Dear Elon Community,

Fairy tales, castles, medieval walled cities, and Christmas markets – that is the landscape of Germany and Austria in early winter. The sites we’ll visit on this cruise are picture-postcard perfect. German and Austrian cities are 800-plus years old – Würzburg, our first stop on this tour, is over 1300 years old – meaning that history is always within an arm’s reach.

What stories do these places tell? What’s it like to live among layers of history, from the middle ages to the Cold War and beyond? For example, Nuremberg was the home of the peerless Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer as well as the Nazi rallies depicted in the 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will. We’ll “read” buildings, churches, town squares, and other spaces for what they can tell us about how Germans and Austrians understand themselves. We might also come to a deeper appreciation of the role of history in our own lives.

As a side quest, we’ll find out that the German language isn’t as difficult as it’s cracked up to be. That, alongside group meals for fellowship and free time to explore on your own, will make for a relaxing, enjoyable, and intellectually rewarding tour.

Cheers,
Scott

 

SCOTT WINDHAM BIO
Scott Windham is from Browns Summit, NC and earned his PhD in comparative literature from UNC-Chapel Hill. His academic interests are the scholarship of teaching & learning (SOTL) and the ways in which Holocaust perpetrators are portrayed in literature, film, theater, and other genres. At Elon, he teaches German courses and Core curriculum courses at all levels. His personal interests are hiking, triathlons, and BBQ. He and his wife Laura have two grown daughters. Scott and Laura live in Chapel Hill with their cat, a mini-dachshund, and a real dog.