The Ohio State University offers many study abroad options, and we are happy to feature several options from the English department.
ENGLISH 4450: READING AND WALKING LITERARY LONDON (MAY IN LONDON)
Professor Zach Hines and Professor Chris Highley
In this month-long experiential learning class, students will explore the streets, buildings, rivers, and gardens of London through the prism of short stories, poems, song lyrics, and other short texts inspired by or set in these same spaces. All readings will have corresponding walks, visits, or tours: from Dickens’ infamous slums to Woolf’s literary Bloomsbury and Shakespeare’s riverside theatres, students will explore the cultures and geographies that have informed and inspired canonical works of literature. Students will also conduct research at the British Library and travel to literary sites in Oxford, Bath, and Stratford-upon-Avon.
Potential Pairings and Texts/Authors and Walks
- A Shakespeare play at the Globe: the Blackfriars and Bankside districts
- Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz: Seven Dials, Smithfield, & Covent Garden
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League: Baker Street & the Central Criminal Courts
- Virginia Woolf: Bloomsbury & the British Museum
- Geoffrey Chaucer: General Prologue to Canterbury Tales: Southwark Cathedral & the George Inn
- Samuel Pepys, Diary selections: Monument to the Great Fire & crypt of St Bride’s Fleet Street
- Sylvia Plath & Primrose Hill
- Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners & the Docklands Museum
- John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’: Hampstead Heath & Keats House
A typical weekly schedule is:
Monday-Thursday 10:00AM-12:00PM: Classroom lecture, discussion, student reports.
Monday-Thursday 1:00PM-4:00PM: Walking tours and site visits in and around London.
Friday: All day excursion outside London.
Saturday-Sunday: Free.
May 2025: “Walking Literary London”
Applications due by January 16, 2025
Upcoming INFORMATION SESSIONS:
Tuesday September 24, 2024 from 5-6p in 100 Enarson
Monday October 21, 2024 from 4-5p in 160 Enarson
2023: “Detecting Victorian London: Crime in the City”
2022: “Speculative London”
2020: “Representations of Black London” – Cancelled
2019: “Children’s Literature”
2018: “Victorian Crime And Detective Fiction”
2016: “London on Stage and Screen”
ENGLISH 4400: LITERARY LOCATIONS
Literary Locations, the signature study abroad opportunity in the Department of English, invites students to study the literature, art, and history of a location before traveling to that site. In the spring semester, students take a three-credit course (English 4400) that focuses on the specific cultural contributions of a particular place. Then, in May, students visit those sites and participate in activities relevant to the course subject like seeing plays, visiting art galleries and taking literary/historical walks. Students earn an additional one-credit (English 5193) for this approximately ten-day long trip. English 4400 can be applied toward the English major, the English minor or overall university degrees.
2020: Venice, Italy – Cancelled
2019: Rome, Italy
Students visited such sites as the Forum, the Colosseum and the Pantheon after spending the semester studying poems, fiction, films, art and essays about Rome over the last two millennia.
2018: Dublin, Ireland
Students studied James Joyce and W. B. Yeats, and they visited the Lake Isle of Innisfree, the beautiful West Country and the hills of Glendalough.
2017: Athens and Greece
Students read Greek literature such as The Odyssey and Cavafy's poems alongside English works inspired by Greece and modeled after Greek writers. At the end of the semester, they explored the landscape and ruins of Athens, the oracle at Delphi, the ancient theater at Epidavros, the quaint city of Nafplion and the island of Corfu.
2016: Bath & Dorset, England
Students considered the literature of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, and they then traveled to locations throughout southwest England, including Bath, Lyme Regis, Dorchester, Salisbury and Stonehenge.
GLOBAL MAY
Global May programs are offered by the Office of International Affairs, and some are led by English faculty members. These programs are intended for first- and second-year students of any major, allowing students to begin their global education early in their college careers. Each Global May program allows students to explore the history, culture, current events and major issues of its titular country.