Academics
Click on the options below for specific class offerings.
Your world is about to be rocked by a powerful British beat. Just as ideas that started in London have changed the world countless times, the ideas, perspectives and professors you’ll encounter here will change your world as no other academic experience can. London will be your classroom. One day you could be attending a lecture on the grounds of the Imperial War Museum, and the next you’ll be in Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms learning about the strategies developed here that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany.
Program details:
- 6 credits earned over 4 weeks
- Courses taught by British and European Union scholars, artists, business leaders and government officials
- Every course includes a 4-day LondonAWAY! experience. Destinations have included Paris, the D-Day Beaches, Brussels, Amsterdam and Edinburgh
- Every course includes at least 2 academic visits outside of London led by UK, EU and American professors. Typical destinations include Oxford, Bath, York, Dover and Stratford-upon-Avon
- Every course requires a supervised research project on a topic related to your studies
- Credit hours are awarded by The University of Southern Mississippi, a fully accredited institution of higher learning
Art
Wayfinding: Design and Navigation
If you’ve been lost in a city, you know how important signs and symbols are to navigating the urban landscape. In London where many visitors rely on symbols to move through the city, you’ll learn how wayfinding uses design to help people find their way.
Wayfinding is a class that never stops. From your arrival at Heathrow airport, you’ll be documenting signs, posters, information stations, and kiosks that make London’s wayfinding machine one of the world’s finest. During visits to the Tate Modern, the National Gallery and other key museums, you’ll see how maps and signage work in the context of some of the world’s most famous art collections. Your studies expand when visiting well-known London design studios, as you hear the creative process behind a successful system–from the typography chosen and visual hierarchy to how branding was used to promote the area–that brings ease of use and visual dynamics to neighborhood after neighborhood. Every day, London will be our exciting classroom, as we embark on what we will call “type and design walks,” searching out famous street art and documenting memorials as we move together throughout the city.
Once you’ve experienced London, you’ll move on to France for four days of new wayfinding opportunities. From the village of Bayeux to the D-Day landing sites to the streets of Paris, you’ll experience the comparision and contrasts of how the design of wayfinding works in another culture.
Course details:
- 6 credits in ART 499 or 599
- Wayfinding Syllabus? It’s right back there, of course.
- LondonAWAY! experience: Normandy for 2 nights and Paris for 2 nights
- Prerequisite: Consent of instructor
- Requirements: A camera you are comfortable using and instructor approval
Pictures of You: The London EYE and Art Photography
(This class is waitlist only for 2013 as of 15 March. Sign up for an alternative course and call 601-266-4344 to be placed on our waitlist in case someone drops.)
Get ready to capture the beauty, history and quirky everyday life of London on film. In addition to photographing the city’s well-known architectural masterpieces, daily walking tours will take you through quaint neighborhoods, palace gardens, and Dickens-like villages. You’ll also tour London’s major art museums, including the Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery. During LondonAWAY, you will take 4 days to live and learn in central Paris. Every day you’ll hone your personal artistic vision, applying compositional techniques and design skills utilized by master artists to your work. You’ll be given individual and small-group assignments, and attend weekly instructor-led group critiques. At the end of the summer, you’ll present a complete portfolio of your work for a final critique, along with various written and oral assignments. Finally, your best photographs will join those of your fellow artists/photographers from British Studies to constitute an art exhibition that will carry your viewpoints on London to colleges and universities all over the USA.
Course details:
Business
Career Opportunities Are the Ones that Never Knock: Successful Business In The UK And Europe Today
Want to watch a prospective employer’s jaw drop? Tell them some of the insights you gained about international commerce by living in London and immersing yourself in an interdisciplinary course of business study there. In this course you’ll get a firsthand look at the economic engines of Britain and the European Union as you take both a macro and micro perspective on these potent sectors of the global economy. While your eyes open to assess economic conditions, fiscal/monetary policy, international accounting regulations, and governmental structures in the UK and the EU, you’ll also learn about the impact of social and cultural factors on international management and marketing; methods of analyzing the impact of international market demand; and methods of managing human resources. Planned field excursions will allow you to observe the British and European systems at work, with visits to institutions like the Bank of England, UBS, Lloyd’s of London, Jaguar cars, the British Parliament, and the European Union in Brussels. Supervised research will involve analysis of a current globalization issue or a comprehensive international business case study. LondonAWAY will feature site visits in Brussels and Amsterdam.
Course details:
English
Shakespearience! Walk Where He Walked. Play Where He Played.
(This class is waitlist only for 2013 as of 15 March. Sign up for an alternative course and call 601-266-4344 to be placed on our waitlist in case someone drops.)
Shakespeare is alive and well, and on stage every night in London. In this course, you’ll follow in The Bard’s footsteps through the South Bank neighborhood that was his home. You’ll explore the newly uncovered sites of the Rose and Curtain Theatres, attend a traditional performance of Shakespeare at the Globe Theater, visit museums, historical sites and other performances, and share insights with experts and other students as you unearth the world Shakespeare knew and loved.
Shakespeare’s London is just the prelude. You’ll travel to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and talk with actors and experts from the world-renowned Royal Shakespeare Company. You’ll journey to Edinburgh, Scotland, where you’ll study the politics, dark conspiracies and witchcraft of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the ancient Dalkeith manor. Finally, your Shakespearience will come full circle back in London. As you see glimpses of even older worlds from before Shakespeare’s time, you’ll come to understand how the presence of that deeper past can offer you a way to calibrate the many worlds, and words, of this titanic literary figure.
Course details:
The London Underground: Exposing the Other Side of Victorian London
(This class is waitlist only for 2013 as of 15 March. Sign up for an alternative course and call 601-266-4344 to be placed on our waitlist in case someone drops.)
When you think of Victorian London, you may think more of high tea than of low life. You may imagine witty ladies and gents rather than sneaky criminals and detectives. You may picture a prim and proper world rather than one that is seedy and scandalous. In this course, we’ll investigate the sinister and enthralling underbelly of Victorian London through its depictions in Victorian novels, short stories, and journalism. We’ll read of monsters roaming city streets, Holmes and Watson solving unsolvable crimes, a poor girl striving to become A Little Princess, and Dorian Gray descending into London’s squalid shadows. By visiting the Fleet Street of Sweeney Todd and delving into Alan Moore’s London-set graphic novels, we’ll also explore why Victorian London continues to inspire current writers.
We’ll aim to understand London as a character—not just as the setting—of Victorian literature. Charles Dickens loved walking the streets and witnessing the “restlessness of a great city.” We’ll absorb that “great city” by joining a Jack the Ripper walking tour, exploring the grand Victoria and Albert Museum, and visiting Victorian landmarks that still exist today. Just as Dickens contrasts two great European cities—London and Paris—in his classic novel A Tale of Two Cities, we’ll cross the channel to compare London to the famed city of lights and love during our four days of LondonAWAY!
Will you keep all of the Victorians’ secrets after a summer of digging deeply into their hiding places? Perhaps…
Course details:
Beatrix and Other Potters: Classics Of Children’s British Literature (NOT being taught until 2014)
Here’s your chance to experience firsthand the inspiration for some of the world’s most famous children’s stories. You’ll read literary classics, visit the places where they were written, and attend presentations by noted British specialists. You’ll visit fantasy sites in Oxford associated with Lewis Carroll, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Harry Potter; cross Pooh Bridge in Milne’s Ashdown Forest; find traces of Long John Silver in Stevenson’s Edinburgh; and look for Peter Rabbit in Potter’s Lake District. In London, you’ll explore the appeal of Dick Whittington to city apprentices; visit Kensington Garden to understand how J. M. Barrie could see Peter Pan in the magical park across the street; walk about the maritime world of Greenwich Village; visit the Old Royal Observatory and experience a child’s wonder of having a foot in each hemisphere at the Greenwich Meridian, and more. Along the way, you’ll learn how various texts are constructed as literature that reflects historical, cultural and psychological realities. You’ll also enjoy the most stunning classrooms of a lifetime, as your pathway of learning stretches North from London through the Lake District to Edinburgh for four days of LondonAWAY.
Course details:
- 6 credits in ENG 497 or 597
- LondonAWAY! experience: Edinburgh for 4 nights
- Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor
History
Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: A History Of World War II
In this far-ranging course, you’ll have a rare opportunity to study World War II, the pivotal event of the 20th Century, from a European perspective. You’ll experience the war where history was made, with lectures by distinguished British historians, including professors from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Areas of concentration include the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, the Russian Front, women at war, the Holocaust, and Operation Overlord, the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
You’ll journey across the English Channel to the beaches of Normandy and then onto Paris, for a four-day study of the D-Day battle sector and the liberation of Paris, tracing the footsteps of American soldiers inland to ultimate victory. In London, your “classrooms” will include the Cabinet War Rooms where Winston Churchill directed the British war efforts, and the Imperial War Museum. You’ll also take a day-long trip out of the city to walk through the British history of warfare, starting with a climb to the Celtic hillfort at Cisbury Ring, then moving on to the Roman fort at Portchester, and finally touring the Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.
This course gives you the chance to meet World War II through the eyes of those who lived it, as you conduct your own primary research in the Public Record Office or the Imperial War Museum. There you will design your own research plan, perhaps using Churchill’s letters to study how battlefield strategies evolved, or using the letters of everyday Londoners to understand the terrible era of the Blitz.
Course details:
Interior Design & Geography
Wonderwall(s): Knowing London and Paris Inside and Out
How did London and Paris, two of the greatest global cities on Earth, become what they are today? This fascinating course, co-taught by professors of architectural engineering technology and cultural geography, will take you through layers of time to see how the city has been designed and redesigned through history. Focusing on scales as minute as a single dwelling and as extensive as London and Paris’ metropolitan regions, you’ll gain an authentic introduction to the city as a spatial construct and an urban system.
You will explore London, retracing old Roman Londinium, discovering hidden medieval pathways, and learning the origins of the city’s famous districts and boroughs. A short trip up the River Thames will take you to grand estates where the nobility of centuries past lived in idyllic splendor. You will tour landscapes of sport and leisure in Hyde Park. As a participant in the everyday “urban drama,” you’ll visit open-air markets, which have supplied Londoners with food and entertainment for centuries. You’ll meet locals in a pub and peek inside the doors of an elite social club, and you’ll explore the history of the British home through visits to some of London’s finest historic and contemporary residences.
Just when some of London’s greater secrets have come to seem obvious to you, Wonderwalls(s) will change up the game and take you to France. There you will spend two days studying how the ruins of the the ruins of the D-Day battlefield area have been developed since 1944 to become a commercial landscape of memory and memorialization. With Omaha Beach and the American Battlefield Cemetery as just some of your classrooms, you will look closely at how modern pilgrimage sites rely on geography and design to convey their meaning and give them a powerful voice. Then in Paris, you will compare how another great European city has developed since the 1800s, both inside and out.
Wrapping up the course and your month in Britain, you will take a fresh look at contemporary London as one of the most diverse cities in Europe. Local experts will help you visualize the future of London and how urban planners today are addressing the social, economic, and environmental challenges of the 21st Century.
Course details:
Mass Communication
(What’s The Story) Morning Glory: British Journalism And Social Media Today
From racy tabloids to the raucous commentary that often sparks legal action, British media has it all. In this course, you’ll learn the ins and outs of the world’s most influential media market, all the while tweeting, blogging and podcasting your discoveries to the world.
As a mobile journalist, you’ll compile a body of work online as you develop and stretch your practical, academic and technology skills in one of Europe’s most exciting cities. Your lectures and behind-the-scenes tours will give you an insider’s perspective of this rapidly changing industry and its stark differences from American journalism. You’ll analyze Britain’s news coverage, public relations practices, advertising policies, and the pros and cons of each. Then you’ll journey to Dublin for LondonAWAY! for a firsthand look at Ireland’s developing online media companies.
In four nonstop weeks, you’ll gain a nuanced understanding of the global news marketplace, while your hands-on use of the technologies driving mass communication today helps you acquire marketable experience that will impress any future employer. Come to London and break open a sensational story this summer!
Course details:
Library Science
To Thy Known Shelf Be True: Library Science and Information Studies In Historical and Contemporary Britain
(This class is waitlist only for 2013 as of 15 March. Sign up for an alternative course and call 601-266-4344 to be placed on our waitlist in case someone drops.)
Here’s your chance to really immerse yourself in the “sceptred isle” of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen and J.K. Rowling. You’ll walk in the footsteps of your literary heroes, and along the way you’ll explore some of the world’s most famous libraries, archives and special collections.
Your course will be taught by distinguished British information specialists, who’ll take you to renowned sites around London, Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and Edinburgh. As part of your coursework, you’ll write about your experiences in an online journal, and conduct your own research on an approved topic related to your studies.
Undergraduate and graduate students alike routinely review this course as the most important career choice of their lives. You will likely say the same. Because not only will you gain a professional knowledge about what UK and EU specialists in library and informational studies consider to be the very highest practices and standards in your field, but, in your spare time, you’ll have plenty of opportunities for independent exploration all over London and Edinburgh. (The British Library, British Museum, take Modern, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the National Theatre are all easy walks from where you will make your summer home.)
From London to your 4 day exploration of Edinburgh, let the royal repositories and storied private collections of the UK give your career as an information specialist a pedigree that will be yours to relish for a lifetime.
Course details:
Music Industry
For Those About To Rock: Band Camp, London!
Do you love bands and the music business? Are you always looking for new festivals to hit? Do you enjoy trolling around for vintage gear or new effects? Then you already know that music is a passion you can turn into a career. Whether your goal is recording, performing, engineering, producing, marketing or publishing, Band Camp will give you the real-world tools and experience to take your first steps onto the stage as a music industry professional.
From Camden Town punk clubs to the storied music emporiums of Denmark Street, you will begin to put the map of London and its entertainment geography into your own back pocket. So that you can prowl the city with your professor and fellow students looking for the next big acts you think will be breaking big. While you also log serious studio and rehearsal time as you work to perform and record music made by students and highly talented locals.
The rest of British Studies may sleep at night. But Band Camp meets when and where it must. So during LondonAWAY! be ready to really see and feel what 24-7 living and learning amounts to, when Amsterdam and a world-famous recording studio become your heart and soul for a grueling and unforgettable 4 days and nights.
Course details:
Political Science
Give Peace A Chance: World Politics And Social Justice In Our Times
Armed conflicts, terrorism, poverty, human rights abuses, economic development, international trade, and climate change are just a few of the issues facing world leaders today. In this course, you’ll explore these challenges from a global perspective and learn about activities by international organizations to address them.
Through lectures and site visits in London and Amsterdam, you’ll gain an understanding of the unique role played by Great Britain in the international community, and why London is a hub for global politics. You’ll learn firsthand from scholars, policy experts, government officials, diplomats, and representatives from international organizations such as the European Union, Amnesty International, NATO, Greenpeace, Oxfam and the World Bank. And you’ll go behind the scenes at offices of international organizations, British government institutions, embassies and research centers in London and Amsterdam
Course details:
Psychology
Helter/Skelter: Psychopathology In The UK
(This class is waitlist only for 2013 as of 15 March. Sign up for an alternative course and call 601-266-4344 to be placed on our waitlist in case someone drops.)
There are skeletons rattling in closets all across London, and you’ll find plenty of them in this class. Historic home to the notorious Jack-the-Ripper, London has also been the birthplace of many advances in modern psychology, just as it was long the home of Sigmund Freud.
In this class, you’ll dive deeply into the dark side of this “stiff upper-lipped” island from three angles: Criminal Profiling, Addictive Behaviors, and the History of Psychiatry and Medicine. In the Criminal Profiling section you’ll visit the Center of Investigative Psychology at the University of Huddersfield, studying The Ripper, Burke & Hare, and recent high-profile cases in the UK and the United States. Your Addictive Behaviors unit will focus on the National Addiction Research Centre, contrasting the traditional American 12-step treatment model with others (like Harm Reduction), which are more popular in the UK. Finally, the History of Psychiatry and Medicine will take you inside historic psychiatric institutions such as Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam), The York Retreat, and psychiatric and medical museums including the Wellcome Institute and the Freud Museum.
Beyond London, you’ll study in Edinburgh, Scotland for four days, as your LondonAWAY experience opens up more new perspectives for you on the field of psychopathology. Then your focus will fix on developing a totally original research design related to your course’s themes, which you will complete upon returning home from British Studies.
Course details:
Sociology
Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me: British Culture and Society
This course will open your eyes to a world few Americans ever see. You’ll get an insider’s perspective on the British government, education system, family life, religion, social class, population trends, the military, the monarchy, sports and economics. You’ll explore historic sites such as the Houses of Parliament, old London’s east side, the Docklands, Canterbury, Cambridge, the National Gallery, the British Museum, Stratford-upon-Avon, and every step of the way, you’ll gain insights into the remarkable diversity of British culture and society.
As you also find answers to questions that many well traveled and educated people won’t even bother to ask. (Why are the most stunning churches in the world almost always void of people? How does a government function without a written constitution? Why are Wimbledon champions only allowed to wear white? And why does every grave of a fallen British soldier have at least one rose planted in front of it? )
You will never look at your own country again through the same eyes, once you’ve seen the UK as you will in this class. The sun was never supposed to set on this empire either, and yet it did. Leaving this people, their society and their mighty rock of an island no choice but to regroup, rebuild and learn to thrive in a world that wasn’t theirs anymore to dominate.
Course details:
- 6 credits in SOC (Culture) 499 or 599
- LondonAWAY! experience: Normandy Beaches and Paris for 2 nights
- To review the syllabus for Rock of Ages, click here; to review the class schedule and calendar for Rock of Ages, click here
- Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor
- To explore the iconic English hymn “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me,” click here
Back in Black: Race and the Afro-British Way to the World
Which English queen was of African descent? Which Roman emperor was born and raised in Africa and buried in Britain? What 3,500-year old African monument is erected on the north bank of the Thames River in London? The answers will rock your world and change your perception of what it means to be black and European.
This multi-disciplinary course focuses on the experiences of African and Afro-Caribbean communities in the UK from WW II to today. You’ll immerse yourself in the contemporary British social debate on race and identity, the relevance of the phenomena to the African diaspora, and the impact of the phenomena on the global community.
Your course will take you across London to former Afro-British communities including Brixton, Notting Hill, Tottenham and Elephant and Castle. During the London Away session, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the African presence and enduring impact in either Amsterdam or Paris.
Course details:
Sport Management
Bend it Like Beckham: The UK Business of Global Sport Management
You think that people in the United States love sports? After your summer in London, our fans will look like a bunch of amateurs. In England, real football fans pay to have their ashes entombed inside of their favorite “home” stadium!
In this class, you’ll learn what makes sport tick so profitably in the UK. You’ll get the inside story on British sports management from the people who have made it their lives. Your classrooms could be the stadium homes of football teams like Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United, or Wembley Stadium, where great wins and devastating losses have defined entire lifetimes for UK football fans. Other sites you’ll explore include Lord’s Cricket Grounds, Twickenham Rugby Stadium, the headquarters of MLB Europe and NFL Europe, and ‘the Old Course” at St. Andrews, not far from where you’ll spend the four days of your LondonALIVE! You’ll also tour highly profitable niche businesses, like the world’s largest indoor climbing arena, where you may have sufficient guts to assess whether the famed “Aerial Assault” zip line could become a new export to the USA.
Course details:
