Study Abroad Opportunities for Humanities Majors and Minors
Study abroad offers enormous opportunities for students who are interested in the humanities. At UR, those departments include Art and Art History, English, Modern Languages, Music, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, and Film and Media Studies.
Students majoring in the humanities will find that a semester or a year abroad will greatly enhance their resumes and their career. Many programs offer challenging internship opportunities for students who enjoy engaging their writing and research skills. A museum internship in London or a theater internship in Berlin aren’t just notches for your resume; they will lead to exciting internship and career opportunities back in the United States, or even in other overseas locations in the future. Humanities majors who study abroad are more likely to apply for competitive scholarships for domestic graduate and professional schools, or for further graduate study abroad.
Many students believe that if they are studying the humanities abroad, they need to first be proficient in a foreign language. This is not always the case; many English-language programs are located in the UK, Ghana, South Africa, India, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand. However, it would be a mistake to overlook extraordinary opportunities to begin a new language on UR-sponsored, English-language programs in Austria, Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan.
Students will find a great diversity of humanities courses overseas, more than are normally available on a typical American campus. These programs are designed to immerse students in the literatures, arts, and religions of many cultures. What can you experience abroad that you can’t study as effectively at UR? Most programs feature regular field trips to historic sites and museums of all kinds. If you have already traveled, you know that looking at slides of the frescoes and sculpture of Italy in a classroom is a very different learning experience from visiting museums in Tuscany with an art historian. Reading the Romantic poets in a UR classroom is not the same as doing so on a field trip to Britain’s Lake Country. You will also have access to courses that aren’t offered at UR (such as Art and Architecture of Cairo or Latin American theater in Buenos Aires).