Study tour to Greece, summer 2015

The public honors college St. Mary’s College of Maryland is once again offering a 24-night study tour to Greece, this May 20-June 13.

Professor Michael Taber is planning the eighth St. Mary’s Greece Study Tour, this time with days on the island of Samos (the birthplace of Pythagoras--remember that theorem?) and two nights near Ephesus in Turkey.

Some highlights:

· visiting all 4 pan-hellenic game sites (incl. Olympia)

· authentic, home-cooked Greek cuisine

· spending nights on TWO continents

· walking the streets walked by our authors

· visiting 5 ancient theaters

· using a thermal spa in use since ancient times

· seeing the cell in which Socrates drank the hemlock

· spending nights on the island Pythagoras lived on

· visiting 4 sites visited by St. Paul

· folk-dancing lessons

· visiting 2 monasteries

· visiting the Turkish city where natural science was born (!)

· visiting 2 wineries

This year's theme, "Tyrants, Trials, and Triangles," will cover three imperfect and halting moves:

• from despotic rule to a version of democracy, 
• from a social system of vengeance to one governed by laws, trials, and juries,
• from a view of the cosmos as a place dominated by fickle gods to one of orderly scientific laws and mathematical regularities.

We will examine these changes from about the time of the Trojan War (c. 1200 BCE) to the Classical period (5th and 4th centuries BCE), as well as looking at subsequent developments in Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman times.

Check out the website about the study tour:  www.smcm.edu/greece/

There is a description, a syllabus, an itinerary, photo galleries from past years, cost information, and applications.  Even packing tips.  

Applications are processed on a rolling basis, but will not be considered after January 24. The first payment of $1600 is due January 27.

Warning: For the offering this past June, the course filled up by early January

This is an upper-division course that assumes no particular prior coursework—either in classics, in ancient conceptions of law and justice, or the like.  But it is a course—not just a fun trip, and we hope to continue to have a range of disciplinary interests represented by the students. We've had majors from Anthropology, Art, Art History, Biology, Economics, Education, English, Environmental Studies, Foreign Languages, History, Math, Musical Theater, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Religious Studies, Sociology, and Theater, Film, & Media Studies.  The mix of students traveling together constitutes a minor education in itself.