Location:

Deia, Spain

Program Type:

Study Abroad

Degree Level:

Undergraduate

Term:

Summer

Program Overview

Program Description:

DAMARC is an artist designed and built centre for study and research. Our two week summer programs develop understandings of tourist motivations, infrastructures, perceptions of place, time and space through direct contact, interviewing and discussion. Participants will learn about the history and prehistory of the island, the relationship of the past to the present and future, visit archaeologicaal sites, participate in local life and swim in the beautiful mediterranean sea. The Centre accommodates 14 people ( eight in a dormitory and six in three double rooms). Shared facilities, food preparation and chores, help to develop a community of researchers, staff and family life.

Introductory lectures introduce student to the centre, the village and the potential areas of study.: 1) Archaeology, prehistory, history, social anthropology and gender. 2) Tourism dynamics: ( expectations and imaginings, leisure activities, insider/outsider categories, expat lifestyles, etc) 3)Ecology: Environmental sensitivity and conservation, recognising, planning and drawing from the environment, sustainability, concepts of nature\culture, space, technology, socio-cultural implications of modernization. 4). Spanish and Catalan Culture today.

This program will expand the experience and awareness of vital issues in our contemporary world. It will develop self-confidence through interviewing and collecting data from people of all walks of life. It will introduce you to other ways of seeing and perceiving the world. Combining history with everyday observation and experience will offer insights of human existence through the ages. The past, present and future of our planet will be considered from various standpoints. This course is open to all ages (18 Plus). Previous students have arranged 4 credits from their home universities.

Setting Description:

A beautiful village overlooking the mediterranean. Now one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan holiday sites, Deia, Mallorca is a mountain village, once the home of an agricultural population spread about in small houses or living and working on large self-contained estates. Prior to the 1980s ‘ Deia welcomed the occasional foreigner as a distraction from everyday events. ‘Local’ clearly meant that one had a birthright, a family, a home which gave one a sense of identity and belonging to previous generations, traditions and place. Today the meaning of ‘Local’ is more complex. There are almost 900 registered residents and forty percent of the village is owned and inhabited by foreigners, some of whom have resided there for fifty years and whose children have been born and brought up in the village. Foreigners and locals share many aspects of local life and are often competitors for the same resources: land, houses, consummer goods, jobs and services. Tourism, in its many forms, is a m