About the Program

“I would definitely recommend the Jordan program to any student who is willing to try something different. It teaches you not only about the culture of the Middle East, but it also introduces you to experiences and people that you will remember forever.”Meade Wills, 2010

June 24 – July 21, 2012

Culture and History: Understanding the Arab World offers an incredible opportunity for students to learn about and experience the Middle East.  Having engaged in rigorous coursework with their three instructors and numerous guest lecturers, a variety of cultural activities in Jordan, and ethnographic/journalistic fieldwork, students emerge from this program with a working knowledge of the modern Arab world, rudimentary conversational Arabic, and unforgettable first-hand experience of Jordanian lifestyles.

The four-week program begins at Columbia University, where students dive into a historical overview of the Arab World while discovering New York City. Students next travel together to Jordan, where they spend two weeks at King’s Academy outside Amman, taking courses in the morning and traveling into Amman and Madaba in the afternoon to work on their media projects. The time in Jordan concludes with a week of travel, where students are able to experience what they have learned in the classroom in a number of authentic and personal contexts. First, they spend two days exploring Petra and Wadi Rum with Bedouin guides, then wash it off at a Turkish bathhouse before heading north to Jordan's breathtaking EcoPark, a nature reserve founded by the Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli cooperative Friends of the Earth Middle East. From there, students discover the region's budding environmental movement through activities at the park, as well as tour the surrounding villages, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River Valley.

The program concludes back at Columbia University in New York, where students channel their coursework, cultural experiences and ethnographic research into a group media project.