1. Academics
  2. Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
  3. Travel Courses

Travel Courses

The Department of Anthropology and Archaeology offers a number of courses off-campus that are designed to provide students with unique, experiential learning opportunities. Current offerings are taught once a year and entail short-term study abroad, instructional time in a local prison, or domestic travel.

The Cuba Experience

Cuban cityscape
 

Offered during the Winter Break, this course introduces students to anthropological, ethnomusicological, and ethnochoreological ethnographic fieldwork methods, including participant-observation, ethnographic interviews, and audio/video documentation techniques. Students will be exposed to both Afro-Cuban religious and Cuban popular expressive forms. They will learn about the interrelatedness of music, dance, visual arts, ritual, and religious beliefs, as well as with Cuban views on Cuban culture, gender, and race. Students will attend/observe both formal and informal music performances and take music and dance lessons where they will have an opportunity to engage musicians on a one-on-one basis. In addition to music-oriented activities, students will learn about Cuba’s cultural and economic history by exploring Havana’s rich museums, monuments, and plazas.

Inside Out

Washington students in an Inside Out course outside Baylor Women's Correctional Institution
 

Each fall semester, Professor Steinmetz offers an Inside-Out Course in collaboration with the Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution in New Castle, Delaware.  The international education program brings incarcerated (Inside) and college (Out) students together in a semester long academic course. 

Students from Washington College and from BWCI engage in an on-site classroom component and off-site collaborative work that pushed them to see each other as individuals rather than statistics or stereotypes and to critically question the foundations of social inequality. The benefits of a diverse group of students contributing a myriad of perspectives to the learning process epitomizes the College’s value of moral courage and mission to develop citizen leaders.

The U.S. Southwest

Each summer,  a small number of anthropology students travel with Washington faculty to study the cultures and artifacts found in the American Southwest.