We always have faculty and staff working on potential TREKs. We share them here with an important note: these TREKs are being planned, but could be postponed or completely abandoned for a variety of reasons. There is never a guarantee that any TREK will happen as scheduled.
For Summer 2026
The Future is Slow: Foodways and Landscape in Central Italy
with Drs. Matt Mariola & Evan Riley
We expect students to engage with and learn about another culture –that of Italy, and specifically of Umbria, with a focus on foodways and politics, in some depth. Students will learning by doing, for example, by cooking collaboratively in the instructional kitchen at the Umbra Institute and through participating in multiple outings together, beyond the traditional classroom experience.
COMM 29906: Rhetoric of Black Civil Rights
1.25 Credits
with Dr. Denise Bostdorff
This TREK will be an embedded requirement in COMM 29906, Rhetoric of Black Civil Rights, and involve travel to significant civil rights sites of the 1950s and 1960s in Alabama: Birmingham, Marion, Selma, and Montgomery. While there, students will visit the locations of major civil rights historic events, museums about those events, meet with civil rights veterans, and engage with the music of the civil rights movement.
Climate Justice and Religion in the Fiji and Tuvalu
with Brian Webb, Director of Campus Sustainability
Hopeful dates: mid-May-early June, 2026
This TREK explores the rich intersections between faith, spirituality, and climate justice in the South Pacific. We will examine the relationship between Pacific culture and the natural environment, with an emphasis on the role that both organized religion and indigenous spirituality play in shaping their views of the natural world. Students will experience first-hand the ways the climate crisis is changing the Pacific through visits with frontline communities, conversations with regional leaders, and direct observation from one of the lowest lying nations in the world. We will learn from climate activists, religious leaders, scientists, indigenous teachers, and ordinary people who are daily being impacted by the challenges of a changing climate.
Global Tokyo – EAST 20200
with Drs. Margaret Ng and Jim Bonk
Hopeful dates: 3 weeks in May 2026
In the context of Tokyo, Japan, students will learn about the complexity of Asian history, politics, identities and ways of knowing, analyze cross-cultural interactions in Asian and their legacies, and learn how the urban and rural geographies influenced the manga and anime artists in production. Students will visit sites that have historic significance in nation-building, sites that reflect or memorialize major shifts in Japanese and East Asian history, and sites serving as inspiration for artistic production in manga and anime (anime pilgrimage sites).
Ancient Science & Medicine in the Greek Islands
AMST 22800
with Dr. Monica Florence
Hopeful dates: 3 weeks in May/June 2026
AMST 228 Ancient Science and Medicine in the Greek Islands is necessarily experiential, allowing students to visit and experience the sites and locations. Indeed, this is especially important in a course such as ancient medicine and science, where the texts already go hand in hand with material evidence. On location, students will be able to see ancient medical and scientific artifacts in local museums, visit temples of healing, and more deeply learn the culture and medicine of the past. Students will better understand the development of medical and scientific ideas as they see that the islands, in particular, were significant points of cross-cultural contact among the various ancient Mediterranean nations, including parts of Northern Africa and the Middle East.
