This program provides students with an intriguing and empowering study abroad experience. Over the past eight years, more than 150 students have participated in this innovative program and returned to the University of Vermont rejuvenated and inspired to create change in both their own lives and throughout the world.

Students can select from one of three course tracks:

• Arts and Science
• Food Systems
• Advanced Spanish
• Health/Psychology (tentative for 2014)

This is the course offering for the 2013 Oaxaca Semester Abroad Program and is subject to change for the 2014 program.

Core Courses

All students participating in the Oaxaca Semester Abroad program will complete the first portion of the program as one cohort.

Spanish Solexico Language and Cultural Center (3 credits)
January 12 – February 8 & March 25 – March 29
Professor: Norma Aguilar-Gaytan
All students will participate in a Spanish language course offered at the Solexico Language and Cultural Center in Oaxaca. Upon arrival in Mexico students will have the opportunity to take a placement test to see which level of Spanish will be adequate to meet their needs. Language courses are focused on conversation and immersion in the Mexican culture.

One week community based Service Learning Experience (2 credits)
This course provides an opportunity for students to integrate theoretical and practical anthropological issues through supervised research and service in different villages in Oaxaca, Mexico. Students will be divided into groups with each group living one full week in a village in the valley of Oaxaca, working on a community-based project of interest to people in that village. Students will live with families in the village and the tasks that they perform each day will be determined by community members in conjunction with an academic supervisor.

Community, Culture, and Place Oaxaca, Mexico(3 credits)
January 7 – February 15
Professor: Oliver Froehling, MA
Oaxaca Mexico has been described in a myriad of different ways: as a state with indigenous characteristics, as a primary tourist destination with its quaint colonial capital, as one of the most underdeveloped places in Mexico, as a haven for alternative collective practices, or, since 2006, as the home to Mexico’s next revolution, etc. This course surveys how “Oaxaca”, as a place, is constructed by multiple agents embedded in multiple networks, exploring the multiple layers and connections of different groups that together make up the place called Oaxaca. As such, we will place emphasis on communities, government agencies and collective actors as agents in controlling and shaping their place through various means of territorial control, within connections and networks created through professional associations, NGOs, social movements, circuits of capital and symbolic circulation. This course will draw on geographical and social theory in order to provide students the tools to make sense out of complex phenomena. The course will use lectures, field visits, assignments, and interactive techniques in the classroom in order to facilitate learning.

Oaxaca Field Study Seminar and Independent Project (3 credits)
January 7 – April 12
Professor: Mary Lucia Razza, Ed.D.
The purpose of the Field Study seminar is for students to explore a topic of personal interest that will create new learning and understanding of community, culture and place, the themes of the semester long study in Oaxaca. Students will identify an area of focus and develop a specific topic, develop a plan that will guide the study, and acquire skills to successfully carryout their study. This is an opportunity for students to take ownership of their learning and focus on their particular interests. Students will publish their work on a public WIKI and present their studies at a student-run seminar. Community partners in Oaxaca will provide consultation, feedback, and resources. Students will meet for weekly seminars as well as individual appointments with the instructor.

Following the completion of the first three courses, students completing the various tracks will break apart to complete the following courses:

Arts and Science Track

Botany of Oaxaca (4 credits)
February 25 – March 15
Professor: Michael Sundue
Oaxaca, at the southern tip of the North American continent, harbors an intense diversity of tropical flowering plants and ferns, whose heritage lies in the ancient tropical forests of the northern continents. This diversity is only possible because across the state’s terrain striking variation in rainfall and average temperature yield a broad array of habitats. The 2012 Oaxaca Botany Course is an opportunity to explore the geography and ecology of these plants as we learn the spot characters to identify them – with or without flowers – in the forests of Oaxaca. The course has two parts, 1) an introduction to the commonest tropical American flowering plants and ferns with an emphasis on their morphology, evolutionary history, and uses by humans, and 2) a direct experience of the same plants in the forests of Oaxaca or as they are being used by people today. Indigenous cultures have an ancient and very different perception of the plant diversity in this region; working with some of the 16 different ethnic groups in Oaxaca we will explore the different indigenous perceptions of the forests and their plants.

Anthropology of Music in Oaxaca (3 credits)
March 18 – April 12
Professor: Sergio Navarrette, Ph.D.
The course will focus on the concept of music as culture. Music like any art is not a mere reflection or echo of society. More than a symbolic image of social relations, music generates social life. The course is designed to give a basic theoretical framework to understand the ways music and society influence each other. Video and audio material will be a main source for discussions. A general overview of Mexican music history and a mapping of folk music will lead to the contemporary scene of music practice in Oaxaca rural and urban. A hands on workshop on rhythm will give the student the feel and groove of Mexican music. The students will learn techniques to do fieldwork and to write brief musical ethnographies. There will be weekly field trips to different regions of Oaxaca to experience the music and fiestas of those regions including a 3- day trip to the Mixteca and the coast, highlights of the course.

Food Systems Track

Tropical Farming and Gardening in Oaxaca Mexico (2 credits)
February 25 – April 12
Professor Michael Sundue and Vern Grubinger

Food, Culture and Health: The Case of Oaxaca (5 credits)
February 25 – April 12
Professors: Cynthia Belliveau, Ed.D. and Jean Harvey-Berino, Ph.D.
This part of the course will examine how the Oaxacan food system influences the health and nutritional status of the people of Oaxaca. We will further explore the food environment in both rural and urban Oaxaca as a way to understand the nutrition transition in Mexico. Finally, we will compare and contrast food assistance and nutrition interventions in both the US and Mexico that are designed to ameliorate nutrition and health disparities.

Advanced Spanish

Classes will by faculty at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca.

Oaxaca Culture, Civilization and Development (3 Credit)
February 25 – April 12
Professor Gayle Nunley

History of Mexico (3 Credit)
February 25 – April 12
Professor Gayle Nunley