Honors students led by three ASU faculty members, Drs. Alexandra Hellenbrand (Global Studies), Victor Mansure (Music), and Jim Toub (Art), traveled to Vienna in May with the bi-annual summer study abroad program, Culture and the Arts in Vienna. In this program, Honors students take two interdisciplinary Honors seminars (2515 and 3515), in which they study the art, literature, psychology, politics and music of Vienna from around 1700 to the present. The focus is on the Fin de Siècle Vienna (1880-1917) and the effects of that time that still shape the cultural life of the modern city. Students examined Vienna's unique urban landscape as well as its rich artistic, literary, political, and scientific traditions. In the photograph shown, the group is at the Vienna State Opera before seeing Wagner's Lohengrin. In addition, students took daylong excursions to important monuments outside of Vienna such as the concentration camp memorial Mauthausen, the Baroque Monastery at Melk, and Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt. Honors Senior and Music Education major, Hunter Cox, shared the following reflection on the experience: “This program is one of the most valuable cultural experiences that I have ever had and gives new insight into the historical research that I have been working on in music history. The historical figures and events studied in the program coupled with the sites visited gives the student a wonderful understanding of Austrian and Viennese culture.”
Story by Garrett Alexandrea McDowell, Ph.D.
Photo contributed by Victor Mansure, Ph.D.
