Travel dates: January 10 - 19

This popular seminar allows you to examine up close the main coastal and marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean environment. You'll compare the management practices between Europe and the North of Africa. You’ll study how the interactions of human civilizations have shaped the natural environment with both misuses and protective measures. While restrictions will not allow travel to Morocco as in pre-COVID semesters, you will explore the coastal ecosystems of Valencia and Murcia.

Please note this seminar carries an additional program fee of $340.

Priority enrollment in this Signature Seminar goes to biology majors, related science majors, and students for whom this course will fulfill a specified, documented degree requirement. Your Madrid Program Advisor can tell you more about other non-academic requirements specific to this seminar.

Note: Spring 2023 seminar will not travel to Northern Africa.

Travel dates: January 10 - 19

This traveling seminar explores the interweaving of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures during the Middle Ages, the resulting tensions, and the lasting cultural and social impacts on present-day Spain and the modern world.

In this Signature Seminar, you will retrace splendors of Islamic culture, the drive for Hispanic national reunification, and their impacts on the Spanish present. The course examines the Islamic influence on the rich traditions of the Iberian Peninsula, including the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate in Cordoba and the Nasrid Emirate in Granada. You will learn how Muslim, Jewish, and Christian tolerance and coexistence (la conviviencia) have helped produce cultural and social monuments such as the Great Mosque of Cordoba, the Giralda of Sevilla, and the Alhambra in Granada.

After an introduction to the origins of the Arab world, Islam, and the Jewish influence in Western culture, you’ll analyze the foundations of the modern world through the study of an early multicultural society in Spain.

Travel dates: January 10 - 19

This seminar requires students to have completed four semesters of college Spanish study or the equivalent. When the UAM academic calendar permits, it is required for participants in our Universidad Autónoma de Madrid special program.

Taught exclusively in Spanish, this 3-credit seminar is an immersion into Spanish culture and language. The seminar will offer a close-up view of the diversity of the Spanish languages spoken on the Iberian Peninsula and their importance to Spanish regional identity. With the goal of a broad understanding of the icons of contemporary Spanish cultural identity, we will analyze topics such as popular culture and literature, music and traditions, art, history and religion and their contributions to the development of Spanish high culture. We will also observe and experience traditional festivities and gastronomy in its relation to Spanish culture.

In-depth lectures and guided field study will be oriented toward developing students’ language competence in all four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing) while offering them a first-hand experience of Spanish customs, traditions, and way of life. Students will visit cities and places relevant to the acquisition of these topics.