One of the primary study abroad opportunities is the African Civilizations in Paris program, which alternates every year with a program on Colonizations. In addition, the College of the University of Chicago works with the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), to sponsor programs in Tanzania and Botswana.
University of Chicago Study Abroad Programs
Dakar: African Civilizations
The College’s Winter Dakar program is built upon a three-course African Civilizations sequence, taught in English. Program participants also take a French or Wolof language course, which runs at a normal pace through the quarter and is designed to help students live in and move around the city. Dakar is an impressive metropolis, a booming and modern multicultural city. Senegal’s intellectual life shines; the country has produced global thinkers and politicians, as well as scholars of literature, the humanities, and the social sciences. The country is also home to an array of museums, monuments, and marketplaces, as well as a wealth of culinary, musical, athletic and artisanal traditions. Possible extra-curricular activities for students include attending a live music venue, visiting galleries and street fairs that feature original art, watching a wrestling match, learning to cook ceb bu jën, Senegal’s national dish, or taking part in a pick-up game of soccer.
The Dakar program is operated in partnership with the West African Research Center, a non-profit educational organization located in the Fann neighborhood of Dakar. Students will have access to the resources and activities at WARC, including the library and café. Please note: Offered in alternating years. The next program will be Winter 2025.
More information can be found here.
Dakar: Colonizations
The College’s Spring Quarter Colonizations program in Dakar meets the general education requirement in Civilization studies by providing credit for a full three-course sequence (Colonizations I, II, III), taught in English.
This three-quarter sequence critically unsettles the concept of ‘civilization’ by focusing on the histories and discourses of power, resistance, and political possibility that have given shape to the modern world. We explore modern forms of colonialism across the globe: their dynamics of dispossession, exploitation and domination; their contradictions and unforeseen consequences; their relationships with processes of resistance, revolution, freedom and independence; and their legacies in the present. The sequence also centers colonialism’s fundamental entanglement with capitalism and with the histories of race/racialization, labor/class, gender, and sexuality that have come to configure political identities today. We will pay particular attention to the historical and contemporary expressions of these processes in the context of Senegal, and the African continent, more generally.
Participants will also take a Wolof or French language course, which runs at a normal pace throughout the quarter and is designed to help students connect with local life and people in Dakar.
In addition to classroom instruction, the program features a number of excursions to sites of historic and cultural interest both in and around Dakar, and in other parts of coastal Senegal. The Senegalese capital and its environs offer numerous opportunities to connect readings, discussions, and lectures with Senegal’s colonial past, its vibrant present, and its dynamic future. It is assumed that students will use their free time to explore this remarkable city apart from program-organized outings. Please note: Offered in alternating years. The next program will be Spring 2025.
More information can be found here.
Paris (and Beyond): Migration, Colonization, and Diaspora Civilization
The College’s Migration, Colonization, and Diaspora in Paris program is a three-course sequence that fulfills the Core’s Civilization requirement. It is taught in English. Program participants also take a French language course, which runs at a normal pace through the quarter and is designed to help students connect with French (and Parisian) culture. This sequence is designed to give students the historical context for understanding contemporary debates on postcolonial immigration and multiculturalism as well conceptual frameworks for analyzing issues of race, otherness, and the legacies of the colonial encounter—in France and elsewhere. We will explore the histories, definitions, and connotations of “Frenchness,” as well as consider how colonized peoples have helped to create those meanings. However, this course will not simply treat the inhabitants of former French colonies as a window onto France. We will also investigate how various colonized peoples directed, shaped and contributed to the worlds in which they lived, and how they actively made and maintained relations with other peoples, such as the French. Those processes and interchanges, as we will learn, often produced unintended consequences, with which both the inhabitants of France and the inhabitants of the former French empire continue to grapple today. Our goal is for students to emerge from the class with a better understanding of the legacies of French imperialism, and of the history and theories that animate contemporary debates on multicultural France. Students will have an opportunity to learn about Paris beyond its standard hallmarks—the museums and sites that are the mainstay of typical tourist guides—to explore the ways in which France’s former empire and its peoples has made and remade the city.
Overall, the course proceeds through a combination of general theoretical texts and case studies and also makes ample use of novels, poems, and films. The precise case studies and areas of the world we engage will vary from year to year. In Autumn 2024, the course content will largely focus the legacy of France’s colonial empire in Africa, North Africa, and the Caribbean. Khalid Lyamlahy will teach African Civilizations in Paris during the Autumn 2024 Paris study abroad program. Please note: Offered in alternating years. Following the Autumn 2024 program, the next program will run in Autumn 2026.
More information can be found here.
Cairo: Middle Eastern Civilizations
The College’s Middle Eastern Civilizations in Cairo program provides University of Chicago students with an opportunity to study Egyptian civilization and culture from pyramids to minarets, from antiquity to modernity. The rich history of Cairo will reveal itself to students through exposure to history, literature, and archaeology along the banks of the Nile.
Participants will take a series of three civilizations courses devoted to Egypt’s evolving role in a wider regional context. As with the University’s other programs abroad, these courses will be taught by three different faculty members (in English) in intensive three-week segments. The precise topics of each year’s courses are determined by faculty interest and expertise. Students take a fourth course in Arabic language, offered at beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. The beginning course is Egyptian colloquial Arabic. Classroom work is supplemented by excursions to sites of historical interest from pyramids at Giza to the Valley of the Kings and Karnak temple in Luxor to the modern bustling capital city of Cairo.
The next program will be Winter 2025.
More information can be found here.
Marrakesh: Middle Eastern Civilizations in Morocco
The Marrakesh program is a civilization-based program designed to provide students with the experience of living in a city at the crossroads of three dynamic regions—North Africa, Europe, and the Near East—while undertaking a rigorous academic introduction to Morocco’s role in regional history.
Morocco is a mélange of diverse cultures, from its pre-historic Amazigh (Berber) heritage to the conquests of the ancient Romans and Visigoths to its present confluence of European and Arab civilizations, linking the West with the Islamic and Middle-Eastern worlds. At the center of this quarter-long program is a three-course sequence that presents a historical and literary introduction to Morocco’s place in history and the modern world. In addition to this sequence, which is taught in English by University of Chicago faculty and meets the College’s civilization requirement, students will also take a fourth course in either beginning Moroccan Colloquial Arabic (known as Darija), or in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) at the intermediate or advanced level. Excursions to sites of historical interest around Marrakesh, greater Morocco, and further afield will complement your classwork and give you a sense of the region’s rich history, as well as the interplay between its history and current international affairs.
The Morocco program is operated in partnership with the Center for Language & Culture: Marrakesh (CLC), a non-governmental organization with over a dozen years of experience offering educational, language, and intercultural programs to local and international students. The CLC is located in Marrakesh’s Guéliz neighborhood—the French District of the New City just outside the famous Old City (the medina). Students will have access to the CLC’s resources and activities as well as downtown Marrakesh.
The next program will be Winter 2025.
More information can be found here.
Going to Africa?
You can update your immunizations and find out more information about the health requirements of traveling abroad at the University of Chicago’s Travel Clinic.