U of Ideas of General Interest -- May 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
STUDY ABROAD
Students to live other nations' histories, from classical period to today
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- This summer, the history department at the University of Illinois won't just be teaching history, it will be making it, by sending four groups of professors and students abroad -- to Cuba, France, India and Russia -- and in the process doubling its typical summer overseas course offerings.
John Lynn, a professor of military and French history, is leading 15 students in "The History of France From Roman Times to Today," using, he said, "the country itself as our classroom by visiting sites in Paris, the Loire Valley, Normandy and the Argonne. Paris is, of course, the heart of France -- in a sense Washington, D.C., and New York rolled into one," Lynn said, "but it has also been the political and cultural engine of Europe in the past, from the invention of the Gothic style to absolutism, the Revolution to the artistic outpouring of the late 19th and 20th centuries."
In addition to the history, Lynn said, he hopes his students learn about the French people and the country as it is today. The way the course is planned, his students "won't live in a bubble of tourist buses, watching the show outside as it if were on television."
Mark Steinberg, professor of Russian history, is taking 12 students to St. Petersburg, Russia. He notes how "exceptionally interesting and important" a time this is in Russian history, since "Russia is in the very midst of its painful, complex and exciting transition from a state-dominated authoritarian socialism to something quite different, though what this will be is still far from clear."
Steinberg hopes students will discover "the way a place, especially a modern city, can be a window into other times -- vitally alive with the past, memories of the past and attempts to reimagine and rewrite that past. St. Petersburg is the birthplace of Russia's modern history and the symbol of its complex relations with the world -- a city filled with images, stories, memories and ghosts."
He hopes that spending time in Russia "will make a country that may seem so different and so abstract -- known to the students only through news reports, political arguments, rumors and imagined landscapes and cultures -- very tangible and immediate, but also even more complex."
The department's push is part of a "greater concentration on international studies and an effort to 'globalize' the experiences and perspectives of undergraduate students," said department chairman James Barrett. It also is part of a larger joint effort by the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Study Abroad Office, which in the last year has increased summer overseas participation by 47 percent.
"This one program in LAS has increased opportunities for undergraduate course work abroad by nearly 20 percent," said Charles Stewart, an LAS dean, "providing an opportunity for an ever-larger number of undergrads for whom a standard year or even semester abroad cannot be easily managed."
UI history professors Blair Kling and Joseph Love are teaching courses in Panchgani, India, and Havana, respectively. Other UI course sites this summer: Vienna; London and Stratford, England; Barcelona; Dublin; Avignon, France; and Beijing, Shanghai and Xian, China. Most courses run May 15 to June 9.
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