UG Opportunities Study Abroad
- Dublin
- Florence
- London
- Mexico City
- Stratford-upon-Avon
- UCEAP
“In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis”: A Guided Tour of Literary Dublin
June 23, 2025 – July 13, 2025
Program Director: Professor Colleen Jaurretche, UCLA Department of English
Visit UCLA Study Abroad to register and learn more at our upcoming info session:
Info Session: Summer Travel Study in Dublin
Monday, March 10 at 4:00 pm
Kaplan Hall 250
Using the city of Dublin as your locus, students in this course will read a variety of major works written by Dublin writers. A grounding in Dublin geography, urban study, and history will prepare students to consider various dimensions of Irish experience in the twentieth-century, from its status as a country under British rule through its fight for independence, and ultimate autonomy.
Program Courses
All students will enroll in two required courses while attending the program, for a total of 10 credits:
- English 119 – “In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis”: Literary Dublin
- English 182F – James Joyce Seminar
Course Descriptions
- English 119: “In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis”: Literary DublinUsing the city of Dublin as your locus, students in this course will read a variety of major works written by Dublin writers. A grounding in Dublin geography, urban study, and history will prepare students to consider various dimensions of Irish experience in the twentieth-century, from its status as a country under British rule through its fight for independence, and ultimate autonomy.Requirements: attendance at all walks and excursions for the 2025 Travel Study program. Course assessment will be based on participation in conversations, as well as two essays: One short essay on your experience walking the route of three consecutive chapters of Ulysses, and one longer essay (7 -8 pp) on the connection between one of our assigned texts and an historical or geographical feature of Dublin and environs.
- English 182F: James Joyce SeminarIn this course, you will read Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and representative sections of Finnnegans Wake. As Ulysses is the pivotal novel of the twentieth-century (as well as a supreme depiction of Dublin), the greater portion of the program will be given over to its exploration. Our conversations will range from Joyce’s vision of the role of the artist in society to considerations of the ways in which his work engages textual, gender, postcolonial, ecological, historical, and philosophical subjects and writers. Discussion will be based upon readings of his work as well as our excursions in and around Dublin. Toward the end of our course we will read a bit of Finnegans Wake, with an eye to introducing strategies for interpretation of Joyce’s most obscure text. A special feature of this seminar is the overlapping readings with English 119 on Literary Dublin, which contextualize Joyce’s work as well as show the direction of modern literature in the wake of his achievements.
Requirements: attendance at all walks and excursions for the 2025 Travel Study program. Course assessment will be based on participation in conversations, as well as one 20-page essay.
Syllabus & Grading
- Syllabus and program itinerary are subject to change at the discretion of the instructor.
- Syllabus will be available to program participants in the spring quarter.
- All courses must be taken for a letter grade. Please refer to the course syllabus for grading details and contact your Faculty Director with any course-related questions.
Textbooks
Required texts will be announced during Spring quarter. Students are responsible for purchasing their own textbooks.
English in Florence: American Writers and Artists Abroad
June 30, 2025 – July 24, 2025
Program Director: Professor Christopher Looby, UCLA Department of English
Visit UCLA Study Abroad to register and learn more at our upcoming info session:
Info Session: Summer Travel Study in Florence
Wednesday, March 5 at 4:00 pm
Kaplan Hall 193
American writers and artists loved Florence and often went there to write, paint, and sculpt.
Travel and residence abroad was an essential part of their aesthetic education and creative development. Especially in the nineteenth century, the old world (and Italy in particular) served as the site of significant artistic education, exploration, and adventure.
This summer Travel Study program offers an opportunity to read American novels and short stories that were written in Italy, or that set their stories there or featured expatriate American writers and artists as characters, or all of the above.
This program examines the experiences of some of the most important American writers and artists who spent time in Florence, the beautiful Tuscan city where the Italian Renaissance originated. The program also includes an overnight excursion to Rome, the seat of the Roman Empire and a place of significance for Western civilization.
Curriculum: 10-14 units
- English 119-Literary Cities (Florence) (5 units)
- English 177-Interdisciplinary Studies in American Culture (5 units)
- English 199-Individual Studies (optional 4 units)
London – City of Transformations
English London is currently full and not accepting new applications. Waitlist currently closed. Please consider English Dublin.
June 30, 2025 – July 20, 2025
Spend a few weeks living in London this summer, and get to know one of the world’s greatest cities as an insider, not just a tourist.
This is an opportunity to gain an intimate knowledge of London, discovering, walking and mapping the psychogeography of the contemporary capital while recovering the hidden traces of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—such as the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor and the illuminated books of William Blake, which remain active nodes in the city’s cultural maps and provide major reference points in literature from T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland to the graphic novel From Hell.
The program combines the study of the cultural history of London with the study of the shifting patterns of urban design and development in the city, comparing the great nineteenth-century transformations of the capital (for example Trafalgar Square, Regents Street) with more contemporary developments (e.g., Canary Wharf and the Docklands; the purged and reinvented sites of the 2012 Olympics; Shoreditch and the east end).
The program aims to trace and re-trace the many recurring patterns of demolition and development that have shaped London for two centuries, and an unfolding Romantic contestation of those changes that have persisted into the present.
Program enrollment is limited to maintain an intimate environment for discussion in the classroom and on the street.
Program Director: Professor Saree Makdisi, UCLA Department of English
Curriculum: 10-14 units
- English 169-Topics in Literature, circa 1700 to 1850: Romanticism and Revolution (5 units)
- English 182D/184-Topics in Romantic Literature/Capstone Seminar (5 units)*
- English 199-Individual Studies (optional 4 units)
*English majors who will have completed 4 upper-division English courses by the end of spring term will be registered in English 184 for capstone credit; all other students will be registered in 182D.
For more information, visit http://ieo.ucla.edu/travelstudy/English-London
Mexico City: An American Crossroad
Not running in Summer 2022.
This program brings several courses together in a unique, inter-departmental opportunity to learn the history of US-Mexico relations, build language skills, and satisfy both major and general education requirements.
During our time together, we will read about and explore Mexico City as a primary catalyst of both contemporary chicanidad and transnational conceptions of “America.” These courses will deepen your understanding of what it means to study culture, of the historical and geopolitical stakes of valuing certain forms of expression over others. You will learn to reflect on your critical practice and to think about how your own definition of “America” is informed by living in the United States. This program is an excellent foundation for further study of American (broadly defined) literature and culture and an ideal foundation for students considering careers with an international, American focus.
Program Director: Professor Marissa López, UCLA Department of English
Curriculum: total units will vary based on course selection
You have significant flexibility to pick and choose courses, building a program that best meets your needs, with the only requirement being that you must take at least one English course. You may also enroll in an additional 4 units of 197 (Individual Studies) or 199 (Directed Research).
English courses:
- English 11-Introduction to American Cultures (5 units)
- English M105A-Early Chicana/Chicano Literature (5 units)
- English 199-Individual Studies (optional 4 units)
Spanish courses:
- Spanish 2A/3A-Intensive Spanish (4 units)
- Spanish 7A-Introductory Spanish for Heritage Speakers (4 units)
- English 7B-Intermediate Spanish for Heritage Speakers (4 units)
For more information, visit: https://ieo.ucla.edu/travelstudy/english-mexicocity/
Shakespeare (Stratford-upon-Avon and London)
Not running in Summer 2022.
Experience Shakespeare’s plays as they were meant to be experienced, on the stage as well as the page, and in the company of his fellow dramatists, during a summer session spent in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, England.
During this intensive program, students will be immersed in the study of multiple plays in performance, as mounted both on the two stages of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the reconstructed Globe Theater in Southwark, London.
Classroom work will include analysis of literary and historical approaches to the plays led by UCLA Shakespearean Professor Claire McEachern, as well as visits from actors, directors and other production staff of these two world-famous theater companies. Beyond the classroom, students will be introduced to the major historical sites and museums of Shakespeare’s hometown as well as the cultural offerings of London.
Program Director: Professor Claire McEachern, UCLA Department of English
Curriculum: 10-14 units
For English Majors
- English 150A-Shakespeare: Poems and Early Plays (5 units)
- English 150B-Shakespeare: Later Plays (5 units)
- English 199: Individual Studies (optional 4 units)
Students who have already taken English 150A or 150B may substitute English 150C-Shakespeare:
Special Topics for that course.
For non-English Majors
- English 90-Shakespeare (5 units) may fulfill GE requirement
- English 129-Topics in Genre Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Critical Theory (5 units)
- English 199: Individual Studies (optional 4 units)
For more information, visit: http://ieo.ucla.edu/travelstudy/English-Stratford
Additionally, the UCEAP (University of California Education Abroad Program) is partnered with 115 universities worldwide and offers programs in 42 countries; and the UCLA Career Center offers individual and group advising to students on a wide array of international opportunities.