Intensive Week Long Study over Spring Break

This year students campus-wide will benefit from unique opportunities for week-long intensive study abroad over spring break. These innovative programs for intensive study abroad in Paris were expressly created to provide in-depth on-site international experiences. They include: 7 activity-rich days in Paris with meetings at the Paris Research Center, classes given on-site at the cultural, historical and political institutions you are studying, 6 nights in hotels, numerous group meals, site visits, cultural activities and UF credit.

• Download 2009 Spring Break Brochure (PDF)

Programs Offered Spring Break 2009

• African Americans in Paris
  Professor Stephanie Evans
• An Appetite for Paris: Gender, Globalization, Travel, and Food
  Professor Anita Anantharam
• Dateline: Paris
  Professor Boaz Dvir

Course Descriptions

African Americans in Paris
Professor Stephanie Evans
drevans@ufl.edu

• Download Course Description (PDF)

Since the mid-1700s, scores of African Americans have visited, lived, and worked in France. This course will explore the African American presence in Paris, introducing students to three groups of Black Americans who have traveled to Paris:

1. political persons,
2. academics, and
3. culture bearers.

Walking in the footsteps of those who were drawn to the City of Light, such as Frederick Douglass, Carter G. Woodson, Josephine Baker, Anna Julia Cooper, W.E.B. Du Bois, Billy Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King Jr., students will research Black Americans' experiences and perceptions of Paris and study visitation patterns over time. A cross disciplinary approach will facilitate learning about African Americans in Paris, with the fields of political science, performing arts, literature, sociology, history, and economics all offering points of entry to this topic. Students will approach topics chronologically, but also thematically to see the various reasons African Americans have continued to engage in Parisian life.

Students are required to complete course readings before the trip. On-site assignments will include attending lectures, cultural events, and significant sites linked to the rich heritage of Black American expatriate Paris. After the trip, students will submit a final paper that brings together their disciplinary interests with political and cultural analyses.

An Appetite for Paris: Gender, Globalization, Travel, and Food
Professor Anita Anantharam
aanita@ufl.edu

• Download Course Description (PDF)

If there is one thing that is both culturally specific and truly open to global experience at the same time, it is food. Not only a basic necessity to sustain life, it is also the one thing that all humans and animals have in common: you need to eat to survive. Yet each culture's attitudes towards food preparation and consumption tells us a great deal about that society's socio-political organization and structure. Given that food (like people and cultural beliefs) travel across geographic boundaries, the politics of what we eat, where we eat it, and how we eat reflects deep-rooted gender, religious, racial, class, and national identities. By examining food historically and globally, we can see how these issues have developed over time and across cultures in relation to political, social and economic changes.

French food is often heralded as the epitome of fine dining and as this class is centered in Paris we will pay special attention to the specificities of this place in constructing gendered histories of food. We will read novels and memoirs by travelers to Paris from the turn of the 20th Century to the present day and examine the politics of identity, class, and race in their culinary and literary creations.

Dateline: Paris
Professor Boaz Dvir
bdvir@jou.ufl.edu

• Download Course Description (PDF)

PARIS, France—Have you ever dreamed of serving as a foreign correspondent in one of the world’s most vibrant cities? Well, here’s your chance. Your assignment, if you choose to accept it: Research, report, write, photograph and/or videotape traditional and multi-media in-depth stories about Franco-American relations, which appear to have started turning around since the recent election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Work with a veteran international editor and team up with fellow student storytellers to craft publishable articles, photo essays or short documentaries. Explore such issues as France’s new political attitude toward the United States, the renewed French connection to NATO, Paris’ cultural backlash to the BlackBerry/YouTube/Apple revolution, and the city’s anti-global movement, among other topics. Visit the U.S. Embassy, the French Foreign Ministry, the Rotary Club de Paris, Le Monde and other organizations to gain firsthand insight into a topic that has intrigued Americans for decades. You’ll research your story ideas before the trip, work on your assignments in the field and produce professional-level journalism upon your return.

Spring Break Course Archive

• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006

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