Staying Global – Highlighting Four Virtual Course Offerings for the Summer 2021 Session

Promoting a Strong, Virtual Study Abroad Experience

Although on-site study abroad programs have been suspended for the Summer 2021 term, The Office of Global Education is introducing four virtual global program offerings this summer.

Intensive Arabic Language and Culture

The Politics of Identity: Art, History, and Language

Development Challenges in Tanzania Internship & Kiswahili Studies

Villa Le Balze’s Plague, Tuscany, and the Globalization of a Disease

While the full social and experiential aspects of being abroad can not be fully replicated, OGE is working with its Georgetown faculty directors and on-site partners to ensure that the programs remain academically intensive and cohort-based, with numerous cultural and co-curricular opportunities that support the program’s academic objectives. Further details are planned to be released on the program brochures soon, including revised dates, course offerings, and a modified program fee that reflects virtual delivery.

Interested students are invited to apply via myGUABROAD (deadline: April 8, 2021). Applications will be reviewed and nominated on a rolling basis. Please direct any questions to globaleducation@georgetown.edu or an OGE Advisor.

Intensive Arabic Language and Culture

“Georgetown in Amman: Arabic Language and Culture,” requires no prior knowledge of the Arabic language yet is designed to provide a rapid immersion into both language and culture. Course materials have been prepared in conjunction with the insights of instructors at the Qasid Arabic Institute, located in Amman, Jordan.

*Students enjoying a meal on a prior study abroad experience to Jordan*

Georgetown in Barcelona: Art, History, Language, Politics

Through “Georgetown in Barcelona: Art, History, Language, Politics,” students have the opportunity to dive into and engage with profound regional and global questions surrounding Spain and the Spanish identity in broad contexts. Those who take the course can expect to develop a better sense of bilingualism and in the process, become better students of language themselves.

“Georgetown in Barcelona: Art, History, Language, Politics” highlights a number of questions; What is the role of art and of language in the construction of national and cultural identity? How has this Mediterranean region integrated Muslim, Jewish and Christian traditions throughout history and continue to do so today? What are the tensions between local and global, between Catalan and Spanish in the wider context of the European Union?

Through this program, students will grapple with these issues and their many intersections with politics, history, and the arts – alongside intensive language immersion.

*Photograph of the streets of Barcelona taken during a previous study experience in Spain*

Georgetown in Dar es Salaam: Development Challenges in Tanzania (Internship)

“Georgetown in Dar es Salaam: Development Challenges in Tanzania” brings a focus to both the drivers and challenges of economic development in Tanzania. Further, students enrolled in the course will have a better understanding of how the work of local community organizations, think tanks, and government agencies intersects to address modern-day challenges of global development.

Alongside academic studies, students will both test and apply their new knowledge in a part-time internship with a local community-based organization. Moreover, students will engage in Kiswahili language training in order to deepen their cultural understanding and experience, while increasing their abilities to add value in their internship roles.

*Zanzibar, Tanzania, photographed during a previous study abroad experience*

Georgetown at Villa Le Balze: Plague, Tuscany, & the Globalization of a Disease

“Georgetown at Villa Le Balze: Plague, Tuscany, & the Globalization of a Disease,” presents both micro and macro histories of plague. This course offers a broad perspective on the issues at hand. In this course, the Black Death is presented not as an Italian or European disaster but as an Afro-Eurasian catastrophe. Meanwhile, students will acquaint themselves with plausible evidence of late medieval and early modern demographic run from regions as disparate as East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Greenland. This is a deeply multidisciplinary course that is at once a history, biology and art history class.