Travelers Abroad

Why have people traveled abroad?  Not people who were emigrants or refugees, who hoped to settle permanently in another country.  But people who found themselves in other countries just for a certain while, and who ventured there for many reasons:  engineers, performers, diplomats, soldiers, scientists, missionaries, tourists, corporate employees, and, of course, students.  This course will take a multicultural as well as global approach to travelers abroad.  We will investigate any kind of traveler from anywhere, to anywhere, at any point in human history.  We will examine their motivations, resources, experiences, adaptations ... and their returns home, changed and unchanged.

This course centers upon discussion of primary and secondary sources, and a research paper on a topic of your choosing.  At the end of the course I hope you will have sharper analytical skills with which to assess evidence and formulate your own arguments, as well as sharper writing and verbal skills with which to organize and articulate your own ideas — beyond the confines of history, and useful in any field of endeavor.