The Program
A week-long interactive learning experience that offers insight into the ways that a Caribbean small island developing state serves as a microcosm of contemporary global challenges and opportunities.
The Caribbean and the 21st Century is a one-credit interdisciplinary immersion program that will provide opportunities to both explore and interrogate the comparative complexities of Black people’s history, culture, and experiences across the African Diaspora with a focus on the Caribbean. During the week, students will visit various sites and be engaged in conversations with local scholars and experts, community members and peers. These sites include: the Newton Burial Ground and Rock Hall Freedom Village; service learning and conservation with the Sea Turtle Project, and the PEG Farm and Nature Reserve at Easy Hall Plantation; a visit to the rum distillery and parliament, and conclude with participation in local cultural events.
Program Locations
Barbados
Bridgetown
Barbados is an eastern Caribbean island and an independent British Commonwealth nation. Bridgetown, the capital, is a cruise-ship port with colonial buildings and Nidhe Israel, a synagogue founded in 1654. Around the island are beaches, botanical gardens, the Harrison’s Cave formation, and 17th-century plantation houses like St. Nicholas Abbey. Local traditions include afternoon tea and cricket, the national sport.
Academics
This course satisfies several University core requirement learning objectives including: glocal learning, understanding intercultural relations, responding to diversity, and using multiple modes of inquiry and critical thinking to examine key issues.
Course Learning Goals
- Explain the historical significance of Barbados in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and its emancipation and independence efforts
- Explore the ways that Barbados has retained African cultural practices and the contemporary articulation of these practices in everyday life
- Analyze the role that Barbados has and continues to employ in mediating our understanding of the Caribbean, the formerly colonized Americas, Europe as colonizing instigators and the Black Diaspora
- Evaluate the ways that Barbados’ contemporary environmental realities have impacted global climate justice efforts
- Examine the role that Barbados and CARICOM have played in broadening global reparations demands
Prerequisite:
- Any course that has a substantial engagement with the Caribbean, especially Intro to Caribbean Studies, and coursework concerning the Atlantic Slave Trade, European empire-making, pre and post-colonial African states, and contemporary discussions that involve people of African descent in the world.
To view syllabus and itinerary click here.
Housing and Meals
The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus will serve as our home base. Students will share a dorm for the duration of our stay. The majority of our breakfast meals will also be at the University. Students are responsible for all other meals.
Financial Information
Program Costs
NJ Resident | non-NJ Resident | |
---|---|---|
Undergraduate | $1,750 | $1,850 |
Program Cost includes:
- Tuition
- Housing
- Breakfast
- Excursions
- Administrative Fees
- Emergency Medical Access Abroad
Out-of-Pocket Costs
Airfare | $700 |
Meals | $500 |
Local Transportation | $20 |
Personal Expenses | $150 |
Total | $1,370.00 |
Out-of-Pocket Cost includes:
The above costs are estimations and represent the known out-of-pocket costs students encounter during their time abroad.
Some of these expenses will be paid for prior to going abroad, such as an airline ticket, while some of these expenses, such as meals and personal expenses, will be paid in-country as part of your daily expenses. As you plan, you will need to budget these costs and spend wisely throughout your time abroad.