Tracking Cultures Program
Tracking Cultures is a flagship interdisciplinary study abroad program sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Every other year, this innovative cultural studies program engages students in the interdisciplinary study of Texas and the American Southwest, tracing aspects of southwestern culture historically into Mexico, Spain, and North Africa. The program runs from January to June of each calendar year (spring semester and first summer session) and includes academic work both on the University of Texas campus in Austin and abroad. The ultimate goal of the program is to promote a more sophisticated level of cultural awareness and understanding.
In the fall, the program accepts ten to fifteen students who enroll in four challenging seminars at UT during the spring semester. In previous years, students have travelled through the American Southwest over spring break and to Mexico and Spain during the first summer session, ending the program with a final report on a specific topic related to their individual programs of studies.
The program is a blend of study abroad and carefully coordinated academic course work in Austin. Faculty from four different departments at UT work closely together to plan the program's curriculum, identifying fundamental themes and goals for each course, coordinating examinations and writing assignments, and encouraging synthesis exercises that transcend traditional academic boundaries.
Topics in program courses focus on issues of ethnicity, politics, legal affairs, material culture, literature, art history, architecture, cultural identity, religion, technology, medicine, colonialism, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other related subjects.
Local faculty abroad enhance the students' experience with a series of lectures and on-site discussions in the most important locations for the study of cultures in contact.
After studying the wide array of academic subjects related to the program during the spring semester, students focus more specifically on a topic of personal interest when they write their reports in the summer. Past report topics have investigated the arrival of Islamic medical technology in the New World, comparative vernacular and monumental architecture in North Africa, Spain, and Mexico, contrastive studies of colonization and religious conversion, and a variety of other issues related to art, literature, music, history, geography, anthropology, religion, and politics.
A network of approximately 25 faculty associates, drawn from a variety of departments throughout the University, serves as a valuable academic resource to the program by giving guest lectures in the program courses and advising students on subjects related to their areas of expertise. Academic departments and programs presently represented in the Tracking Cultures Program include Anthropology, Comparative Literature, English, French, Geography, History, Latin American Studies, Mexican-American Studies, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Middle Eastern Studies, and Spanish.
Applications for the 2008 program are due October 26, 2007. There is a program fee of $2500, which covers all six weeks of travel to the Southwest, Mexico, and Spain during the spring and summer. The University underwrites all remaining costs of the program. A limited number of need-based scholarships up to $1,000 will be available.
Upper division standing and basic language proficiency in Arabic, French or Spanish are required (the equivalent of four semesters of lower-division work). For more information about the program, contact Professor Cory Reed, Faculty Director of the Program, at 232-4512 or 471-4936 or Priscilla Ebert in the Gebauer Building, Room 2.200, at 475-7586.