We wish to call your attention to a truly excellent opportunity we're making especially available to all students in the Honors Program and other qualified students.
This summer, professors Hasenfratz and Semenza will be teaching an exciting 5-week, 6-credit program in London, England, designed to help you fulfill your course requirements while offering you the best cultural experience that this amazing city has to offer.
You'll live in a 2-bedroom flat in the heart of the city, just a ten-minute walk from the Florida State University London Centre, where your classes will take place, and a mere fifteen minutes to Covent Garden and Leicester Square. As part of this program, you will receive “underground” passes that will provide you with the liberty to visit sites throughout Central London. You will also enjoy built-in daytrips to Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford and beautiful Cambridge, and one overnight trip to Stonehenge and Bath. Since the weekly schedule is highly flexible, with classes taking place between Monday and Thursday morning, you'll be free on weekends to skip over to Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, or any other place you wish to go.
Also covered by your tuition for “Shakespeare” (English 230 or 231) and “Museum Culture” (English 249 with W option) will be admission to 5 of the city's hottest theatrical productions and many visits to London's best museums/attractions including the British Museum and the National Gallery, specialized collections like the Museum of the Order of St. John or the ultra modern Design Museum, to private collections like the wonderful Sir John Soane's Musuem (many Londoners' favorite museum), to the smaller house museums like those dedicated to Austen, Dickens, and Keats.
Honors-track students will take part in several additional lectures or other enrichment opportunities. As “Honors Shakespeare” students, for example, you will enjoy a private workshop with several actors, directors, and museum staff from the popular, reconstructed Globe Theatre in Southwark; you will meet with and interview Andrew Gurr, perhaps the world’s most renowned historian of the Renaissance theater; and you will may be granted special access to several Shakespearean and other Renaissance manuscripts and texts housed in the British Library in Bloomsbury. In the Museum Studies course, honors students will have the chance to interview Richard Humphries, one of the curators at the Tate Britain responsible for assembling a recent exhibition on Samuel Butler's photography. They will also be able to interact with museum staff behind the scenes as well as create and curate their own virtual exhibitions.
For each enrichment experience, honors track students will be expected to do preparatory and follow-up work. This work may include reading secondary literature on both Shakespeare drama/history and museum studies and small-group projects.
Students enrolling in the Honors track will be able to earn 3 – 6 credits of Honors work. Still need a W? The museum culture course will fulfill it.
Done with your Ws? Then choose the non-W option.
Already taken Shakespeare? Then English 230 will count either as 231 or an advanced topics Shakespeare course.
Criteria for inclusion in the Honors track: membership in the Honors Program at UConn OR at least a 3.0 grade point average.
If you're interested, you'll need to let us know fairly soon, but there isn't a ton of material to submit. You'll simply need to file an application online to the UConn in London Summer Program, which consists of some basic personal/academic information, a brief personal statement, two very short recommendations (one to two paragraphs submitted online by your teachers will suffice), and eventually, an application check. We'll also want to meet with you for about a ten-minute interview. You can let us know at the interview that you are interested in the Honors track.
Email either of us at semenza@uconn.edu or robert.hasenfratz@uconn.edu if you want to know more. You might also check out the London Summer program on Study Abroad's website at https://secure.sa.uconn.edu/sap/studioabroad/.
Consider applying soon.
Greg Semenza and Bob Hasenfratz
