Studying abroad is a widely popular opportunity at Tufts University, a school well-known for its internationally minded student body. Every year, 40–45% of Tufts undergraduates participate in a year- or semester-long program in a foreign country. As impressive as this statistic is, Tufts Global Education is seeking to bring even more students abroad with a newly minted program that will take place over this academic year’s winter break. Taught by Bruce Hitchner, professor and chair of the classics department, the Greeks, Romans, and Celts in France program will take a group of students to significant archaeological sites in and around the city of Aix-en-Provence in southern France.
The program will take its maiden voyage this winter break, though it will hardly be the first on-site learning experience for its well-traveled instructor. Hitchner has led similar classical studies programs abroad, including courses that spent several days in Aix-en-Provence, taught through the city’s Institute for American Universities. What makes Tufts’ version of Hitchner’s program unique is that it focuses exclusively on Aix-en-Provence and its environs for two and a half weeks.
According to a past participant in one of Hitchner’s programs, a longer stay in France may be well worth students’ time. Mikayla Barreiro, a current Tufts graduate student and an alumnus of Hitchner’s winter 2019–20 program through the IAU, thought that a more in-depth look at southern France was a smart choice for this new, Tufts-affiliated program.
“There’s just so much in one place,” she said. “You can’t see all of it in just a few days if you’re splitting it up.”
Barreiro cited Hitchner’s on-site lectures, French museums and crêpes as the highlights of her own Aix-en-Provence experience.
Although the course is solely concentrated in one location, its subject areas will be wide ranging, and intentionally so. Hitchner hopes that undergraduate and graduate students of all majors will apply, and has organized the curriculum to transcend the discipline of classical studies.
“It’s not just your standard kind of traditional history course in the traditional classical approach; it looks at it in the way you might expect a professor at Tufts to try to do it,” he said.
This means, for example, delving into scientific perspectives on the sites they visit. Hitchner has planned lessons on local flora and fauna and the engineering of aqueducts, which may be of particular interest to students who come from biology and engineering backgrounds. Hitchner has also prepared lectures with contemporary relevance, including course content on climate change and its effects on populations in antiquity.
“It’s open to everyone, and it will have resonance for anyone who takes the course,” Hitchner said.
Another aspect of the program’s accessibility is the fact that it corresponds to Tufts’ winter break, when students are more likely to be unoccupied. Greeks, Romans, and Celts is designed to work within the confines of the Tufts academic calendar, allowing students to study abroad for a relatively short duration.
“One benefit, or one of many benefits, of the winter term programs is that generally, students don’t have some other obligation that they have to work around,” said Melanie Armstrong, associate director of programs and outreach at Tufts Global Education. “They won’t miss an opportunity, like to work or to intern over the summer.”
Armstrong hopes that the introduction of the program will further break down barriers to student participation in abroad programs.
Indeed, timing was a crucial aspect in the feasibility of Barreiro’s abroad experience, due to obligations she had during the school year.
“I would not have been able to go abroad, and I would have never been abroad, if not for having gone with Professor Hitchner at that time,” she said.
Most importantly, though, she would not have had the experience that changed the trajectory of her academic and professional career.
“I had not intended to [become] a classicist,” Barreiro said. “And then I went on this trip, and I haven’t been able to get these things out of my head.”
Now, Barreiro is studying to complete a Masters in Classical Studies at Tufts, with Hitchner as one of her advisers.
Armstrong added that attending a shorter studying abroad experience could also serve as a jumping-off point for doing a semester or even a full year abroad.
“I think for some students too, they want to … get their feet wet. So a shorter-term program gives them that opportunity to test it out a little bit, and then see if maybe a full semester or year [abroad] is something that interests them.” she said.
Armstrong also emphasized the transformative potential of studying abroad. “I’ve been in contact with students who are 10 to 15 years out, who are just doing really interesting things,” she said. “It’s just really cool to see how much study abroad was actually one of the catalyzing experiences for them to go on and do what they’re doing now.”
In the hopes of inspiring students to think both globally and historically, Hitchner intends to take on significant philosophical questions that are inherently tied up in the course materials. Most significant is the relationship between France’s current culture and the cultures that occupied and contributed to its ancient Gallic society.
Hitchner touches upon this variety of different cultures that have shaped modern-day France by questioning the way they have interacted.
“It’s very important to note this question of identity: How do we know who we are?” he said. “What did it mean to be, for example, someone of Celtic origin, of Gallic origin, a Roman … what did it mean to be a mixture of all these things?”
At the very core of this study abroad program is cultural interaction, an experience that can illuminate other ways of life as well as enhance understanding of one’s own culture. Hitchner posits that these questions of identity have remained the same, despite the millennia that separate the modern day from antiquity.
The course accompanying students’ two-and-a-half week residence in Aix-en-Provence is worth 3 semester-hour units and will be taught under the Department of Classical Studies. Students will take 10 excursions and site visits in total. Applications for the Greeks, Romans, and Celts in France program are open until Nov. 1.
