Students enrolled in this course will travel with Dr. Ouellette and Dr. Chi to Cuba for 8-10 days in January following the fall semester of study. In Havana, students live with host families and consume breakfast and dinner with their host families. During the day, students visit notable historical and cultural sites with their instructors, making connections between their study and the realities lived by Cubans on the island today. Students spend at least one day outside of Havana in the Matanzas region, the site of many plantations relying on enslaved labor during the colonial period. Additional noteworthy site visits include: Universidad de Habana, CENESEX, José Martí Memorial, Museo de la Revolución, and Proyecto Muraleando. Students also benefit from interactions with local scholars at the Centro de Estudios Martianos in Havana.
Additional MILA Goals Include:
1) For students to develop knowledge of a region outside the United States, including ways that global systems shape the lives of the people who reside there.
2) For students to use diverse perspectives to examine the topic and abroad site, making connections among various disciplinary, methodological, ideological, and/or epistemological approaches.
3) For students to gain a deeper understanding of the abroad place of study and greater global awareness by interacting with a diversity of people from that place.
4) For students to reflect upon ways that global systems of power affect their own efforts to learn more about that region and how their visit affected their perceptions of both the place and of themselves.
