London, England and Leiden, The Netherlands
Program Type: UA Faculty-led
Credit Type: UA Direct Credit
Level of Study: Undergraduate
GPA: 3.0
Class Eligibility: Sophomore, Junior, Senior
Program Open To: UA Students
Language of Instruction: English
The Advanced Honors Trip is open to Advanced Students (second-year status through senior status). Students will study culture through the lens of language and anthropology. You will travel and experience new cities and have the opportunity to visit London (UK) and Lieden (The Netherlands).
Summer Five Week-Second - July 11-August 10
Curriculum and Faculty
You will select two courses for six units of upper-division Honors credit. The options include HNRS 314, HNRS 395H or HNRS 399. Both courses will be based on the national Honors Colleges’ “City as Text” curriculum: immersive, experiential, and hands-on learning that enables students to generate, analyze, and assimilate the cultural and academic material they encounter. Each morning, small groups of the class will “interact” with different assignments throughout the city; in the late afternoon, we will all convene to discuss the challenges, pleasures, and insights that resulted. On the Honors Trip, life is your text, and the world is your classroom.
Special note about HNRS 399: Students who take the course for research credit will learn how to conduct a multi-methods qualitative study that could include ethnographic interviews, the creation of video recordings, direct observation, integration of published research, artefact analysis, photography, etc. The following research question will be applied to the student’s choice of only one of the two countries we visit: “How does intersectional identity inform residents’ construction of a Dutch OR English “cultural narrative,” and what is their view of the role of that narrative in national politics and social practices?” Adding an interview component to each of the daily assignments, students will learn how to design interview questions that build trust, foster honesty, are predicated on respect for others’ dignity, and increase understanding of others’ perspectives and experiences. In addition to data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of evidence, students will practice the ethnographic approach of “participant observation” by becoming immersed in the culture as an active participant and recording first-hand experience of cultural understanding.
Honors Professor: Dr. Meg Lota Brown
Dr. Brown has led many Honors Trips abroad and loves both teaching and learning from Honors students. With degrees from Brown University and Berkeley, she has taught interdisciplinary studies at the UA for several decades. The author of four books and editions, she has won nearly every major teaching award at the university. Dr. Brown has traveled extensively on four continents and lived in England, France, and the Netherlands for many years. Recently, she and her two kids hiked 256 miles across the northern United Kingdom.
Students will either stay in fully equipped multi-bedroom apartments hotel rooms.
Activities and Assignments
The 2023 Advanced Honors Trip to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands is a transformative learning opportunity to engage with the cultural diversity, beauty, history, and innovations of two global crossroads. Students will explore the vibrant cities of London and Leiden— as well as other cities in both countries—from many perspectives. Whether your major is in STEM, law, fine arts, humanities, or social sciences, the trip will enrich your study, broaden your interests, and deepen your connections with people and ideas.
Assignments will lead you to the Cambridge University lab where DNA was discovered, to live political debates in Parliament, to the Dutch engineering marvel that is the largest flood protection system in the world, to the oldest surviving surgical theater in Europe, to some of the most spectacular museums and architectural monuments in the northern hemisphere. Students will ride bikes through the UNESCO World Heritage Kinderdike—a network of 19 windmills along the waterways of Holland—while learning about technological responses to climate change. They will interview members of the legal profession at the Inns of Court, where England’s lawyers have trained and practiced for over 700 years. They will read a play by Shakespeare and see it performed at his Globe Theater, and they will learn about the origins of modern banking, of the stock market, and of over 400 years of global capitalism in Amsterdam. Tying together these experiences is a focus on interdisciplinary cultural studies that will hone students’ critical thinking and interpersonal skills; the trip will develop more informed, empathic, and self-aware “global citizens.”
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