Upcoming Programs
Please check back in Fall 2026.
Past Programs
War in Europe
Program dates: June 9 - June 30, 2026
A three-week, interdisciplinary study abroad experience to examine the causes & consequences of war, genocide, & peace. Program includes trips to Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Vienna, Budapest, and so much more!
War in Europe
Program dates: June 10-30, 2025
This interdisciplinary study abroad program offers 6. s.h. of credit for studying the causes and consequences of War in Western Europe. While traveling through Belgium, France, and Germany, students will learn about the impacts of two world wars and over a thousand years of bloodshed by exploring various historic sites, museums, and cultural exchanges. Extended excursions included in this trip are visiting Paris, the Beaches of Normandy and D-Day museums, the 100th-anniversary ceremonies of World War I at Verdun and Metz, the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne, Belgium, the steeped history of Trier and Munich, Germany, as well as the Alps, Dachau Concentration Camp, and Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.
War in Europe
Program dates: June 3-23, 2024
A three-week, interdisciplinary study abroad experience to examine the causes & consequences of war, genocide, & peace. The program includes trips to Munich, Nuremberg, Trier, Bastogne, Verdun, the Beaches of Normandy, & Paris.
Becoming Japan: History, Religion, Culture
Program dates: May 17 - June 8, 2023
War in Europe
Program dates: May 15 - June 5, 2018
This interdisciplinary program offered by History and Sociology 6 s. h. of credit studying the causes and consequences of war in Europe. While traveling through the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, and Poland students will learn about the impacts of World War II, the Cold War, and the Holocaust through the exploration of various historic sites, museums, and cultural exchanges. Extended excursions included in this trip are: visiting Berlin's "DDR" Cold War Museum, Jewish Holocaust Memorial, and Berlin and Jewish Museum; Krakow's Auschwitz Death Camp; and Budapest's Terror, and the Hospital in the Rock.
Tibet in China
Program dates: May 15 - June 5, 2018
In these two courses, we will explore the contemporary legacy of more than a millennium of the influence of Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan culture and society on Chinese empires and states. We will visit important Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and temples, a Tibetan Medicine Hospital, and sites of Tibetan culture. In the north, we will see the influence of Tibet on imperial China in Bejing's Forbidden City and Yonghegong - the 'Lama Temple.' We will also explore the many temples and monasteries scattered across the five mountaintops of Wutaishan. A famous site of Buddhist pilgrimage past and present, it is also the site of several important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. In the southwest, we will explore Tibetan monasteries and cultural sites in the capital of Sichuan Province, Chengdu, and along the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, in the old frontier town of Dartsedo, on the Tagong grasslands, and in Jiaju Tibetan Village. In each of these sites, we will investigate the interaction of the two societies today and the resonance of history therein. More generally, we will also study the relationship between an ethnic minority nationality and the majority culture and society of the PRC, the historical foundations for this relationship, and the role tourism plays in the place of the Tibetan culture and Tibetan Buddhism within contemporary Chinese society. Click Here
The Holocaust: Interpretation, Memory, and Representation
Beginning in the spring term of 2017, the Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies will offer a new, bi-annual course cross-listed as a class available through the History Department. This upper-level course will involve a spring-break research trip to memorials and research centers in Europe associated with survivors, rescuers, historians, and archivists who deal with the complex history and legacy of the Holocaust.
Course participants will travel to Germany and Poland, including to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Cracow's Jewish quarter, the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial, Berlin's Jewish Museum and the New Synagogue in Oranienburger Strasse, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial near Berlin, and the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany (home of three former subsidiary concentration camps). The excursion will be financially supported by the Center, fellowships from the Brenner Foundation, and generous donations in a concerted effort to increase the trip's affordability.
Here's a video with information on the Center's research excursions: