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.
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.
