London Program 2012
[Horse Guards Parade]
CARLETON COLLEGE ENGLISH LITERATURE & THEATER SEMINAR IN LONDON
PROGRAM DATES
The program will take place during the spring of 2012 and will roughly correspond to the Carleton term. Specific dates will be announced later.
DIRECTOR
Professor Peter Balaam
Peter teaches courses in American literature at Carleton and teaches and writes on transatlantic Romanticism. He is the author of Misery’s Mathematics (Routledge 2009), a study of literary representations of mourning in 19th-century U.S. literature and culture.
PREREQUISITES
The seminar is open to students of any major at Carleton. Participants are urged, prior to the start of the program, to take any 100-level English course and, for background in 19th-century British literature and cultural history, English 211.
OVERVIEW
Literature, theater, and the arts flourish in London. The city has an incomparably rich literary and cultural past and present, and is arguably the world’s pre-eminent city for theater. The goal of the London program is to immerse Carleton students in this rich milieu, taking-in and making use of the city itself as a visual text and an historical phenomenon in order to enrich their understanding of English literature and culture.
COURSE OF STUDY: 16 CREDITS
ENGLISH 281: SEEING ROMANTICALLY: LONDON’S AGE OF WONDER (6 Credits)
Early 19th-century London (1785–1830) was a setting of extraordinary intellectual, social, and political volatility and vitality. With the city itself as the classroom, the group will explore the revolutions in thought and feeling that made the Romantic era an epistemological “age of wonder.” The poetry and prose of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Mary Shelley, contextualized in light of Romantic expressions in architecture, painting and science, will help us to recreate a sense of what it meant to see romantically.
Instructor: Peter Balaam
ENGLISH 282: LONDON THEATER
(6 Credits)
Students will attend productions of classic and contemporary plays in London and perhaps Stratford-on-Avon (about two per week) and do related reading. Class discussions will focus on dramatic genres and themes, production and direction decisions, acting styles, and design. Possible guest speakers may include actors, critics, and directors. Students will keep a theater journal and develop several entries into full reviews of plays. Instructor: Jane Edwardes, former
Theater editor for Time Out [London
ENGLISH 279: URBAN FIELD STUDIES: LONDON AS TEXT
(4 Credits, S/CR/NC)
A combination of background readings and guided site visits will give students tools for seeing the city itself as a multilayered text, a human work under constant processes of expansion and revision. Starting from the city’s pre-urban geology and the still visible structures of its Roman past, students will recreate a sense of the Regency-era city of our Romanticism studies and explore the urban reforms currently under way in preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games. Students will pursue this visual knowledge of London in groups and on their own, and make themselves expert on some aspect of London’s reconstructable urban text.
Instructor: Local Faculty
HOUSING
Students will stay in double, triple or quadruple rooms at Pickwick Hall, 7 Bedford Place, London WCIB 5JE, conveniently located in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum and within walking distance of a number of London theaters. Students will have breakfast at the hostel and eat lunch and dinner on their own with an allowance provided by the program. The hostel includes a common kitchen, laundry facilities, and a lounge with two computers and high-speed internet access.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Classes will meet Monday through Thursday mornings in a seminar room at the Swedenborg Society, a short walk from
Pickwick Hall. Field trips to London sites and museums will occupy some afternoons as well. London theater performances will be scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and/or Thursday evenings. Students are expected to attend all classes and performances and all scheduled group trips.
EXCURSIONS
In addition to frequent class meetings at London museums, historic houses, and other sites of literary interest, group excursions will likely include trips to Bath, the Lake District, other sites relevant to our readings, and a theater-focused trip to Stratford-on-Avon. There will be a mid-term break that will allow time for individual travel. Students may also wish to travel independently before or after the program as well as on weekends when group travel is not planned.
EXPENSES
Carleton’s 2011-2012 comprehensive fee covers room and board, all program-related theater and museum tickets, and group-travel while in England. Many incidental expenses are also included. Students are responsible for books, their own transportation to and from London, personal travel in England and beyond, and all additional personal expenses. Estimates for minimum expenses beyond
airfare run from $400 to $500. Student financial aid is applicable as on campus.
See the Off-Campus Studies Office or website athttp://go.carleton.edu/ocs for further information regarding work study contracts, loans, and other subjects related to financial aid.
INFORMATION MEETING
There will be an information meeting at 5 pm on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 in Laird 211.
APPLICATIONS
Application forms are available from the Office of Off-Campus Studies, Leighton 119 or online at http://go.carleton.edu/ocs.
Applications are due no later than Friday, April 15, 2011, to Professor Balaam in Laird 205A.
If you have immediate questions about courses, please email Peter Balaam, pbalaam@carleton.edu. Other questions may be addressed to the Off-Campus Studies Office.
Photo Album - Pictures taken during a recent London Program
[The Pickwick, our Home]
PICKWICK HALL - RESIDENCE OF THE LONDON PROGRAM STUDENTS
[Thames Boat]
A BOAT RIDE ON THE THAMES
[The Globe Theater]
SHAKESPEARE'S GLOBE THEATER - RECONSTRUCTED
[The Cutty Sark]
THE CUTTY SARK AT GREENWICH
[Class Discussion]
CLASS-IN-PROGRESS IN THE SWEDENBORG HOUSE
[Swedenborg House]
THE ACADEMIC HOME OF THE LONDON PROGRAM
[St. Paul's Cathedral]
ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL - LONDON