Global Education and Field Study

Past Summer Study Away Blocks

Why Look at Past Programs?

While many summer programs do not repeat every year, we hope this look at the programs offered in the past year helps you to understand the scope and diversity of offerings typically provided by Colorado College.  Using this information, you can get a sense of the variety of programs offered as well as the price range for the various program fees.  As inflation has been a factor in travel and lodging costs, we anticipate that 2024 programs will have slightly higher program fees. 

 

When will the 2025 Summer Programs Be Announced?

Off-Campus Blocks for Summer 2025 will be announced in early November.  At that time a new webpage will be added with information on each program.  The Summer Study Away Fair is scheduled for Thursday, November 21st, and we would recommend that all students interested in summer study away attend the fair.  December 1st will be the first day when online applications will be open. They will remain open through January 15th.  Students are encouraged to apply on Summit during this period to maximize their potential to earn a Summer Block Away financial aid award.  Late applicants are far less likely to obtain an aid award due to demand for the limited pool of summer aid. 

Examples of Recent Summer Study Away Blocks

The unique history and culture of Bali are best understood through the arts, which connect past to present, self to community, and religion to reality.  The daily class schedule in Bali includes lectures and discussion of readings on Balinese culture, history, arts and the environment, followed by practical instruction in traditional music, dance, painting, and wood carving. 
Course Number(s): Music 222 / Asian Studies 250
Faculty: Prof. Made Lasmawan & Prof. Liz Macy
Offered: 2022 & 2023
Program Fee: $3,950 (2022), $3,300 (2023)

Through myriad multidisciplinary critical perspectives such as Black Feminism, Transnational Feminism, and Critical Race Theory, this course examines how the identities of Black, Jewish, Turkish, and LGBTQIA+ communities, as well as immigrants, refugees, victims of neo-Nazi terrorism, and police brutality, and other marginalized people are constructed in Germany, particularly how these constructions are dependent on racism, heterosexism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression. 
Course Number(s): Feminist & Gender Studies 214, German 220, Race & Migration 200
Faculty: Prof. Heidi Storl
Offered: 2022, 2023, and 2024
Program Fee: $2,250 (2022), $3095 (2023), $3,300 (2024)

An intensive introduction to Portuguese language at one of the two levels.  THrough accelerated language study in the four modalities--speaking, listening, reading and writing--and home stays with Brazilian families, students will acquire an intermediate to advanced level in Brazilian Portuguese.  We will take field trips around the state of Bahia and students will explore the rich history of the colonial capital and Afro-diasporic center. 
Course Number(s): Portuguese 298
Faculty: Prof. Naomi Wood
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $3,650

Approximately 1,000 years ago people in Southern Bohemia started building large shallow lakes to grow fish. To this day the fishery is thriving, and the anthropogenic landscape is preserved under the UNESCO’s “Man and Biosphere Programme”. These lakes will be the natural laboratory for this applied limnology course with the focus on (1) ecosystem and landscape level processes (eutrophication, nutrient cycles, primary productivity, oxygen regimes, hydrologic regimes), (2) population level processes (e.g. aquatic food webs), (3) fishery management, conservation and ecosystem services, and (4) unique history and culture within which the ancient anthropogenic ecosystem operates. The course will be based in experiential pedagogy with focus on hands-on field and laboratory measurements, data analysis and interpretation.

COURSE NUMBER: EV320

FACULTY LEADER(S): Prof. Miroslav Kummel

 

OFFERED: 2024

COURSE FEE: $3,150

Kierkegaard's work unfolded in close relation to his life, which was spent almost entirely in his home city of Copenhagen, Denmark, references to which populate even some of his most abstract theoretical texts. The course provides an introduction to Kierkegaard's writings, situated in the context of his life in mid-nineteenth-century Copenhagen, many features of which are still present in the city today.  We will visit many sites linked with Kierkegaard's life and work. 
Course Number(s): Philosophy 203
Faculty: Prof. Rick Furtak
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $3,910

This study abroad course will look at hte history of colonialism, human rights abuses, and environmental destruction in the Amazon, while highlighting the efforts of the indigenous movement and environmentalist allies to reverse exploitation and forge new futures with new and traditional technologies. 
Course Number(s): Anthropology 208
Faculty: Prof. Josh Holst & Prof. Alberto Hernandez-Lemus
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $3,100

Spend a month reading Homer's Odyssey while sailing on the crystal blue Aegean Sea and visiting important sites on the Greek islands and mainland.  Using Homer as a guide, learn about a thousand years of ancient Greek civilization and the intersection of history and myth.  Amazing views, amazing people, amazing experiences, and, of course, amazing stories. 
Course Number(s): Comparative Literature 121/English 280
Faculty: Prof. Lisa Hughes & Prof. Barry Sarchett
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $4,225

This course centers on student participation in archaeological excavations at Shikhin, an ancient Jewish village in the Galilee region of Israel.  Through this field experience, students will gain training in essential methods and theories of archaeology as well as insights into the history, culture, politics, and economics of the region during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. 
Course Numbers: Religion 200/Anthropology 208/Classics 200/History 222
Faculty: Prof. Pamela Reaves
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $4,500

This course explores the spectacular remains of Greek and Roman antiquity as well as the legacy of the classical tradition in Italy.  We survey the art and architecture of Greece and Rome from their origins in the Bronze Age to their transformation in the late Roman Empire.  Our journey includes stays in Rome and the bay of Naples, where we voyage down the Amalfi Coast to the Greek colony of Paestium, sail to the island of Capri, and later visit the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Course Number(s): Classics 223/Art History 207/History 200

Faculty: Prof. Richard Buxton ('22, '23) & Prof. Sanjaya Thakur ('22, '23, '24)

Offered: 2022, 2023, and 2024

Program Fee: $4,750 (2022), $5,000 (2023), $5,300 (2024)

Experience firsthand the spaces and places of Italian filmmaking and film festivals, from Rome & Bologna to Turin & Ponza Island.  The course will serve as an introduction to the panorama of Italian cinema from the post-World War II period until the present day. Students will view and discuss masterpieces of modern Italian film, become familiar with the exemplary directors an artists of the era, and identify the distinguishing characteristics of notable cinematic movements and genres.  This course includes attendance at two international film festivals in Bologna. 
Course Number(s): Italian 320/Film & Media Studies 200
Faculty: Prof. Carla Cornette
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $4,800

In this course, we will study childhood as it is imagined and constructed in Italian Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Steiner Schools by visiting elementary schools from each of these pedagogical models, as well as a traditional Italian elementary school, to talk with and learn from school administrators, teachers, public scholars, and disability rights scholar-activists. We will study the social and political contexts during which these pedagogical approaches were formed, and the problems their founding theorists sought to answer. We will then examine how these pedagogies made their way to the United States, and the ways in which they have been interpreted, and sometimes appropriated, to construct and reproduce a narrative of childhood that idealizes the child in progressive schoolings as wealthy, white, and non-disabled. 
Course Number(s): Education 250
Faculty: Prof. Nickie Coomer
Offered: 2023
Program Fee: $3,900

This course focuses on the intersection of Japanese culture, food, and literature. This is an interdisciplinary course designed to integrate perspectives on the history, aesthetics, practices and tastes of food in Japan.  It encourages analytic thinking and effective expression on food and culture as they are experienced and expressed in Japan’s past and present. The topics covered will range from food production and consumption to religious and artistic representations and the construction of cultural identities.  We will spend time in the following cities: Tokyo, Fujiyoshida (at the base of Mount Fuji), Omi Hachiman, Kyoto, and Hiroshima.
Course Number(s): Japanese 340/Asian Studies 350
Faculty: Prof. Joan Ericson & Prof. Jim Matson
Offered: 2023
Program Fee: $3,100

In this course we will strive to learn from the perspectives of our hosts, the Maasai people at the Dopoi Center, adjacent to the Maasai Mara Natural Preserve in Southwest Kenya. The course will explore the complex relationship between Indigenous communities and the State under colonial and postcolonial conditions; the way in which the bases for global capitalism that were laid down during the European colonization of the Americas and of Africa endure and continue to produce effects in the age of present-day globalization; the role of Indigenous communities in preserving the natural environment, in a world where the natural environment is conceived and treated as a tourist commodity; and the non-neutral concepts of “progress” and “development” and the ways in which the Maasai people conceive and implement alternatives.
Course Number(s): Philosophy 203
Faculty: Prof. Alberto Hernandez-Lemus
Offered: 2023, 2024
Program Fee: $3,900 (2023), $4,000 (2024)

This class will introduce students to the work of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries by experiencing productions of his works and by exploring the cities and the countryside where he lived and wrote.  In addition to introducing students to the particular constraints and demands of the theatrical medium, and to the cultural particularities of early modern England, we will attend a number of productions and thus seek to raise the question of how a dramatic text has (and can be) adapted. 
Course Number(s): English 225 or English 405
Faculty: Prof. Steven Hayward
Offered: 2022, 2023, and 2024
Program Fee: $3,750 (2022), $3,750 (2023), $3,750, reduced to $1,000 thanks to a generous gift to the program (2024).

This interdisciplinary course will travel (by van, short helicopter shuttle, and mostly on foot) through the heart of the Manaslu area, learning about the culture of the indigenous ethnic Tibetans of Kutang and Nubri, and a handful of other ethnic groups that have settled in the area.  We will answer questions such as how do the physiography, climate, and biological diversity of the landscape present opportunities and constraints to people's livelihoods?
Course Number(s): Environmental Studies 120
Faculty: Prof. Miro Kummel
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $3,340

This Culture course will be taught in English (with credit in French option). It will investigate and discuss topics and themes conveyed through various pedagogical tools: Field trips to selected sites in/outside of Dakar, novels, selected historical and sociological documents, Guest lectures by writers/researchers and university profs., Films and documentaries, attendance of selected live cultural events, etc.   Students who wish to earn credit in French will have the opportunity to participate in two (2) weekly afternoon discussion sessions in the French language. Discussion will focus on topics studied in class.

COURSE NUMBER: CO200/FR317

FACULTY LEADER(S): Prof. Ibrahima Wade & Prof. Nene Diop

OFFERINGS: 2024

COURSE FEE:  $3,975

Based in Bratislava, Slovakia, with trips to Prague and Budapest, this interdisciplinary course critically examines the transformation of Central European societies after the communist era. 

Course Number(s): Political Science 2023
Faculty: Prof. John Gould
Offered: 2022
Program Fee: $3,000

Our program has its base in Soria, a small and tranquil city in the region of Castile, 140 miles north of Madrid.  Classes will take place in a recently renovated convent at the Centro Internacional Antonio Machado.  Students will live with host families and participate in city life during the two blocks of classes.  Additionally, the program will provide excursions to various cities such as San Sebastian, Madrid, and Segovia. 
Course Number(s): Spanish 111/211/305/306
Faculty: Prof. Carrie Ruiz (Director)
Offered: 2022, 2023, and 2024
Program Fee: $6,550 (2022), $6,600 (2023), $6.900 (2024) -- This course is 8 weeks long and provides 2 units/blocks of coursework. As such, an second block of summer tuition is also billed to students for this program. 

Students will explore the history of Christianity in Great Britain as they travel in England and Scotland. From the monastic missions of the 6th century to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th, including the subsequent English Civil War, the course traces Christianity's engagement in the politics and culture of Britain. It will be especially attentive to relations, both cooperative and conflicted, between the monarchy and the church, as well as the significant development of monastic culture during the medieval period. Students will spend time in London and Edinburgh, with excursions to Canterbury, York, Lindisfarne, and St. Andrews (among other sites).=

COURSE NUMBER: RE200

FACULTY LEADER(S): Prof. Pamela Reaves

 

COURSE LOCATION: London, York, Edinburgh

OFFERINGS: 2024

COURSE FEE:  $4,200

This travel based course that will explore the concept of a BOAT as relief print, functional form, and fine art object.  Taking place in remote Southeast Utah on the Yestermorrow Design School Campus, students will live and work alongside the San Juan River to conceptualize what is means to create a wooden MacKenzie drift boat that is both a printable matrix and technical whitewater craft.  The course will be divided into three parts: design and carving of the hulls, construction of the boats themselves, and finally a multi-day aquatic journey with the boats built during the course.  Students will leave leave the course with a knowledge of relief printmaking, basic boatbuilding skills, and expedition planning expertise. No experience with printmaking, boatbuilding, or river expeditions is necessary, just a mindset of openness and exploration in all aspects of intellectual and experiential learning.
COURSE NUMBER: AS216

FACULTY LEADER(S): Prof. Kate Aitchison

 

OFFERINGS: 2024

COURSE FEE: $3,240

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