Translating Cultures: Reading and Writing in Morocco
Sitting at the Northeast corner of Africa, Morocco almost touches the southernmost tip of Spain. Thus situated, it has always been an important gateway between Europe and the “Orient.” Over the centuries, Morocco’s culture has been layered with influences and inflections of Africa, Arabia, Europe and the Mediterranean. Not only has it been a geographical gateway ushering people through the straits of Gibraltar, but it also has served as a gateway of the imagination filtering and shaping ideas that the East and West have of each other. As we travel through Morocco producing our own texts and understandings, we’ll be reading the work of travelers and scholars who came before us. As we combine our reading and writing about Morocco with the actual experience of moving through a new cultural context, students will have the opportunity both to develop an awareness of how experiences are translated to and from the written word and how the traveler constructs an understanding of the “foreign.”
We will travel to three cities to explore the range of settings and contexts in a country as rich in diversity as Morocco. We start in Rabat with its urbanscape flavored by years of French colonialism and its current role as a cosmopolitan urban center. Our second destination, Meknes, with it’s imperial architectural complexes and nearby Roman ruins. We then settle for some time in Fez. With its winding alleyways and vibrant markets, Fez is an important center of Islamic learning and civilization. In Rabat, we will stay in the city’s cosmopolitan center. Here we’ll tour the city, meet with Moroccan scholars and learn a little bit of Arabic. In Fez, students will stay with Moroccan families, experience the multi-sensory richness of the Medina and marketplaces in and outside the city and confront contemporary redefinitions of religiosity in the city that houses Morocco’s oldest Islamic university. Side trips will include a visit to the Roman ruins at Volubulis, the shrine city of Moulay Idriss and an overnight camel trek in the Sahara.
This program is led by Dr. Sharon Nagy (Anthropology) and Barbara Schaffer (English and Womans Studies) .
The trip includes two coordinated courses, one in Anthropology in the Fall quarter and one in History in the Winter quarter. Participants registering for ANT240 may use it to satisfy the Self, Society, and the Modern World Liberal Studies domain. Also, either ANT397 or HST398 may be used toward the Junior Year Experiential Learning Requirement.
ANT240/ANT397 - Cultures of the Middle East- Morocco (Fall)
This course, taught by Sharon Nagy, examines the challenges facing ethnographers as they attempt to describe specific social and cultural groups to a variety of audiences. Readings are selected for their descriptions of the sites visited. In addition, structured field experiences in Morocco provide the raw material as students confront the challenges of translating field research into text. Anthropology majors will enhance their skills of reading and writing ethnography and find direct correlations between the history of anthropological theory and the shifts in the ethnography of Morocco. All students will acquire skills for understanding themselves, others and the interactions of cultures.
ENG 397: Constructing Place: Travel Literature and Morocco (Winter)
This course focuses upon travel writing as a literary genre and will introduce students to travel literature—"travel books," memoirs, fictions, guidebooks, journals, websites, and blogs, contextualizing them within theoretical literary and cultural perspectives in order to gain an understanding of how the rhetoric of travel is shaped by the traveler. The overall goal will be to develop a way of thinking about the role of travel writing in producing meanings of place and of personal identities. This course will be writing intensive, as students will wrestle with ideas emerging from the texts, as well as have the opportunity to create travel narratives of their own.
Circumstances, such as an unexpected event abroad or a curriculum change at a host institution, may require DePaul University to make changes to the program. DePaul University reserves the right to cancel or alter programs and courses without notice.
While in Rabat, participants will stay in a hotel. In Fez, home stays will be arranged with Moroccan families. One night will be spent camping at a desert oasis. The travel between cities is mostly on trains, so students are required to travel with one bag plus a day pack.
In addition to DePaul tuition for 8 credits, costs include a specific program fee. For updated information on specific programs expenses, click here:
For this program, the fee covers round trip airfare, study abroad health insurance, hotel accommodation, some meals and visits to cultural sites. Students must register for eight credits, four credits in the Fall quarter and four credits in the Winter quarter.
Students must plan their budgets to cover additional meals, passport fees, local transportation, supplies, textbooks and personal expenses.
Program fees are based on actual costs of the prior year and projections for the current year. Inflation and fluctuating exchange rates make it impossible to state a fixed cost. DePaul University reserves the right to adjust program fees without notice.
To apply to this DePaul Study Abroad Program, students must submit the following:
• A completed DePaul Study Abroad Program application form
• Two (2) recommendation forms from faculty familiar with your academic work.
• A copy of the DePaul Unofficial Transcript. This may be found on Campus Connect in the Students section under Records and Registration.
• A digital photo uploaded into the application.
DePaul University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex or handicap in admissions, employment or the provision of services. Inquiries regarding this policy should be addressed to the Director of Human Resources, 1 E. Jackson Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60604.
APPLICATION DEADLINE: May 15
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