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Spend Spring Break in London combining free-time with unrivaled opportunities for understanding the history of the most exciting and cosmopolitan city in Europe today, and earn extra credit at the same time!
Contemporaries called London "monstrous" in the seventeenth century because it was so big and because it contained so many social "evils" at a time when it was growing more quickly than at any other period in its long 2 millennia history. The course 'Monstrous London' looks at London's cultural and social history over three centuries (1500-1800) when London became Europe's largest city. It has a large emphasis on original sources (collected in a sourcebook for students) and also on London's environment and physical appearance several centuries ago.. This is why a trip to London is an essential element and is a required component of the broader course. Themes and topics to be studied in Iowa and London include: London's geography and physical growth, the Great Fire (1666) and rebuilding, governing and policing the city, crime and criminal cultures, neighbourhoods, women, poverty, sanitation, health and hospitals, and plague. Prior to leaving for London some time will be spent preparing students for the trip.
Everyone should visit London at least once! There will be time to explore the city alone and with expert guides. No other city offers so much: galleries, theatres, museums, famous landmarks/buildings, excellent restaurants serving food from all parts of the globe, and some of the best night-life anywhere in the world. Course themes are deeply embedded within senses of place, quite literally as students will walk the square mile of the old city to get as good a sense as we can now get of its physicality back in time, visiting streets and buildings they will know about from class.
Students will get to know past and present London very well. Four morning classes will take place in the London Metropolitan Archives (London's leading archive), led by guest Professors, all experts on London's history, who will teach the class using sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documents from the archives that students can also hold and read. There will be no classes in afternoons, though optional trips to museums/galleries will be arranged, along with a river cruise along the Thames from Westminster to Greenwich. There will also be an optional day-trip to the ancient university city of Cambridge.
Students will stay in central London: 10 minutes walk from Trafalgar Square, the British Museum, the National Gallery, and Pall Mall leading to Buckingham Palace. Soho and Covent Garden with excellent food and shopping are a little more than 5 minutes walking distance, along with Chinatown. London's longest shopping street -Oxford Street- is around the corner from the hotel, as is Tottenham Court Road Tube (subway) station from where you can reach anywhere in London in a short time.
The London trip has been arranged with the expert help of Anglo-American educational services whose offices are a two minute walk form the hotel. They are a long established company and have successful partnerships with numerous American universities. Representatives from the company will be at hand round the clock during the trip, and will also provide additional orientation on arrival in London.
Course instructor Professor Paul Griffiths is Associate Professor in the History Faculty, and has published extensively on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London. Professor Griffiths was born in England and has lived in London for long spells and has worked on its archives for almost two decades.
Brochure
