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“As a combat veteran of Iraq, I know personally the importance of cultural understanding and how necessary empathy for other cultures is to becoming a global citizen. Study tours like this to Germany are crucial to a climate of dialogue and diplomacy.”
“Connections and comparisons are two things that cannot be made solely in the classroom. These experiences occur when learning is taken to a level past memorization and testing. A study tour to German speaking countries would give me the opportunity to make those connections and comparisons between life the way I know it and how people around the world live.”
-- Leon Fyfe and Nicolette Stanfill, Berlin Study Tour Participants 2006-2007
Berlin has been loved and reviled throughout its complicated history. The city is the iconic symbol of five political identities: Prussian imperialism, the short-lived brilliance of Weimar, the terror of the Third Reich, Cold War division, and now the capital of a reunified Germany. No other city so dramatically embodies the tumultuous events of the twentieth century and our collective modern experience. Berlin is an electric center of political and cultural activity, a vibrant and fascinating metropolis.
Importantly, Berlin is undergoing an unprecedented reconstruction that goes far beyond an architectural face-lift. Its ever-present cranes and scaffolding mirror a process German identity itself seems to be experiencing. Challenged by a heavy historical legacy, both the city and German conceptions of identity are re-constructing themselves, and in the process transforming conceptions of European identity. Due to its historical significance and geopolitical location, the city has become a metaphor for not only a new conception of German identity, but the process of European integration itself.
In Berlin, students will encounter a city caught between its tumultuous past and a massive project to redefine itself. This unique situation is ideal for students to explore past and present in an open classroom setting. The summer program in Berlin provides students with a fourteen day opportunity to discover one of Europe’s most dynamic cities through a range of activities, including dinners with locals, tours to historically, politically, and culturally significant sites (such as museums, memorials, and buildings), visiting the German Chancellery, and attending the Berlin Philharmonic.
Fifteen students will be selected each year to participate in the program. Please contact Dr. Nelson for more information about the program application process.
The German Studies in Berlin director, Dr. Julian Nelson, and one advisor, will accompany students to Berlin, while several colleagues and teaching assistants from the Freie Universität in Berlin will join us once we arrive to lead tours and attend dinners. Students must enroll in a 3 credit seminar course before departure (German 150: Berlin in Film and Literature) and take a seminar while in Berlin, either language or culture based, depending on needs. Extensive note taking and journals record impressions for individual culminating projects: reflection essays and Power-Point presentations in the fall on specific aspects of Berlin’s cultural, political, and historical heritage.