Snapshots from Spring in Vienna 2015:
Evening at the Opera
The Spring in Vienna program is comprised of intensive language study plus a literature and culture and an art and architecture course. It is open to all UW undergraduates who want to study in Vienna for one quarter, earning 16 credits overall. Serving as our program director for this year, I worked with a wonderful group of students with majors ranging from Physics to Political Science, Art History, Communications and other fields, several Freshmen among them. I joined them in Vienna in April to teach a course on 20th century Austrian Literature and Culture, focusing on Austrian memory politics and Viennese modernism.
The success of our Spring in Vienna program is in no small part due to our excellent partners in Vienna, the accomplished language teachers and staff at the Internationales Kulturinstitut (IKI), and to Dr. Friederike Forst-Battaglia, the renowned Viennese art historian in charge of the art and architecture segment of the program. In her engaging guided tours she shares her rich knowledge of Viennese visual culture and of Central European history to provide her listeners with a new appreciation of art and an in-depth sense of place.
Cost always being an issue, we are very grateful to the Max Kade Foundation in New York for providing generous travel grants to several participants of our program.
As I am writing this, we have already started preparations for the next round of the program in spring 2016. My colleague Sabine Wilke is looking forward to directing the program next year.
Freud Museum