Global Learning & Immersions

Every spring, BCLA offers semester-long classes that take a trip abroad during spring break. Need-based financial assistance is available to support travel costs. The current courses include:

• Modern Greek Playwrights: Influences and Performance
  Trip to: Athens, Greece
  • A multi-disciplinary exploration of Modern Greek theater from its ancient origins to its
    contemporary reincarnations. Through a series of lectures, theater visits, and workshops with
    artists, students will engage with topics like the evolution of Greek theater as well as the
    creative process of writing, staging, and performing theater today.
• African and Black Psychology
  Trip to: Accra, Kumasi, Cape Coast, Ghana
  • This course challenges students to critically analyze their current understanding of Africa and its people, their perception of the value of African culture and the relevance of the paradigm of Western psychology. Students will be exposed to indigenous African knowledge in philosophy, psychology, medicine, spirituality, and history. Students will use these frames to interrogate how Black people globally are portrayed (often negatively), how they are erased from the discourse in these disciplines, and how an African-centered perspective counters the long-standing and dominant narrative of Black inferiority. To accomplish this, the course focuses on three main themes: 1) a holistic African Worldview and understanding of psychology; 2) the history and ongoing consequences of the Trans-Atlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans; and 3) understanding indigenous African (Akan) culture and African and diasporan African cultural retentions. In regard to each of these, students will explore the connections between Ghana and African descended people across the Diaspora.
• Medieval Religious Thought and Practice
  Trip to: London, Canterbury, England
  • This course explores key religious topics in medieval Western Europe (11th-15th century), focusing on diverse religious lifestyles (monastic, lay, knightly, and clerical) and medieval views on God, humanity, the body, soul, salvation, rituals, and the afterlife. Through close readings of texts by figures like Augustine, Hildegard of Bingen, and Thomas Aquinas, we engage with visionary literature, theological works, prayers, and saints' lives. We also examine devotional objects, architecture, and situate our study within broader medieval culture.

• Eastern Christian Traditions
  Trip to: Italy, Rome
  • This course explores Eastern Christian traditions—Byzantine, Oriental, Eastern Syriac, and Eastern Catholic—across countries like Greece, Ukraine, and Russia. It covers their historical development, cultural contexts, and key theological concepts, including views on God, the Incarnation, cosmology, and ecotheology. The course also examines identity issues, nationalism, recent conflicts, and efforts toward Christian unity, while highlighting spiritual practices like monasticism and the Jesus prayer through stories of saints.

• Japanese Politics and Society
  Trip to: Tokyo, Japan
  • This course examines Japan's political, economic, and cultural transformations over the past 150 years, with a focus on the post-World War II era. It explores the development of Japan's modern institutions and the new challenges it faces today, including demographic shifts, economic stagnation, debates over national identity and immigration, and the rise of China as a global power.

• History and Psychology of the Holocaust and Genocide
  Trip to: Lublin, Warsaw, Poland
  • This class will examine how historians and psychologists explain the phenomenon of genocide in the modern world. Key to these interpretations are the role of power and privilege in creating the conditions for genocide, in shaping the experiences and actions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, and in fostering denial or reconciliation. In this global immersion course, we will examine the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. There will be a special focus on the Holocaust in Poland, paying attention to the impact on bystanders of witnessing genocide and on the conditions necessary for reconciliation.

See more information about BCLA Global Immersion Courses.

BCLA Domestic Immersion Courses are on-campus classes, which each include a multi-day domestic travel experience. With a Domestic Immersion Course, students can get out of the classroom to study a topic in-depth at the source with faculty experts. Classes can be open to all students or targeted towards majors. Need-based financial assistance is available.

There are over 50 study abroad programs all over the globe, and many are faculty-led and fit into liberal arts major curricula.

LMU Faculty-led programs:

• LMU Semester in Croatia
• LMU Semester in Germany
• LMU Semester in London, England: Leadership London
• LMU Semester in London, England: Study and Internship

Additional program locations:

• Argentina: SIT Study Abroad Argentina
• Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
• Augsburg University in Cuernavaca, Mexico
• Augsburg University in Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala
• Australia: Southern Cross University
• Cardiff University, Wales
• Champlain Montréal, Canada
• China: The Beijing Center
• Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala: Augsburg University
• Ecuador: SIT Study Abroad
• France: IAU Aix-en-Provence
• Ghana: NYU Accra
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
• IAU Aix-en-Provence, France
• India: SIT Study Abroad
• Ireland: University College Cork
• Israel: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Italy: Spring Hill Italy Center in Bologna
• Japan: Sophia University
• Mexico: Augsburg University in Cuernavaca
• Morocco:  SIT Study Abroad
• New Zealand: Auckland University of Technology
• NYU Accra, Ghana
• Peru: SIT Study Abroad
• Québec, Canada: Champlain Montréal
• SIT Study Abroad Argentina, Ecuador, India, Morocco, Peru
• Sophia University, Japan
• South Africa: Service Learning Program
• South Korea: Sogang University
• Southern Cross University, Australia
• Spain: Universidad de Deusto in San Sebastian
• Vietnam: The Vietnam Center
• Wales: Cardiff University
• Washington, D.C.: The Washington Center internship program

Visit the Study Abroad Office to learn more about semester study abroad programs that work with BCLA majors.

Can’t fit an entire semester into your schedule? Summer programs provide shorter abroad experiences for credit, like:

• LMU Summer in Croatia
• LMU Summer in Oxford, England
• LMU Summer in New Zealand
• LMU Summer in Paris, France
• LMU Summer in Rome, Italy
• LMU Summer in Spetses, Greece Odyssey Program

For details and more summer program options, visit the Study Abroad Office.

LMU and BCLA offer financial support for students who wish to study abroad.

• Semester Abroad
  Institutional aid via Financial Aid is available for some semester study abroad programs. Study Abroad Financial Assistance Grants support students who study abroad. The award is based on financial need and a project proposal.
• Semester Abroad in London
  Each semester, the Institute for Leadership Studies chooses one political science student to join the prestigious Hansard Fellowship Program in London, which includes a semester of study at the London School of Economics and Political Science, coupled with an internship in the British House of Commons. This competitive program covers the cost of studying abroad, is only open to political science and international relations majors.
• Summer Abroad in Asia
  The Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. Award funds summer study abroad in Asia for history majors/minors, Asian and Pacific Studies majors/minors, and liberal studies majors with a history focus. Learn more via LMU Study Abroad or ask the History Department for application details.
• Summer Abroad in Catholic Studies or Jewish Studies
  Student Enrichment Funds in Catholic Studies and Jewish Studies can provide funding to Catholic Studies or Jewish Studies minors who participate in a thematically relevant abroad experience. Ask the program directors for Jewish Studies or Catholic Studies for details on qualifying programs.
• Global Immersion Courses
  Need-based aid is available to fund travel costs for BCLA Global Immersion courses each semester. In 2019, BCLA provided at least partial support to all qualified applicants, over $100,000 in aid total.