• The general instructions for posting an entry are here.  Write your posts in Word and save them on your computer, and remember to 'disable rich text" before you paste the text into the website.
• For each post, write about 400 to 500 words. There are no other writing assignments for the course, so put some real effort into each post.
• The post should be informed by the corresponding reading assignment, but you don’t have to refer to the readings directly. Ideally, you’ll read the assignment and do a relevant activity a few days before the post is due, and then in writing the post, you’ll integrate your responses to the reading and the activity.
• Look ahead on the assignment list—many of the assignments involve doing something that can’t be done at the last minute, like going to a museum or a restaurant.
• When you do your post, on the "Topic" line, type in the study abroad site (Berlin, Florence, etc.) if the post is relevant to the site.
• For each post, include a picture, either from the web or one of your own. The instructions for doing pictures are here.
• The reading assignments are all available online, but you'll need to log in to access a few.  Just click on the title of the assignment and you should see a list of links for the pdf's.  For some of the readings, you'll need to install NYU's ebrary reader (if it's not on your computer, you'll be prompted to download it).
• For each assignment, post a comment on someone else’s post, within a day or two of the due date. 
• You’re welcome to post more than the 14 required assignments: just scroll to “other” in the list of assignments to tag the post.
• You're also encouraged to take lots of photos during the semester.  Open an account on a photo website like Flickr, and you can link your slideshows to the course website.

Tues., Oct. 28

Post #2. New York through foreign eyes: Look at New York as if you were a stranger to the place, as you’ll be when you go abroad. Do something touristy—go to a tourist attraction, take a ride on the Apple tour bus, go on a walking tour, etc. Or get started on exploring the place you'll be studying by going somewhere in New York that's relevant: if you'll be studying in Florence, go to Little Italy, etc.  Observe your own thoughts and feelings, and observe the tourists around you.  If you'd like to see what a class last year did with a similar assignment, you can check out their blogs here.  You might also take a look at the website page on New York news—some of the items are travel writing pieces about NYC similar to what you might do for the assignment.  As always, do the reading before you write your blog post, and see how the readings inform what you write.  You can refer to a reading if you like, but it's not required.  BTW, the last article, the scholarly piece on the "transatlantic imagination" may be heavy going, so don't get bogged down in it.

While you're out and about, stop by Idlewild Books at Union Square, NY's travel book store, or the Strand on Broadway, which also has a great travel section.  Pick up a guidebook like Fodors for the place you’re going, and choose two books that are travel essays, narratives, or fiction (not guidebooks) about the place you’re going.  Before you go, look over the Suggested Reading list on the website.

Read:

1. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Manhattan" (pdf below)
2. Simone de Bouvoir, from America Day by Day, impressions of New York, pp. xvii - 32 (pdf below) (also available in Google Books)
3. Camus, "The Rains of New York" (pdf below)
4. Le Corbusier, The Fairy Catastrophe (pdf below)
5. George Oppen, “Tourist Eye” (pdf below)
6. David Gilbert and Claire Hancock, “New York City and the Transatlantic Imagination: French and English Tourism and the Spectacle of the Modern Metropolis, 1893-1939”

Tues., Nov. 4

Post #4: Travel Tropes: Write about one or more of some common “travel tropes”—the difference between tourists and travelers, the search for authenticity—in the context of your experience of, say, New York.  For example, what constitutes "authentic" New York?  Take a look at the National Geographic article on "the true" New York.  Or experience a bit of "authentic" Italy in New York's Little Italy, or some "authentic" China in Chinatown, and write about that.

Read:

1. Walker Percy, "The Loss of the Creature," from Message in the Bottle (on Google books and as pdf below) (Note: I had made this reading optional, but on second thought, it seems well worth your time.)
2. Dean MacCannell, “Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings” (pdf below)
3. Donald Redfoot, “Touristic Authenticity, Touristic Angst, and Modern Reality” (pdf below)
4. "Martin Parr: Tourists in the Frame" (see also Parr's home page and this blog post)

Tues., Nov. 11

Post #6: Museum trip: Go to a museum and look at art or artifacts associated with the place you’re going, then write about what you saw.  How is the place you're going represented in landscape painting, cultural artifacts, and the museum display?  How do these images and objects conform to or depart from your expectations of the place? What feelings and ideas do the representations evoke?  For suggestions about places to go, check out this list of museums in New York.  For most of the NYU study-abroad sites, my main suggestion would be to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; first take some time to search its data base of holdings so you know a little about what you're going to see.  (You don't need to see a lot of different works: just going to see a couple of things might be enough.)

Read

1. Alain de Botton, from The Art of Travel, chapter 7: “On Eye-Opening Art” (available in the ebrary here or pdf below)
2. Optional: D. W. Meinig, "The beholding eye: ten versions of the same scene"

Tues., Nov. 18

Post #8. Travel book: Write a short response essay about one of the books you chose.  Don't write a like-dislike comment similar to one of those Amazon.com customer reviews.  Instead, write about how the book depicts the place you're going.  What aspects of the place does the book highlight?  How did the book surprise you with regard to the place?  (By the way, this is an important assignment: you've spent a lot of time reading the book, so put some time into the post too.)

Tues., Nov. 25

Post #10. Maps: The basic idea for this assignment is to study some maps of the place you're going and prepare to be oriented when you arrive.  As always, include an image and comment on someone's else post.  If you don't want to use your own map for the image, remember that most maps on web pages are jpg images, and you can insert one into your post just as you do with other images.  Here are some suggestions for the assignment:

1. Make your own Google map of your study abroad site, right on our website.  Go to Create content > Google map.  Use the navigation tools to zoom in (using the + icon) on the city or country you want to map; you can use the arrows or click-drag the map to position it.  Ignore all the fields for color, opacity, and strokes, but for the "Marker" field, select "Numbers."  This way, when you flag an address or location on your map, a number will appear, and then in your blog post you can refer to locations by number.  When you're done with the map, copy the "embed" code at the bottom, and then go to your blog post, disable rich text, and paste in the code just as you do when you insert an image.  Then paste in the text from Word.

2. Explore the Google maps other people have made of your place.  Just go to Google Maps and type in the place (or even an address), and click on the user-created map links on the left.  You can make your own Google map like these by following the instructions on the Google Maps support page.  You can put any Google map you find or make into your blog post by clicking on the "link" at the top right of the map, and copying and pasting the "embed" html code into your blog—remember to disable rich text before you paste in the code, and you'll need to change the "input format" to "full html."

3. You don't have to get high-tech about making your own map.  You could draw one by hand, then scan it or go to a photocopy store and send yourself a pdf file, and then convert it to a jpeg and post it on your blog.  Check out this great collection of hand-drawn maps.

4. If you don't want to make your own map, just study some different maps of where you're going and write about what you observe.  You might also check out these blogs: Map Room; Travelography; Geography for Travelers; 10,000 Words.  (Try typing in the place you're going into the search engines for each of these sites and see what comes up.)  Make some text links to websites that you mention in the post.

5. Download Google Earth and type in the place you're going, and you should be able to find a Google Earth 3D map of the place; play around with the different layers, especially the 3D buildings, and zoom in and roam around.  Write about you learn.

Read:

1. Optional: Vincent J. Del Casino Jr and Stephen P. Hanna, "Representations and Identities in Tourism Map Spaces"
2. Optional: Italo Calvino, from Invisible Cities (pdf below)

Thurs., Dec. 4

Post #12. Open Topic: Write about whatever you like.  This might be a good time to write about the place as it relates to your concentration or a special interest, e.g., youth culture, sports, media, etc.

Dec. 11

Post #14. Final Reflections.  Write some final thoughts about the course and what you learned.   How have your ideas about where you're going changed over the past few weeks?  What are you looking forward to?  What are you concerned about?