Every semester, students on the Central College Abroad blog (where, if you so desire, you can read a cleaned-up / de-radicalized version of these posts) make some sort of joke about forgetting the "study" portion of study abroad. When you’re a sociology student, though, the boundaries between your everyday world and your academic world often blur. When I go to a lame party, I "put on an ethnographic gaze," and analyse the social interactions going on around me. I can’t take a walk or ride a bus without noticing the ways in which social structures and social relationships have left marks on the physical environment of the neighborhoods I’m passing. At the same time, my academic work often involves talking to people. I get to ask them about lives, about how they see the world, and about how the world sees them – the kind of deep conversations that are increasingly rare in a society dominated by superficial interactions.
Because of that, I don’t feel so much tension between the desire to do well academically here and the desire to fully immerse myself in the study abroad experience. I chose classes that would enrich my understanding of Austrian culture by providing historical and theoretical background on just the topics that fascinate me. And because academics are an important and exciting part of my time here, I wanted to provide a brief introduction to my classes, all of which are taught in German at the University of Vienna unless otherwise noted. Details after the jump.
Structure and Development of Contemporary Society: Austria in the Midst of Change
This is a pretty big lecture that takes place every Tuesday evening. It serves as an introduction to systems theory (basically, how systems create / replicate social inequality) as it applies to Austrian society. We're going to examine the Austrian labor market, the health care system, demographic pressures, religiosity (or let's be honest, lack thereof), and differences between urban and rural areas. There's a written test at the end.
Youth Sociology and Youth Cultural Research
I'd like to write a thesis on youth culture, so I was incredibly excited to take this class. There are about 30 students, and the class is set up as half-lecture, half-seminar. The first five class meetings are lectures that trace the development of youth cultures (and modes of analyzing them) in German-speaking countries. After a test on this material, the following class meetings are going to be more discussion-oriented. We're working in groups to conduct research on various aspects of youth culture in Vienna, and we'll be presenting those results to the class as well as writing a term paper on them. My group will be analyzing the hip-hop scene in Vienna (which was originally my idea!) in light of ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and the transnational/global media.
Theories of Racism and Sexism
This seminar traces both the German and international intellectual tradition of racism and sexism. Because it's Austria, we're going to do a big unit on the Nazis, but we're also going to talk about more contemporary developments like "black studies" and "critical whiteness studies" (when English terms are used in a German-speaking class like this, I can never decide whether I should pronounce them with an Austrian accent or not.) It's within the sociology department, but I would consider it similar to a WGS class at Harvard. The professor began by making a standard WGS "strive to be intentionally anti-racist / anti-sexist, and understand that everyone else is trying their best to do the same" speech. We have two papers for this class, one an analysis of one contemporary example of sexism and the other a reflection on our visit to the Archives of the Austrian Resistance (from World War II).
Penetrating Ethnic Communities
This seminar, which I've already described, is super chill. We just talked about how we feel about immigration to Austria, we're going to visit a mosque soon, eat lunch together in a Turkish restaurant, and then write a group paper about what we thought about it (only two pages per person). There wasn't even a reading list.
Austria in Context
This is required for all program participants. It's a bit of a mish-mash. Next week we're going to speak with students at the Wirtschaftsuniversität who will be studying abroad in America next semester about cultural differences between Austria and America, which should be really interesting. On other weeks, we'll be taking excursions to various museums and historical important places. There's also a historical component of the course, taught in German by a cute old Austrian man, on Thursday evenings.
Because of that, I don’t feel so much tension between the desire to do well academically here and the desire to fully immerse myself in the study abroad experience. I chose classes that would enrich my understanding of Austrian culture by providing historical and theoretical background on just the topics that fascinate me. And because academics are an important and exciting part of my time here, I wanted to provide a brief introduction to my classes, all of which are taught in German at the University of Vienna unless otherwise noted. Details after the jump.
Structure and Development of Contemporary Society: Austria in the Midst of Change
This is a pretty big lecture that takes place every Tuesday evening. It serves as an introduction to systems theory (basically, how systems create / replicate social inequality) as it applies to Austrian society. We're going to examine the Austrian labor market, the health care system, demographic pressures, religiosity (or let's be honest, lack thereof), and differences between urban and rural areas. There's a written test at the end.
Youth Sociology and Youth Cultural Research
I'd like to write a thesis on youth culture, so I was incredibly excited to take this class. There are about 30 students, and the class is set up as half-lecture, half-seminar. The first five class meetings are lectures that trace the development of youth cultures (and modes of analyzing them) in German-speaking countries. After a test on this material, the following class meetings are going to be more discussion-oriented. We're working in groups to conduct research on various aspects of youth culture in Vienna, and we'll be presenting those results to the class as well as writing a term paper on them. My group will be analyzing the hip-hop scene in Vienna (which was originally my idea!) in light of ethnicity, gender/sexuality, and the transnational/global media.
Theories of Racism and Sexism
This seminar traces both the German and international intellectual tradition of racism and sexism. Because it's Austria, we're going to do a big unit on the Nazis, but we're also going to talk about more contemporary developments like "black studies" and "critical whiteness studies" (when English terms are used in a German-speaking class like this, I can never decide whether I should pronounce them with an Austrian accent or not.) It's within the sociology department, but I would consider it similar to a WGS class at Harvard. The professor began by making a standard WGS "strive to be intentionally anti-racist / anti-sexist, and understand that everyone else is trying their best to do the same" speech. We have two papers for this class, one an analysis of one contemporary example of sexism and the other a reflection on our visit to the Archives of the Austrian Resistance (from World War II).
Penetrating Ethnic Communities
This seminar, which I've already described, is super chill. We just talked about how we feel about immigration to Austria, we're going to visit a mosque soon, eat lunch together in a Turkish restaurant, and then write a group paper about what we thought about it (only two pages per person). There wasn't even a reading list.
Austria in Context
This is required for all program participants. It's a bit of a mish-mash. Next week we're going to speak with students at the Wirtschaftsuniversität who will be studying abroad in America next semester about cultural differences between Austria and America, which should be really interesting. On other weeks, we'll be taking excursions to various museums and historical important places. There's also a historical component of the course, taught in German by a cute old Austrian man, on Thursday evenings.
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