRTR 2306: First Year Honors Humanities Seminar II taught by Professor David D. Doyle
This program is a five-week summer term at University College, Oxford. Students live in college rooms and have both meals and classes within the college. “Univ,” as the college is known, was founded in 1249, and is one of Oxford’s oldest colleges. The program introduces students to a variety of sites and experiences that make up Britain’s rich history. Six semester hours credit (two courses; the course with the Oxford faculty member is taught in the tutorial style of that university, i.e., two or three students in session with the instructor)
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Spring 2023:
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ARHS 3382: Art and Experience in Inka Peru taught by Professor Adam Herring Travel to Peru at the end of the semester
Twelve students will have the opportunity to participate in a UHP 3000-level seminar on the history and aesthetics of Inka Peru with Professor Adam Herring of SMU Art History. After spending a semester studying the art, culture, and history of the Inka tradition of South America, the students will then travel to Peru to experience Inka art and architecture first-hand. Students will visit Inka sites in and around the old Inka capital of Cusco, Peru, culminating in an extended visit to Machu Picchu |
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PLSC 4332: Supreme Court Seminar taught by Professor Joseph Kobylka Travel to Washington D.C. during Spring Break!
Examines the development of constitutional law and the dynamics of decision making on the Supreme Court, from the perspectives of political science and history, built around a week of research in the Library of Congress |
J-Term 2023:
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ASAG 3350: New York Colloquium taught by Professor Phillip Van Keuren J-Term: January 2, 2023 (arrival) through January 15, 2023 (departure)
This course involves intensive analysis, discussion, and writing concerning works of art in museum collections and exhibitions, and in alternative exhibition spaces. Students will study the philosophical as well as the practical to define and understand the nature of the art that society produces and values. The colloquium meets in New York City for 2 weeks in January. |
Mayterm 2022:
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HRTS 4392: Re-Imagine Paradise: A Huaka'I - O'Ahu, Hawaii taught by Professor Brad Klein
A huakaʻi is not an empty itinerary or a list of must-dos, but rather a journey defined by intention. A huaka‘i is not meant to be an easy walk in the park or a leisurely stroll along the beach. It is demanding. It demands that your journey be deliberate and purposeful, and that you remain open to what you might learn about a place and yourself. It will place you in relationship to people and to the land in ways that you might not expect and that will demand something of you—a shift in perspective, an injunction to take action, a challenge to get involved, a request to step back or stand aside. This huaka‘i …has precise aims for moving people through a place and providing new and old ways of looking at and interacting with some of the histories, struggles, and relationships that shape Hawai‘i. …Hokulani K. Aikau and Vernadette V. Gonzalez in DeTours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai‘i |
Spring 2022:
| HIST 3316: History of Sex in America - a Focus on New York City after the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots taught by
Professor David D. Doyle, Jr. Travel to New York City during Spring Break!
Emerging from such intellectual traditions as the social history, feminists, civil rights, and lesbian and gay movements the study of sexuality is an increasingly vibrant field—and a field that is opening up many long-static discussions of vital importance in American history. Considering sexual histories within such issues as slavery, European immigrations, or the interactions between European settlers and Native Americans, it is hard to arrive at a coherent picture without this work. Concepts such as social constructionism, and the ability to articulate gender and sexuality as distinct categories of analysis have given scholars the tools to significantly advance our knowledge of the past.
This semester course will focus on the history of New York and its unique history of sexuality. Well before the famous Stonewall riots of 1969, the city had become a haven for sexual minorities and contained a multiplicity of traditions, cultures, and perspectives almost from its early Dutch period onward. Readings will examine the history of gender and sexuality using the lens of New York City—and will move in roughly chronological order. Conditions permitting, the class will travel to New York over the spring break week.
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MDVL 3351: The Pilgrimage: Imagining Medieval Cultures taught by: Travel to Italy during Spring Break!
This course will examine the sites, objects, routes, and theoretical principles surrounding the act of medieval pilgrimage. Centered around the city of Jerusalem, we will discuss how pilgrimage functioned within the faiths of the three major Abrahamic religious—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both a physical and spiritual act, pilgrimage served as a mode of belief that fused past and present, allegory with reality. As we consider the paradigm constructed by these acts, students will engage with an interdisciplinary array of texts (both literary and historical) and images in their own imitation of the pilgrim’s way.
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J-Term 2022:
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ASAG 3350: New York Colloquium taught by Professor Phillip Van Keuren J-Term: January 2, 2022 (arrival) through January 16th, 2022 (departure)
This course involves intensive analysis, discussion, and writing concerning works of art in museum collections and exhibitions, and in alternative exhibition spaces. Students will study the philosophical as well as the practical to define and understand the nature of the art that society produces and values. The colloquium meets in New York City for 2 weeks in January. |
Spring 2019:
| (KNW) HIST 3317: Persecution to Affirmation: Sexual Minorities and Human Rights taught by:
Professors David D. Doyle, Jr., & Marie-Luise Gaettens Travel to Berlin, Germany during Spring Break!
Twelve Honors students will travel and conduct research for the course in Berlin, Germany over Spring Break. The focus of this class will be issues of gender and sexuality across time and place. Readings in the European section will focus on Germany—with specific attention to differences between the 1920s and the 1930s and 1940s. Over Spring Break, the class will remain for the most part in Berlin—studying and touring the city, past and present controversies and issues surrounding gender and sexuality, and meeting with people from other parts of the globe who have arrived in Western Europe as refugees. The progression of course will begin with readings on the modern human rights movement and its basic components. We then will move to a series of comparative readings that examine how sexuality and sexual orientation and gender “slippage” have been understood in different parts of the world over time and continue to be today. These ‘case studies,’ while necessarily limited in scope, will begin to illustrate for the student just how differently those with same sex attractions or gender bending have been understood—and treated—across time and place. In an effort to illustrate people’s real agency in the face of adversity, cruelty, and discrimination the readings will not focus entirely on oppression, but will also detail how the human spirit manages to innovate and adapt. |
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(KNW) MDVL 3351: The Pilgrimage: Imagining Medieval Cultures taught by: Travel to Jerusalem during Spring Break!
This course will examine the sites, objects, routes, and theoretical principles surrounding the act of medieval pilgrimage. Centered around the city of Jerusalem, we will discuss how pilgrimage functioned within the faiths of the three major Abrahamic religious—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both a physical and spiritual act, pilgrimage served as a mode of belief that fused past and present, allegory with reality. As we consider the paradigm constructed by these acts, students will engage with an interdisciplinary array of texts (both literary and historical) and images in their own imitation of the pilgrim’s way. |
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PLSC 4332: Supreme Court Seminar taught by Professor Joseph Kobylka Travel to Washington D.C. during Spring Break!
Examines the development of constitutional law and the dynamics of decision making on the Supreme Court, from the perspectives of political science and history, built around a week of research in the Library of Congress |
J-Term/Spring/Summer 2018:
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ASAG 3350: New York Colloquium taught by Professor Phillip Van Keuren J-Term: Sunday, December 31st, 2017 (arrival) through Sunday, January 14th, 2018 (departure)
This course involves intensive analysis, discussion, and writing concerning works of art in museum collections and exhibitions, and in alternative exhibition spaces. Students will study the philosophical as well as the practical to define and understand the nature of the art that society produces and values. The colloquium meets in New York City for 2 weeks in January. |
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RELI 3348: Temples, Churches, and Synagogues in the Ancient Mediterranean taught by: Travel to Toledo and Madrid over Spring Break: March 9-18, 2018
This course explores the forms, politics, and social functions of sacred spaces in the ancient Mediterranean using contemporary theories of spatiality. Students learn how to analyze archaeological and literary remains. |
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SMU in Rome-Paris Study Abroad: Rome of the Emperors, Paris of the King
HIST 3361: Roman History and the Roman Mind taught by Professor Melissa Dowling Summer 2018: Thursday, May 17th, 2018 (arrival) through Sunday, June 10, 2018 (departure)
Friends, Romans, countrymen. We will stand where Marc Antony delivered his eulogy for Julius Caesar and march where gladiators soaked in the roar of the Roman audience. In Rome, we will learn about the ancient city and its many peoples, many religions, many innovations in engineering and architecture, and its importance for the rest of world history. In Paris, we will climb up to the gargoyles of Notre Dame, admire the unicorn tapestries, and stroll in the golden halls and gardens of the sun king, Louis XIV, at Versailles. From the cathedral of St. Denis to the Louvre museum, the city will be our classroom as we exam how this great capital became preeminent in art, literature, politics and history until the French Revolution. |