Applications to study abroad during academic year 2027-2028 open on 9/15/2026

Maymester Lineup: Summer 2026 (Summer 2027 TBA)

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Art & Science in London

This Maymester session is a four-week, faculty-led experiential learning program in London (United Kingdom), focusing on the history of art and its intersection with the history of science and history of collections.

Faculty Leaders: Amanda Luyster, Visual Arts and Paul Oxley, Physics

For millennia, London has been a city shaped by movement—of people, ideas, and goods—arriving both by choice and through the forces of empire. Many of the objects brought to or made in London have been conserved in the city’s vast and well-known museums, like the British Museum and the National Gallery. As a result, London’s museums and collections of paintings, archaeological fragments, scientific instruments and even botanical specimens are some of the city’s marvels. In this course we examine the history of the city of London with special attention to its artistic and scientific production, as witnessed in its museums. Led by a husband-and-wife team, an art historian and a scientist, and using the chronology of the city’s development as our framework, our class will explore the city through daily site visits and guided discussions. We will learn what collections have to tell us about the people and times within which objects were made and collected.

The course also includes planned excursions beyond London, including a visit to Oxford – a city famed for its university and scholarly traditions; Glastonbury, with its layers of myth and medieval history, and Bletchley Park, site of Britain’s legendary World War II codebreaking efforts, made successful through early “computers.”

This course is ideal for students interested in the arts, humanities, sciences, and the history of ideas—and for anyone curious to explore how creativity shapes the world around us.

Venice: The Floating City

This Maymester session is a four-week, faculty-led experiential learning program in Venice, Italy, combining studio art with the history of art, architecture, and urbanism.

Faculty Leaders: David Karmon, Visual Art & Architecture and Cristi Rinklin, Studio Art

Venice floats upon the sea, a legendary and exotic place of imagination and adventure, from the travels of Marco Polo to the spectacular contemporary exhibits of the Venice Biennale. Yet today this amphibious city confronts unprecedented challenges: just as more tourists and rising sea-waters flood Venice every day, so do the foundations of the city continue to sink, along with the number of its permanent residents. This Maymester session, as a joint course in studio art and the history of art, architecture, and urbanism, uses the lens of the environmental humanities to think about Venice as a place inscribed with history that stirs the imagination and that invites us to speculate about the future. We will use a range of different techniques—from field sketching to printmaking to critical readings to group projects—to analyze the alluring and precarious nature of this city from multiple perspectives. Our goal is not only to better understand the extraordinary artistic culture of the city and its urban rituals, but to explore how the imaginative ingenuity of the Venetians has enabled them to adapt to the constant ebbs and flows of their unique aquatic environment.

History, Art & Architecture in Paris

This Maymester session is a four-week, faculty-led experiential learning program that explores history, art & architecture in Paris, France.

Faculty leaders: Stephanie Yuhl, History, Emma Burston, French & Francophone Studies & Thibaut Schilt, French & Francophone Studies

This summer course focuses on the cultural and social history of Paris from the medieval period to the present, with an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries. Class discussions and daily readings will explore topics such as Gothic architecture, the French Revolution, various artistic movements (from Classicism to Impressionism to Modernism), the dramatic 19th-century redesign of the city (Haussmannisation), the Commune insurrection, post-colonial migrations, debates over citizenship and what it means to be "French", as well as the modern urban transformation known as "Le Grand Paris". Our investigations will take us out of the classroom and into the city through field trips to historic sites (for example, Chateau de Versailles) and major museums, as well as neighborhood walking tours of the île-de-la-Cité and Latin Quarter, the Marais, the Grands Boulevards, and Montmartre.

Ancient Egypt in Turin, Italy

This Maymester session is a four-week, faculty-led experiential learning program in Turin, Italy. Students will learn about museology and Egyptian material culture, working primarily at the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum).

Facultry Leaders: Danielle Candelora, Classics and Jacob Damm, Classics

Students will gain hands-on experience working with ancient objects, databases, and learning from museum professionals. They will receive lectures and demonstrations from many experts, learning not only about objects and display choices, but also about the different professions connected to the museum in order to consider diverse career opportunities. Field trips to other museums, cultural heritage sites, archaeological sites, and conservation laboratories provide further opportunities to understand the many different means of communicating space and object histories to diverse audiences, and ways to participate in the museum field. Throughout these different approaches, students will be asked to consider the ethics of collecting and displaying objects and human remains, particularly taking into consideration a European, colonial viewpoint.

World Religions & Global Society in Northern Thailand

This Maymester session is a four-week, faculty led experiential program in Northern Thailand. The program will explore Southeast Asia's religious diversity.

Faculty: Todd Lewis, Religious/Asian Studies and Mathew Schmalz, Religious Studies

This class offers deep dive into the religious diversity of Southeast Asia. With a core focus on Buddhism, this program will allow students to study—and experience—Thailand’s rich culture that also embraces Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, and Christianity. The program will be structured around student active participation, including participant observation of important rituals and ceremonies, visits to local temples and meditation centers, a scavenger hunt for amulets in a local market, and a trip to Doi Suthep-Pui National Park. Students will be paired with undergraduates from Chiang Mai University. Academic evaluation for the program will be based on the completion of an undergraduate research project.

Elements of Extraction & Resistance in Peru

This Maymester session is a three-week, faculty led experiential program in Peru. The program will examine how extractive industries shape political, social and economic life in Peru.

Faculty Leaders: Joshua Farrell, Chemistry and Kyle Woolley, Sociology/Director of Mission & Engagement

We will learn how and why elements such as gold and silver, are mined and processed. We will also consider how and why people collectively organize to challenge extractive industries, demand more equitable material outcomes and struggle for a more environmentally just society. To unpack these themes we will visit different communities in Lima to understand disparities in housing, income, education and healthcare. We will visit the region of Ayacucho to learn about legacies of political violence and the role of Jesuit education for justice. We will also visit the city of Cusco to see how rural communities are affected by extraction.

The Maymester will culminate in a trip to Machu Picchu.

Triangulating Bermuda: Global Change, Sustainability & Nature of an Island Ecosystem

This is a faculty-led program in Bermuda and preparatory sessions in Worcester, providing students with comparative perspectives on environmental challenges and solutions.

Faculty Leaders: Justin McAlister, Biology/Environmental Studies and Kelly Wolfe-Bellin, Biology/Environmental Studies

Islands serve as unique microcosms for the study of forces that work at larger scales on continents and within larger societal groupings (large cities, States, etc.). This course will use the islands of Bermuda as a case study to examine historical and contemporary human interactions with the natural environment and to make predictions about future change.

Surrounded by coral reefs and located near the Gulf Stream, Bermuda is well situated for studying the environmental changes in our oceans today. One component of this course will be to learn about marine organisms and ecosystems, ocean function, and to appreciate Bermuda’s location as the northernmost location of coral reefs in the world. Further, islands have unique conservation issues. Bermuda was first settled in 1609 and human impacts on the island’s plants and animals were felt immediately. Thus, a second component of the course will explore the terrestrial environments of Bermuda and discern the impacts of 400+ years of human settlement on a previously uninhabited island archipelago. Bermuda is now one of the most densely populated places on the planet and has a history of exposure and response to invasive species.

Recognizing that humans are an important part of the environment, we will center the people of the island and their history in our discussions of the island environment. Important touchpoints in this conversation will be the original colonization of the previously uninhabited island, early agricultural efforts, history of slavery, British naval presence, and the current extensive tourism industry, influences that are reflected in the people, culture, and natural landscapes of the island today.

As islands are closed systems, it is also imperative that the people of the island work together toward sustainability. Bermuda, like most island systems, is essentially a ship in which everyone has to work together. In that vein, Bermuda is a leader in sustainability initiatives. We will study energy production and usage, freshwater resources, waste disposal, food production, conservation and wildlife population rehabilitation, etc. To serve as comparison for how Bermuda handles these sustainability initiatives, this course will have a pre-departure component on campus and in the local Worcester area. This component will consist of approximately 3 evening sessions and 2 weekend day-trips during spring semester.

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