Fall 2014 will mark the launch of a new SU Abroad program, open to students from Syracuse University and other U.S. colleges and universities.
Running in the fall semester only, “The Culture and Politics of Reconciliation” will offer students a special opportunity to work closely with faculty mentors across disciplines to study the urgent questions of conflict and conflict resolution, while living and studying in the exciting city of Wroclaw, Poland (formerly Breslau, Germany).
The rapidly transforming urban spaces in East Central Europe will serve as powerful laboratories for understanding the history, processes and struggles of reconciliation.
Based at the University of Lower Silesia, the program will commence with an intensive pre-semester traveling seminar titled “Negotiating Identities Across Europe’s Borders.” Students will travel to urban and rural spaces in Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany and Lithuania, where memories of conflict and reconciliation testify to the dramatic upheavals of European history.
Core courses will explore the history of East Central Europe as analyzed through the effects of totalitarianism; analyze the contemporary situation of women, LGBT people and workers in Poland through scholarship and first-hand research; and address important moral and philosophical questions. In particular, those interested in the growing field of peace studies will find that “The Culture and Politics of Reconciliation” meets their academic and activist interests well.
All students will complete an action research project related to their disciplinary interests. Students will also be able to take courses, including foreign languages, at the University of Lower Silesia, the University of Wroclaw and the University of Economics.
The selection of Wroclaw, a city destroyed and rebuilt after World War II, highlights SU Abroad’s ongoing commitment to offering education abroad opportunities that provide an in-depth and comparative approach to exploring urgent global issues.
“This new program is not just a window on the process of political and cultural reconciliation in the aftermath of Nazi fascism and Soviet oppression,” says Sue Shane, director of programs at SU Abroad. “Rather, it’s a journey back to act forward, where students engage in action research, and participate in ‘reading’ the contemporary material culture of their urban settings, recovering clues and contributing new insights through project-based work.”
At the helm of the new program in Wroclaw is director Hana Cervinkova, a professor of cultural anthropology and the founding director of the International Institute for the Study of Culture and Education, a dynamic center for practice and scholarship at the University of Lower Silesia. She has been an academic partner of Syracuse University Abroad for 10 years, leading innovative educational programs in Central Europe.
“Professor Cervinkova is a dynamic, committed educator, deeply knowledgeable about this region of the world and questions of reconciliation,” says Margaret Himley, associate provost for international education and engagement at SU. “She is a great partner for this new program, and a great teacher, as students who have studied with her before attest.”
The application deadline for the Fall 2014 program is March 15, 2014. Applications will be available at suabroad.syr.edu/admissions. More information about the new program is available here.
