San Jose, Costa Rica


Study Abroad in Costa Rica!

June 17 – July 7, 2023


Application 

Costa Rica 2023 Application

Please email Jaycee Cover  for priority consideration.

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Friday, March 3, 2023

 

About the program

This program will include a mix of classroom-based lessons and lessons in the field. Students will take a critical look at varied types of tourism experiences, cultural phenomena, and food-related concerns in class, and try them out, firsthand. Students will learn from local experts about medicinal plants, the coffee trade, maintenance of Indigenous tradition, pre-Colombian foods, cultural innovation, and grassroots social movements.

 Program Activities

  •   walking tour of the nation’s capital
  • Many excursions and cultural visits such as: 
    • Irazú volcano
    • Playa Sámara
    • Chorotega Indigenous Territory
    • Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve
    • Street art tour
    • Chorotega Indigenous ceramics and arts
    • Museums and galleries
    • Air trade art venues and public markets

Program Fee 

$2500- $3000   $1187

The program fee includes the following items: 

  • Housing
  • All program fieldtrips, excursions, and community engagement projects 
  • Ground transportation  
  • Group lunches  
  • International travel insurance
     

The student fee does not include the following:

  • Round-trip airfare 
  • Passport or visa fees if applicable
  • Personal meals 
  • Personal expenses 
  • CSUF tuition and textbooks 
  • Travel protection plan 
  • Additional fieldtrips and excursions that are not listed 

Program Courses

HSS 350: Costa Rican Life and Culture (3 units) [GE – C.3 & Z]

Through online coursework, students will read about culture, history, and current social life in Costa Rica, thereby seeing Costa Rica from the outside. In Costa Rica, students will gain an immersive experience into Costa Rican life and culture, offering students the opportunity to see Costa Rica from the inside. Through lectures and discussions, as well as guest speakers, museum visits, field site visits, and interactions with local experts, students will gain insight into Costa Rican life and culture, as well as learn about their own respective cultures, through the contrast provided. Combined, this insider and outsider vantage point will offer students a view of their own position in an interdependent global community.
 
ANTH 306: Culture and Art (3 units) [GE – C.3 & Z]

Through online coursework, students will read about art, activism, and artistic tradition in Costa Rica, thereby seeing Costa Rica from the outside. In Costa Rica, students will meet artists from various traditions and view artefacts, street art and muralism, contemporary art studios, and Indigenous art. Through lectures and discussions, as well as guest speakers, museum visits, field site visits, and interactions with local experts, students will gain insight into art as it infuses daily life, activist efforts, maintenance of Indigenous tradition through the verbal arts and ceramics, and innovation within Indigenous artistic tradition. Students will study distinctions between graffiti and public art, as explained by Costa Rican Street artists. Broadening out the definition of art to include secular rituals that are artistic in nature. Students will meet women from two artisans’ cooperatives who used arts (culinary and visual) as a deliberate strategy to bridge the transition from an agricultural economy to a tourism-based economy, and to revolutionize traditional gender roles in their rural communities.

Faculty

 

Karen Stocker
Anthropology, CSUF

 

Need more information?
Visit the Student Success Center in H-112, Monday - Friday from 8am-5pm. Email questions to Jaycee Cover.

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