“Travel is one of the great experiences that Princeton offers,” Humanities Professor Sandra Bermann wrote to The Daily Princetonian. “It inevitably expands and deepens a student’s understanding of texts, times and places, as it also provides a great opportunity for ongoing discussion, new questions, and the sharing of ideas and encounters that creates lasting friendships.”
In Spring 2025, Princeton will offer at least six courses that have a significant travel component as part of the course description. Three of these will travel internationally to destinations like France and Panama and will offer a maximum of 56 students the opportunity to travel abroad. Another 25 can take courses that leave the contiguous United States.
All courses with designated international destinations and distant national travel require applications and departmental permission. These courses were found by searching “travel” or “trip” on the Registrar’s course offerings page. In Fall 2024, five courses offered international travel experiences.
Of the three courses with an international travel component — HUM 423, SPA 204, and FRE 354 — two give students the opportunity to visit France, and one to either Ecuador or Colombia. EEB 338: Tropical Biology, a three-week course, is offered for department juniors enrolled in the Semester in the Field Program hosted in Panama. It is the first of four courses students take while in Panama.
HUM 423: Poetry and War — Translating the Untranslatable explores the poetry and life of a major French Resistance leader, René Char. The course offers a spring break trip to France to view manuscripts and follow Char’s wartime migration, led by Bermann and accompanied by the poet’s widow and editor
“Since the natural world is essential to Char’s poetic vision, our trip into the countryside offers powerful insight not only into wartime events but also into his ‘eco-poetic’ writing,” Bermann wrote.
SPA 204: Spanish for a Medical Caravan, reinforces fluency in the Spanish language in a medical context with much of the course focusing on preparation for the week-long medical caravan trip in either Ecuador or Colombia.
“While we discuss the health system and its challenges in class, being on the ground — witnessing firsthand the impact of systemic issues like politics, racism, and barriers to healthcare access — brings the theory to life in a much more powerful way,” Professor Paloma Moscardó-Vallés wrote to the ‘Prince.’
The course has received high praise in Registrar course evaluations, averaging a 4.88 score out of five in the past four semesters the course was offered. The other three courses offering international travel follow the same trend with high reviews and an average rating no lower than a 4.75. The average rating of all Spring 2025 courses is 4.27.
“I really enjoyed this class!” wrote one student in the Spring 2024 course reviews. “The trip over spring break was also amazing!”
Two courses include participation in a trip to U.S. states outside the contiguous United States. AMS 325: Pacific Archives and Indigenous Cosmologies incorporates a mandatory trip to Juneau, Ala. during spring break and GEO 369: Environmental Materials Chemistry — Researching in Field and Laboratory requires a trip to Hawaii for seven to eight days at the end of the semester.
AMS 325 is a three-hour long seminar that meets once a week. The course reexamines American literary history through Indigenous creation stories and cosmologies from the Pacific Coast.
GEO 369 explores field sampling techniques and analytical lab work to test materials found in the Earth’s surface environments. The course has the lowest enrollment limit of the travel courses with a maximum enrollment of ten people.
Applications for international and non-contiguous U.S. travel courses are due between Nov. 20–22, before course selection starts on Dec. 3. Course applications include questions related to previous coursework and the student’s interest in the course.
Vincent Etherton is a staff Data writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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