Many short-term study abroad programs, led by faculty members across various academic fields, are available to Portland State students in the summer of 2024. Four of these programs are detailed below.
London, England
Literary London – Texts and Contexts
Literary London – Texts and Contexts provides students with a deeper historical and cultural understanding of English literature while exploring the city of London. This program, July 8–20, 2024, is led by English Professor Dr. Keri Behre.
The program is worth four credits as English 399 and prepares students with guided readings and discussion before the onset of the trip. In London, students will take part in tours highlighting “many sites and locations where a lot of English literature had its start,” Behre said.
Students will visit the Tower of London and the Globe Theatre to watch a Shakespearean play, take a sightseeing cruise on the Thames River, visit the city of Bath where the Jane Austen Centre is located and experience the treasures of the British Library—one of, if not the largest, library in the world.
“We have an optional trip to the shrine of Julian of Norwich, who’s somebody that all of my medieval literature students read and study, but getting to go and see her shrine and the location of Norwich is just such a beautiful opportunity to connect with the texts that we already may know and love and to really just get that deeper experience,” Behre said.
“There’s not a lot that can replace the connection with place and historical context that you get from actually visiting a place,” Behre said.
While the cost of living in London is relatively high compared to many other major cities, Behre has structured the course with the goal of minimizing costs. “We have worked so hard to make this as affordable as possible and really prioritize affordability for students,” Behre said.
“For example, students are staying in shared apartments with kitchens because eating out in London is really expensive,” Behre said. “And I also think there’s just something so special about having a regular grocery store in a foreign city. So students will get that opportunity to shop and create some of their own meals.”
This program’s core is English literature, but London—with its population of nearly 10 million people and more than 300 spoken languages—is a diverse and cosmopolitan center.
For Behre, studying abroad “really changed the course of my life in so many ways, [like] helping me—a first generation college student from the Midwest—really see myself as a global citizen. And that’s what I’m hoping to bring to my students as part of this experience.”
“Especially for someone who hasn’t traveled abroad before, it’s this really incredible perspective shift that, I think, can really deeply enrich how you see yourself in the world,” Behre said.
Seoul, South Korea
Popular Culture, K-Pop in Seoul
Michael Lupro, Professor of University Studies at PSU, is leading a program from Aug. 24 through Sep. 4, 2024 called Popular Culture, K-Pop in Seoul. This course analyzes the global circulation of culture through the context of Korean media, arts and communication systems.
“There’s nothing more consequential, I think, in the global media environment right now than the rise of Korean cultural production,” Lupro said. “Not just music, but also film and television. And whether it’s ‘Squid Game’ or Parasite, there’s many examples of Korea really having an outsized influence on global pop culture, given the size of [the] country.”
“Students will have the opportunity to engage [in] many facets of pop culture,” Lupro said. “Like, we’ll go to media firms and advertising companies, fashion and not just music… The focus is on K-pop as a cultural phenomenon.”
This program is a four-credit University Studies course called Examining Pop Culture. Lupro’s approach to teaching this content focuses on “how things are made, [and] the stuff that shapes us,” Lupro said. “So getting access to people—[those] who are actually making things—and hearing what they have to say about how they’re trying to communicate… we can then compare [that] to the communication we receive. [That] is the core of my approach to the pop culture class.”
Thus, the program’s itinerary contains many insights into the production of Korean media. “We’re gonna get a dance class from a real K-pop choreographer,” Lupro said. “We’re gonna go see an MTV taping. We’re going to be able to get behind the scenes a little bit in a way that you wouldn’t be able to just as a tourist.”
Participating in a study abroad program such as this allows students to benefit from unique social and cultural exchanges without the pressures and anxieties of coordinating travel logistics.
Transportation, SIM cards, hotels, travel insurance and most meals are all built into the program and organized by local guides. “I think it’s worth it to have that local expertise, like people who know that city… people who are professionally dedicated to providing that experience and are native to the place,” Lupro said.
Mexico City, Mexico
Architecture of Mexico City
Juan Heredia, Professor of Architecture and Director of the School of Architecture at PSU, is leading a study abroad program to his hometown of Mexico City, Aug. 4–17, 2024.
The program is offered by the School of Architecture and thus gives priority to architecture students. However, students of all majors, particularly art and art history, are encouraged to apply.
Through an architectural lens, this program examines the rich cultural history of Mexico from within the country’s capital and second-most-populated city in the Americas. At the same time, students will engage with the artifacts and structures spanning thousands of years of Mesoamerican history.
“There are many archaeological sites that are very important… [and] very close to Mexico City or within Mexico City, and many cultures within that, [like] the Aztecs or the Teotihuacans,” Heredia said.
On this trip, students will have the opportunity to experience the remains of Teotihuacan, the largest pre-Columbian city in Mesoamerica.
“We look at pre-Columbian architecture,” Heredia said. “We look at colonial architecture, especially the early colonial architecture. That is very interesting because you see the clash of cultures occurring all of a sudden. And then some type of resolution that began to form the identity of what is now Mexico during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the so-called Baroque period… At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Mexico became an independent country, and then the history continued.”
This program provides students with a unique connection to the culture and history of Mexico City that a textbook cannot replicate. “The city is a little bit of a palimpsest,” Heredia said. “Like a codex, that you see the traces of what happened behind or before, underneath. So that synthetic experience cannot be readily explained in a lecture class.”
Also included in the itinerary are visits to many of Mexico City’s national museums and museums of political and artistic luminaries, such as Frida Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and Luis Barragan.
The coursework supplementing the travel experience includes readings, lectures, group discussions, sketchbooking and a retrospective presentation.
Students can receive six credits from various courses within the departments of architecture, Indigenous Nations studies, Chicano and Latino studies, or urban studies and planning.
Valparaíso, Chile
Arte y Cerebros en Chile
Artist Jeff Leake and Neuroscientist Bill Griesar both teach in the psychology department at PSU. Together, they will lead the Arte y Cerebros en Chile—aka Art and Brains in Chile—program from June 28 to July 26, 2024.
This course utilizes the experience of international travel itself as a means for students to understand neuroscience on a very personal level.
“Studying in a new cultural language environment directly challenges these ingrained neural networks of perceptual bias and prediction by undermining expectations of what we will see, hear, taste and smell, and how others perceive us and our behavior, introducing surprise and novelty and often pulling us into the conscious present,” Griesar said.
“So we explore the nature of that process, like what’s actually going on in all of us, including your instructors at the time, when we’re involved in the study abroad program in Chile,” Griesar said.
Students will live in the colorful port city of Valparaíso, an ideal setting for a course at the intersection of neuroscience and community arts.
These coastlines are unique in that they are home to the Humboldt squid, a species with unique nervous system physiology that has attracted neuroscientists from around the world and ultimately contributed to the development of the field in this region.
“There’s an extraordinary program there at the Universidad de Valparaíso in Chile in neuroscience, with lots of neuroscientists that our students get to meet,” Griesar said. “And so they go to the labs; they actually see the research being performed. They meet the grad students. They get to view a squid.”
Students will apply neuroscience concepts to artistic projects, such as mural work, sewn textiles, engravings and model making. Additionally, students will visit many museums and institutions related to Chilean history and art.
“[In Valparaíso], they essentially legalized street art,” Leake said. “And so every surface in the city is covered with artwork. So it’s a great place to go and experience the culture through the artwork that’s there.”
Students will learn about and create their own arpilleras—a Chilean tradition of representing memory or trauma in the form of a patchwork tapestry. This is a way for “students to encapsulate the memories they had from their experience there, but also understand some of the national history and trauma of Chile in general,” Griesar said.
This course is communal and ultimately shaped by interactions with locals, including homestay families, artists, neuroscientists and group members. “You’re there to experience the culture, but then there’s also a kind of intent around that,” Leake said. “It’s not just like you’re going somewhere for a vacation or something.”
“When you’re meeting with the local scientists and artists and the people in that community, [students] really see how excited they are to share what they know and their own experience,” Griesar added. “It’s a much more engaged and collaborative way to go somewhere and change your brain.”
Studying abroad is often a highlight of the college experience. More than the novelty and excitement of international travel, organized study abroad programs are evidenced to be professionally, intellectually and emotionally enriching.
Combined with a student’s existing financial aid package, students can participate in programs at a highly subsidized cost or, for some, at no personal cost. The deadline to apply for most summer programs is Jan. 31, and students interested can reach out to the lead faculty members and/or attend the upcoming information sessions.