It’s said there’s much to learn by walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, and two summer courses will give students a chance to put this maxim into practice. Sponsored by the Department of Literature, American Romantics at Home and From Harlem to Paris invite the AU community to experience places that inspired some of America’s most celebrated artists.

A nine-week course that begins with eight weeks of classroom reading and discussion, The American Romantics at Home culminates in a weeklong stay in Concord, Massachusetts. Ralph Waldo Emerson spent most of his adult life in Concord, and “all the Romantics were connected to Emerson,” says course professor Michael Manson. Louisa May Alcott grew up reading books in his study, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau were his longtime friends. On one memorable day, Hawthorne was able to persuade both Emerson and Thoreau to go ice-skating with him on the frozen Concord River.

While students will spend much of their time in Concord, they will also take day trips to nearby literary sites and cap off each day with a swim in Walden Pond. “The Romantics believed that you remake a landscape when you take it in,” says Manson. “We’re not just seeing sights—what we’re there to do is reflect on the sites and remake them in our own imaginations.”

From Harlem to Paris invites students to reflect and respond to a very different landscape—that of Paris, France. During the time between World Wars I and II, many Harlem Renaissance writers and artists— Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Josephine Baker, and Romare Bearden among them—were drawn to the city’s apparent political and racial liberation. Some visited; others never returned to America.

After six weeks in the classroom, students in the course will spend a week in Paris. There they will take walking tours designed to mirror the pilgrimages of these artists, while allowing for diversions—like stopping by the most popular chocolate shop in Paris—that capture the local flavor. “Experiencing the beauty of the city itself helps you see how Paris was an inspiration for these writers,” says Keith Leonard, course professor.

It also allows students to experience “the outsider stigma” that these artists often faced—because of their race at home, and their nationality abroad. “Students last year told me they got a sense of what it was like for people to project an identity on you,” says Leonard. “They experienced a kind of otherness that comes with stereotyping and were able to better understand what liberation from it would mean.”