Skidmore Faculty-Led Travel Seminars
Each year, Skidmore sponsors a number of faculty-led travel seminars to locations
around the world (see list below). Travel seminar courses must offer a carefully structured,
focused, and challenging learning experience. These programs allow students to accompany one or two faculty members as they explore
a focused topic that uses the destination as a classroom. To apply for any of these
programs, please login to our online student portal.
2021 TRAVEL SEMINARS
Education in a Global Context
May 26 - June 12, 2021 (inclusive of travel days)
Professor: Virginia Lee (Education)
This seminar centers around field experience within Botswanan primary schools, working with children and teachers. In addition, meeting with local education experts and practioners, visits to cultural spots and other educational instituations round out students' exposure to a new educational system in Southern Africa.[READ MORE]
The Rise of China: Boundaries, Movement, and Change
*The China travel seminar is scheduled to run in May 2021 but is currently pending due to the US Department of State Travel Advisory.*
May 21 - June 1, 2021 (inclusive of travel days)
Professor: Xiaoshuo Hou (Sociology and Asian Studies)
This seminar examines how different segments of the Chinese population navigate the old and the new, the global and the local, as China transitions from a socialist planned economy to a more market-oriented economy and plays a larger role in the global economy and politics. [READ MORE]
Inside the New Cuba: Reconciling Socialism and the Market Economy
May 24 - June 14, 2021 (inclusive of travel days)
Professor: Michael Ennis-McMillan (Anthropology) & Jack Harris (Sociology, Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
This travel seminar will explore Cuban social and cultural dynamics associated with the “Special Period in a Time of Peace” that began with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The seminar will trace how the contemporary issues relate to the evolution of Cuban society from the revolution of 1959 to the present, with a particular focus on the impact of the revolution on Cuban society, as well as on the contemporary history of Latin America and the United States. [READ MORE]
Finland: Social Work in a Global Context
Dates TBD
Professor: Kelly Melekis (Sociology)
Social work is a global profession. Global interdependence, the transnational nature of issues such as poverty and violence, the movement of people across borders, advances in communications and information technology, and the development of the social work profession around the world, make a global perspective an essential part of social work education. [READ MORE]
The Body and Soul in Ancient Greece
May 23 - June 4, 2021
Professors: Leslie Mechem and Amy Oh (Classics)
Although the boundary between sacred and secular space was less rigid in ancient Greece, sanctuaries were areas set aside specifically for encountering the devine. This travel seminar will explore a number of questions associated with Greek sanctuaries from their inception in the 8th century BCE through the Hellenistic period. [READ MORE]
Courage and the Tragic Sense: Human Dilemmas and the Quest for Meaning (St. Hilda's College, Oxford University)
June 26 - July 19, 2021
Professor: Sheldon Solomon (Psychology)
How do we know what we know? And how does the quest for knowledge help to inform how we are to live in the world, and to do so in a manner that is both moral...and meaningful? The Oxford Experience continues to examine "big issues" central to the quest for meaning, and within the context of human morality. [READ MORE]
Shakespeare: Playwrights, Plays and New Development
May 24-31, 2021
Professor: John Michael DiResta (Theater)
Who are the major players in the 21st Century-US American Theater, and how have they responded to the major shifts in American culture at a dawn of the new millennium? What is the relationship between these new voices and the traditional canon of western drama which rests upon the work of William Shakespeare? This course will study in depth The Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) as a representative test case in pursuit of answers to these questions. [READ MORE]
