A Study-in-Residence on A Tale of Two Cities, With the Class in Front of the Charles Dickens Museum Before a Full Day Touring the Home, Learning to Interrogate Artifacts from the Museum’s Curator, Contrasting Dickens’ Journalism and Fiction With a Dickens Scholar, Seeing a Professional Actor Perform Dickens’ Personal Scripts, and Having Coffee and Lunch in Dickens’ Private Walled Garden.

Study-in-Residence: Student Travel As A Masterclass

See a Visual and Video Diary of an Entire Class on My Instagram

Before COVID, I spent years developing a model of student travel that dives deeper than the “experiential learning” and “immersive trips” offered by ordinary travel companies:

“Study-in-Residence.”

The idea is simple: Student travel that’s designed as a masterclass. For high school students, we teach students to study abroad before they study abroad in college.

Study-in-Residence is a student trip designed as a course, which explores a philosophical question by deep-diving into a specific piece of literature, historical figure or event, or work of art. Before the trip, the students engage in readings for historical and cultural context, preparing them for experiences on the trip. When we’re there, they will say, “Oh, we read about this!”

The trip is composed of on-site educational and research opportunities with academic and cultural organizations in the place where it happened. These are supplemented by “must-do” and “just-off-the-beaten-path” experiences that immerse students not just in the culture, but the history of the place.

When the students return home, they turn their notes, pictures, videos, and other learnings into a visual essay that answers the philosophical question based on their pre-trip readings, contemporaneous notes from the trip, and post-trip reflections. These visual essays, and the trip experience itself, are ready-made for college applications. Thus, the return on investment is a tangible piece of the college application, along with an experience that teaches them to study abroad before they study abroad.

​Journaling in Charles Dickens’ Private Garden to Record What We Learned

Study-in-Residence Puts Learning at the Center of the Student Travel Experience

The Study-in-Residence design starts with a subject that’s complex and interesting enough that students will want to spend time really diving into it. Utilizing principles of Place-Based, Experiential, and Project-Based Learning, Study-in-Residence courses are a journey, in all senses of the word, which end with the student creating a work that they can present for teachers, parents, and each other. This is an authentic work that demonstrates research skills, synthesis in critical thinking, executive functioning, collaboration, proactivity, independence–exactly the characteristics colleges screen for in the application process.

The Former Mayor of Islington, London (and Blue Badge Tour Guide) David Poyser Showing us the Door Knocker That Inspired Scrooge’s Vision of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol. Several of These Students Featured This Tour in Their Write-Up of the Study-in-Residence in Their College Applications.

A Study-in-Residence Course Design Example for A Tale of Two Cities.

The Question:

“History” isn’t simply “what happened,” but an active process of constructing the historical record. Even at the time, events are interpreted differently by different people for different reasons. Over time, the historical “memory” is contested by political actors, often to serve their own agendas in the present.

This makes Historical Fiction one of the most popular and important literary genres, as described in these “10 Thoughts on Historical Fiction” by writer M.K. Tod, reviewing Jerome de Groot’s The Historical Novel. When an author asserts that their work is “Based on a True Story” or “Inspired by True Events,” the “truthfulness” of the fictionalization of history is part of its appeal, even if the author simply intended to tell a story.

Inevitably, this leads us to ask how much responsibility the artist has to the historical record of the events portrayed in their fiction. And, more importantly, beyond historical accuracy and the question of “Did that really happen?”, there are the questions of truth and perspective: What is the artist trying to say about the history, and what do we take from this to understand our present?

This is important because our “knowledge” of historical events comes not just from histories, but from books, movies, television, and other works of art. Thus, interpreting artistic works is part of creating the historical record, part of creating the collective memory of “what happened” and “why it matters.”

For our course, it’s fair to say that most Americans only get a broad outline of the French Revolution in school. Rather, we “understand” the French Revolution not from history books, but from works like musical Les Misérables (which isn’t about the original French Revolution!) and the guillotine scenes from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

So, at the conclusion of our Study-in-Residence, we will answer the following question:

Based on our deep-dive into Charles Dickens’ creation of A Tale of Two Cities, how do we “know” what we think we know about the French Revolution? What can we understand about the nature of history itself?

How Do We Know What We Think We Know About the French Revolution? Mostly, By Going to Shows like Les Misérables! This is Why Understanding Where Les Misérables Came From Is Important

The Readings:

During this course, we will trace:

• Artifacts and contemporaneous accounts of the French Revolution in Paris

• How the history of the French Revolution was written, both in France and England

• How Dickens fictionalized that history in a historical novel

• How those historical details are used to adapt the French Revolution into plays, musical theater, and movies.

• How all these elements combine to create the “Historical Memory”

Before the trip, we will read, of course, A Tale of Two Cities during regular class. During Interim Week, the Study-in-Residence students will read different books and articles to put the book and the history into context, particularly focusing on preparing us for experiences on the trip.

The Syllabus is as follows. We will read all of Claire Tomalin’s Biography of Dickens. For the books, we will read key chapters only. The articles will be provided for you, and the movie will be linked.

• Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Norton Critical Edition, (2019). Contains critical essays and original illustrations from the First Edition.

• Tomalin, Claire. Charles Dickens: A Life. Penguin, 2012.

• A Tale of Two Cities. Directed by Ralph Thomas. Pinewood Studios, 1958.

• Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. Modern Library Classics, (2002).

• Andress, David (Ed.). The Oxford Handbook to the French Revolution. Oxford, (2015).

• “The Poor Laws.” In Our Time Podcast, Hosted by Melvyn Bragg, Produced by the BBC (2018).

• Parenti, Michael. “The Control Of History.”

• Grimble, Edward. “Walking Fast and Far: Dickens and Restless Pedstrianism.”

• Spurgin, Timothy. “Notoriety is the Thing: Modern Celebrity and Early Dickens.”

• Smith, Grahame. “Dickens and the City of Light.”

• Litvak, Leon. “Dickens’ Burial as Bodysnatching.”

• Scott, Laurence. “Charles Dickens: The Writer Who Saw Lockdown Everywhere.”

Dr. Himes and Lauren in Front of an Original Edition of A Tale of Two Cities, Opened to the Page Where Dickens Set a Scene in That Very Pub. Lauren and I Performed the Scene in the Underground Dining Hall While Everyone Was Waiting for Lunch

The Journey

We will begin the trip in London for nine days, then take the Eurostar to Paris for four days, traveling home after thirteen days. During each of these learning experiences, we’ll take notes, and at the end of each day, we will meet together at the residence to talk about what we learned. During that time, you’ll journal your experiences–these notes, journals, pictures, and videos will become part of your visual essay at the end of the course.

During that time, we will do the following 60-90 minute walking tours:

• “Twists and Turns: A Tour of Oliver Twist’s London”

• “The London of A Tale of Two Cities and the Fleet Street that Charles Dickens Knew”

• “Westminster Abbey: Dickens’ Burial as a Form of Body Snatching”

• “Dickens History Walk: The Debtors Prison that Haunted Dickens”

• “The Soho of of Dr. Alexandre and Lucie Manette”

• “Highgate Cemetery: Why Dickens Chose This Place to Bury His Wife, His Daughter, and His Parents”

• “The French Revolution Along the Seine”

We will also have learning experiences at:

• The National Art Library in the Victoria and Albert Museum

• The Dickens Museum

• The British Library Study Room

• Westminster Abbey

• The Globe Theatre

• Highgate Cemetery

• St Pancras Old Church

• British Film Library

• Les Misérables

• Musée Carnavalet

• The Pantheon

And, we will enjoy experiences at:

• A play at the National Theatre

• A play at Shakespeare’s Globe

• An opera at Regents Park Outdoor Theatre

• A canal ride through London from Camden Docks to Little Venice

In the Penny Pit Leaning Onto the Stage Before Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe

The Return:

Students will create their visual essays using their learnings to answer the Question posed at the beginning of the course: What can we understand about history by deep-diving into Charles Dickens’ writing of A Tale of Two Cities?

In addition, we will put on a Gallery Walk and Reception, where we will come together as a group one last time, with our parents and teachers, to showcase our work and share stories of this adventure.

Beyond that, your visual essays are a great piece for your college admission portfolio. More than just a trip, Study-in-Residence projects show colleges that you have primary and secondary research skills, are able to synthesize enormous amounts of information into your own personal insights, can navigate big cities with a group of your peers, are able to pack and plan--you are ready to study abroad.

The Tale of Two Cities Study-in-Residence Met Claire Tomalin, the Author of Our Dickens Biography, at Waterloo Station.

A Day of Study-in-Residence

On a Study-in-Residence trip, we don’t get up at the crack of dawn to get on a tour bus, nor do we spend most of our day in-transit, like with most company-led student trips. We get a good night’s sleep, get up at around 8am, chat over coffee, pack a bag for the day’s adventure, then head out to travel the city.

In the mid-morning, we meet to review the day’s agenda. We use the nearby public transportation to go to our learning experience, travelling the city like local explorers, uncovering hidden artifacts in museums, dusting off truth-telling papers in deep archives, engaging with eccentric experts who really know their stuff.

We usually have lunch on-site, or do grab-and-go at a local grocery and eat in the park. After our learning experience, in the mid-to-late afternoon, we do a nearby cultural experience of some kind–something to get a feel for the city, like an Afternoon Tea in London, take in a museum, or have a coffee at a Parisian cafe.

After that, we usually return to the residence to drop our bags, freshen up, and go to dinner and some sort of entertainment. Dinner isn’t fussy, and the entertainment is a mix of “must-do’s” and “just off the beaten path” experiences you won’t get from major travel companies. We get home at a decent hour to come together as a group to debrief the day, do some journaling, get the plan for tomorrow, and then hang out, call home, get ready for the next day!

Journaling in the Luxembourg Gardens After a Long Day Studying Artifacts at the Musée de la Préfecture de Police (Including a Guillotine!) and Paintings of the Mythology of the French Revolution in the Pantheon, Just Down the Street from our Residence.

Annotated Agendas to Help You Get a Feel for Study-in-Residence:

A Tale of Two Cities: The Victoria and Albert Museum and Chelsea Culture

9:15am: Meet in front of the Residence to debrief the day’s agenda. Make sure everyone is packed and ready to go.

9:30-10:00am: Walk to the Tube, District Line from Paddington to South Kensington

10:00-12:00pm: Learning Experience at the National Art Library, Second Floor of the Victoria & Albert Museum. The curator teaches us to handle rare artifacts from the Forster Collection, then we look at specific pages of Charles Dickens’ handwritten manuscript of A Tale of Two Cities (we see how he wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” which is a key to his mental state at the time), as well as original copies of Dickens’ works to understand how he produced different types of works for different audiences–including an original edition of A Christmas Carol.

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch at the V&A Cafeteria / Queen Victoria’s Refreshment Room

1:00-2:30pm: Guided tour of the Twenty Treasures of the V&A.

2:30-4:00pm: Unstructured time at the Natural History Museum: Dinosaur Exhibits and the Darwin Centre.

4:00-4:30pm: Tube, District Line from South Kensington to West Brompton

4:30-5:00pm: Walking tour of Brompton Cemetery, brief discussion of the Magnificent Seven cemeteries in London and the Suffragettes. This will be important for our later trip to Highgate Cemetery, where we will eulogize Dickens’ wife Catherine, his parents, and his infant daughter Dora at their gravesites.

5:00-6:45pm: Dinner at The Troubadour, one of Chelsea’s last remaining coffee house live music venues (where Ed Sheeran and Adele got their first breaks). While we wait for food, we see the historic underground music venue where Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix first played in London.

6:45-7:00pm: Tube from West Brompton to Knightsbridge

7:00-8:00pm: Window shopping at Harrods, the iconic and quintessentially British upscale department store.

8:00-8:30pm: Tube to the residence, Knightsbridge to Paddington

8:30-9:30pm: Group debrief of the day, individual journaling.

9:30-11:00pm: Free time at the residence, then lights out!

The Study-in-Residence Class With The Journals, Getting an Explanation of Charles Dickens’ Editing Technique from the Handwritten Manuscript of A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities: The British Library and Westminster Abbey

9:15am: Meet in front of the residence, debrief the day’s agenda, make sure everybody in packed and ready to go.

9:15-9:30am: Tube from Paddington to St Pancras

9:30-11:30am: Learning experience at the British Library Study Room. We have a special dispensation for British Library cards that allow access to the stacks and study carrels in the Humanities Room. We go through the process of getting our cards, submitting research slips to get access to copies of first editions of Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History, the chief source material Dickens used for details and stories in A Tale of Two Cities. Then, using pre-prepared worksheets, the students find specific passages from Carlyle that Dickens borrowed for his fiction, and students take notes on what they find about similarities, tone, and interpretation.

11:30-12:30pm: Lunch in the British Library Courtyard, with time to visit the British Library Treasures Room

12:30-1:15pm: Travel to Westminster Abbey, Circle Line from St Pancras to Westminster

1:30-3:00pm: Westminster Abbey Tour with Blue Badge Tour Guide. Our tour is both general to the Abbey, but specific to Dickens: Our guide tells the story of Dickens overnight burial—against his wishes!—in Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. This is a story we will have read about in Leon Litvak’s article on “Dickens Burial as Bodysnatching.”

3:00-4:00pm: Afternoon Tea and Snack near the Abbey

4:00-5:00pm: Queue for Evensong

5:00-6:00pm: Evensong at Westminster Abbey, the daily Church of England service in the main corridor of the abbey. Queueing at 4pm will usually get us in the ancient wooden pews with a view of the throne. Also have the opportunity to light candles for loved ones on our way out.

6:00-7:00pm: Take away dinner from M&S Food Hall, picnic in Jubilee Gardens

7:30-9:30pm: Show at the National Theatre

9:30-10:00pm: Tube back to residence, Bakerloo Line from Waterloo to Paddington

10:00-11:00pm: Debrief, journaling, agenda for next day, contact home.

Boston Massacre Study-in-Residence, Massachusetts Historical Society and Fenway Neighborhood

9:15: Meet at Residence, review the day’s agenda, make sure everybody is packed and ready to go.

9:30-10:00am: Walk to the T, Green Line to Hynes Convention Center stop

10:00-12:00pm: Learning Experience at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The curator introduces us to their primary sources, teaches us to handle rare artifacts from the Revolutionary Era, and then we view and interpret John Adams’ personal, handwritten notes from the Trial of the Boston Massacre. We will also view Phyllis Wheatley artifacts, including an understanding of how her penmanship tells us about the relationship she had with her enslaver family, with whom she lived just two blocks from where the Boston Massacre occurred.

12:00-12:15pm: Walk along the Back Bay Fens to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

12:15-1:15pm: Lunch at the MFA’s Garden Cafeteria.

1:15-2:30pm: Guided Tour of the MFA’s Revolutionary Era paintings, including Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl, Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished portrait of George Washington, and Mohawk Nation works from the same period.

2:30-2:45pm: Walk to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

2:45-4:30pm: An afternoon at the ISG, the former private residence of Mrs. Gardner, which houses one of the most extensive private art collections in a beautiful venue. We will see the blank spaces on the wall, each for the 13 paintings that were stolen in 1990 in the world’s largest art heist, and hear the story of the possible organized crime involvement. Also get refreshments in the ISG’s garden cafe.

4:30-5:00pm: Walk to Fenway Park, alongside the Fenway Garden Society

5:00-5:30pm: The “Fifteen Minute” Tour of Fenway Park

5:30-6:00pm: Take the Red Line to Dinner

6:00-8:00pm: Pizza and Bowling at an Only-in-Boston Candlepin Bowling Alley

8:00-9:00pm: Take the Red Line back to the residence

9:45-10:30pm: Group debrief of the day, individual journaling.

10:30-11:00pm: Free time at the residence, then lights out!

Study-in-Residence Students and Teachers Discussing the Performance Technique and Other-Worldly Lung Capacity of the Opera Singers We Just Saw

Meticulously Planned, But Not Exhausting and Overscheduled—At a Competitive Price Point Compared to Large Travel Companies

As you can see, each day is meticulously planned, but not overscheduled–lots of buffer to make sure we are always running on time. Study-in-Residence days are designed to maximize experiences, so we typically explore a particular area of the city with as little time spent on transportation as possible. There is a fair bit of walking, but we alternate between tours and being off our feet. If it seems like we do a lot, that’s because we do!

With Study-in-Residence, we step through the agenda as you will experience it, to create a plan that packs the most into a day without being exhausting. This is why we schedule so that teenagers can sleep in, rather than getting them up at the crack of dawn to make a train or tour bus. And, we understand that they don’t always have to be doing something. We schedule a lot of time for the group to just be together enjoying their surroundings, which is key to building the group camaraderie over the course of the trip.

And, this helps us keep costs down. Typically, we alternate between an evening with an “event” like a show or scavenger hunt, and something that’s more of a “hang out.” Usually, the educational experiences are free or very inexpensive, we control food costs with take-away and hang-out in a public space, with modest cultural experiences so that we can have some “big” nights out at shows.

Sometimes at the End of a Long Day of Learning, You Just Want to Hang Out And Have Some Gelato With Your Friends

Just Like Our Guide on This Tour Inside the Crypt In Highgate Cemetery, We Will Help Light the Way

How We Work With You

First, schedule a no-pressure brainstorming session. Come to us with an idea. Or, ask us for ideas based on your and your students’ interests. That’s where it all starts: A great topic makes for a great trip. Let’s talk.

From there, we can help you:

1. Design a trip that’s sponsored by your school.

2. Design a trip that is executed through a travel company.

3. Design a trip where we function as the tour guide.

If you have a budget, we will work with you to finalize a consulting agreement, and then we can get started designing your Study-in-Residence, working directly with you and your team to create a bespoke experience for your class.

Depending on the Scope of Work, we can work with museums and learning institutions to create the experiences, order tickets and make reservations–all planned and packaged in a detailed itinerary like you see in the “A Day of Study-in-Residence.”

Finally, we can help you design the learning materials themselves: note-taking journals, worksheets, prompts, study guides, scoring rubrics for the final presentation–whatever you need, we can help.

Knowledge Travels can also work with your school’s development and outreach teams to promote their students and teachers to parents, donors, and other stakeholders. Promoting the vision of your school is part of Knowledge Travels’ core vision, and we’ll give you the tools to showcase what you have to offer.

Whatever your student travel needs, we can develop a consulting package that fits your needs and your budget.

Be the Theater Teacher Breaking Down a Bawdy Comedy at Shakespeare’s Globe, While in London Right After the Show

What Parents and Students Say About Study-in-Residence

Kylie: My daughter’s time in London and Paris was more of a journey than a trip because it was truly a Study Abroad experience. The preparation required her to stretch academically and personally. She was not packing for a leisure trip; she was readying herself for an important life step, getting ready to leave home and encounter the greater world on her own wits, albeit within the safety of a group and for a limited time.

Anna: The course-like structure made them responsible for their growth. Instead of just a travel abroad trip, where they might glance at a historical marker, they had to get off a train and really experience the significance of the city. In other words, the students had skin in the game.

The Knowledge Travels Study Abroad program was an investment in our daughter that resulted in a great appreciation of travel through a thoughtful, well organized trip of a lifetime.

Maria: The trip-as-course framework provided an outline through which our daughter was able to dive much deeper into her travel-abroad experience. It gave her a motive to find context and meaning in the places she visited. She experienced London and Paris as a participant, rather than just a spectator.

As a parent who saw many of the presentations, I saw a group who took away their own personal experience and could clearly articulate their unique and individualized experiences.

​Regan: Before taking the A Tale of Two Cities Study Abroad trip I was never sure how to go about studying the world and all its complexities. The world seemed like a concept out of reach and to enter it would be like a dream. After taking this trip, this is no longer the case.

There was London and Paris, together providing me with just one example of the world’s complexities as I researched their interlocking histories. I now find myself thinking more critically about how the world is presented to me, especially by those in power. People, history, and modern trends are amazingly complex and the course-like structure of the Study-in-Residence helped me process it through one amazing trip.

John: The Knowledge Travels Study Abroad program was amazing. My daughter has traveled overseas on sponsored trips four times. Hands down, the Dickens Study Abroad trip was the most educational and her favorite.

She was held accountable to read and study before going on the trip, and she was held accountable to complete a presentation when she returned home. She also learned how to navigate around London and Paris. My daughter had to learn how to use mass transit in a foreign city. This trip was a fabulous experience and she definitely gained a lot of independence and self confidence.

I would highly recommend this experience. I have no doubt my daughter will take advantage of a study abroad program in college, and I have no fear of her going. She is now an experienced “world traveler” and I feel confident she can “hold her own” in a foreign country.

Study-in-Residence Ideas-in-Incubation

After my first Study-in-Residence course, I worked with my school to develop an entire program of student travel experiences. And, after seeing my Instagram of the trip and seeing all the student, parent, and teacher feedback, I got lots of requests from teachers all around the country–and some travel companies in London–to help them design similar experiences.

This was 2019-2020. You know what happened next.

Below are several trips that I spent years researching, working on-site with museums and research institutions, walking the routes to understand the student experience, and writing the curriculum. I got a lot of requests for London trips, the city I know best, but because my daughter goes to a French immersion public school, I’ve worked in France as well.

And, on the domestic side, the Boston Massacre trip has a fully baked itinerary (it was cancelled in Spring 2020), the Hamilton in New York trip was deeply planned, I also have started deep-diving into the Chicago World’s Fairs for a Study-in-Residence on science and innovation. Much of this work has been sitting in my files since the pandemic, and perhaps it will give you some ideas or inspiration for your Study-in-Residence experience!

The Best and Worst of Times? A Tale of Two Cities

The pictures on this site are from Knowledge Travels’ last pre-pandemic venture, A Tale of Two Cites. This course is the perfect AP or IB companion. In London, we study how Charles Dickens constructed ATo2C, from the influence of his infamous childhood in Warrens Blacking Factory and his father’s time in debtors prison, to his historical (?) research with books provided by the philosopher Thomas Carlyle in the London Library--and we’ll see his handwritten manuscript, with some coded messages about the scandals in his personal life that informed his book. We spend a day at the Charles Dickens Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, we see that actual places (including the underground pubs) where Dickens set scenes to understand how he imagined the geography of London as a spiritual landscape--and we venture outside the center of London to eulogize his family in Highgate Cemetery.

From London, we travel to Paris, the second city of the tale, to explore the actual history of the French Revolution. In Paris, we find the last guillotine, explore the dark neighborhood of the novel, the prisons that held the innocent----while also taking in the City of Lights and the exquisite food and vibrant neighborhoods that made Charles Dickens England’s first legitimate Francophile.

The Boston Massacre: What Can We Learn About the Role of Protest in American Democracy?

This idea has been in development for five years, but we couldn’t launch because of COVID-19. I have met with the Massachusetts Historical Society to integrate John Adams’ personal handwritten trial notes into the course, along with several excellent programs with the folks at Revolutionary Spaces (the organization that oversees the Old State Meeting House and the Old South Meeting House). The Boston Massacre marker is right there in front of the Meeting House, but as we’ll discover, the *politics* of how the marker got placed there might not be historically accurate (it reflects the view of the famous Paul Revere engraving, one of history’s most effective works of political propaganda, as we’ll learn at the Paul Revere House)

Beyond that, we’ve found several Only-In-Boston fun events for the group, including a mystery hunt through central Boston, tea and dinner at the museum where the most expensive art heist in American history happened, and taking the ferry across the bay to Provincetown for seafood and to learn how institutions on Cape Cod are re-framing the story of Thanksgiving.

This course is ready-to-go, complete with two recent books on the Massacre that are vital to our understanding of American democracy. This trip is the perfect complement to APUSH or your IB American History course. We have a special focus on Crispus Attucks’ evolution as a figure of the Civil Rights Movement.

What is the Nature of Genius? Handel’s Creation of “Messiah”

Another course I’ve been planning for years! This course is centered on how Georg Friedrich Handel came to create his famous Messiah, and it’s also an exploration of the concept of genius. Handel came to London from Hanover, following the Hanoverian King George after a successful career creating opera in Italy. He became one of the most renowned composers in the Western canon.

We will dive not only into his music, but also the history and politics that conspired to be a platform for Handel’s music. We’ll hear how Handel composed for different spaces (Zadok the Priest, the UK’s coronation anthem, was composed specifically for Westminster Abbey), and how he arranged the orchestra to fill the Green Park with Music for Royal Fireworks and built a kind-of party barge for the king to listen to Water Music sailing down the Thames.

More than that, Handel basically invented the modern role of conductor: Not just composing music, but conducting business affairs, contributing as a pillar of the community, and existing as a political figure in high society while creating music for the masses.

He’s a fascinating figure, and you don’t need training in music to spend time with him. We’ll learn about his composition of Messiah in the very house where he lived in wrote (downstairs from what could become Jimi Hendrix’ London house centuries later), dig through his archives and wills in the Foundling Museum, and investigate his handwritten notes in the stacks of the British Library. This course is perfect for AP Music Theory students, but really, it’s adaptable because the theme is genius.

What is Frankenstein’s Monster? Unearthing the World of Mary Shelley

I have been developing this course for years, which is the perfect AP Lit + STEM + History interdisciplinary trip. Frankenstein is one of the most read high school books, written at the rise of the Scientific Enlightenment. In London, we will explore the science that would have influenced Mary Shelley, including the original operating theater hidden in the second floor of a medieval church, and take a tour of the historical sites that gave rise to the study of anatomy--including the graveyards where corpses were “fished” for science.

We’ll see a one-man show of Frankenstein set in a historic library, as if the books on the shelves talked to Mary--which, considering her upbringing, they did. We’ll find the places of Mary’s unusual childhood, the daughter of a famous philosopher and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, the most famous feminist of her time and author of the A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft died giving birth to Mary, and we’ll visit her gravesite, where the young Mary was taken by her father to keep vigil.

From there, we’ll trace her relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, eventually tracing through Paris (where Mary Wollstonecraft witnessed the guillotining of Marie Antoinette and much of the Revolution, which influenced her daughter’s conception of the Monster), all the way to Geneva, where Mary first conceived the idea in an isolated chateau during the coldest summer on record, in a contest to write the scariest story that included Lord Byron.

There is so much rich material here that we can adapt it to whatever focus you want, or like the monster itself, just let it be a stitched together collection of everything :)

The Suffragettes: How They Won Votes For Women

This course will deep-dive into the intersection of feminism and the modern movement by tracing the origins of the Suffragettes from the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester to London, where these women engaged in legal and extra-legal means to achieve the vote. Not just the story of the Pankhursts, but also of Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl, who wrote and worked most of his life in London. In many ways, Eleanor was her father’s daughter, and we’ll find the archives where the both researched and developed intellectually.

This course will explore the East End of London, which is off the tourist track---but whose history reaches into the present, the legacy of the struggles of women and immigrants (and how women of color were often explicitly excluded from the Suffragette movement). We’ll meet some of the women of today who are restoring this history that the patriarchy erases from the books, to understand not just what it means to make this history live, but actually how to do it. This course is perfect not just for history classes, but also economics and feminist studies as well.

Emilie du Chatelet: The Forgotten Genius of France’s Scientific Enlightenment

For most of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Emilie du Chatelet was remembered as nothing more than “Voltaire’s Mistress.” Voltaire himself would take exception: He called her “a great man whose only fault was being a woman.”

Emilie du Chatelet is nothing less than the most penetrating intellectual force of the French Scientific Enlightenment. She not only was the first to translate Newton’s Principia, thus creating Newton’s fame outside of England, she corrected Newton’s assumption that momentum is proportional to velocity, eventually relied upon by later thinkers to form our modern ideas on mechanics. In short, Du Chatelet’s insights were used by Einstein to square the c in his famous formula.

More than that Emilie du Chatelet was a philosopher, poet, feminist trailblazer, fervent critic of John Locke---the energy and intellect she brought to so many subjects makes her one of the most fascinating figures who ushered in the modern age. She died tragically in her early 40s from a pregnancy gone wrong, and was promptly written out of most history.

We will begin in London for a couple days studying Newton, as well as Du Chatelet’s letters in an archive at the City University of London. Next, we will unearth her legacy at sites throughout Paris, studying the beginnings of modern science. Then, we will visit her famous Chateau de Cirey, the country estate where she built the first science laboratory and a theater for her lover Voltaire, where they spent their days enraptured in scientific and philosophical thought. From there, we venture to Geneva, Switzerland to see the Voltaire archives.

From Hamilton to *Hamilton*: The role of musical theater in historical memory

Hamilton is perhaps the artistic landmark in the last decade of American art forms. So much so that its lines are quoted by Congresspeople, and its depictions of events in the Revolution have deeply influenced who not just lay people, but politicians and some historians see this era.

But how accurate is it? How much does accuracy matter?

Famously, Lin-Manuel Miranda didn’t just rely on, but brought biographer Ron Chernow onboard as a consultant, but in recent years, Chernow’s “definitive” biography has come under fire for creating a distorted portrait of Hamilton’s views on slavery, relationship with Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, and other aspects of his life.

New scholarship on Hamilton’s family’s ownership of enslaved people, as well as his role in the Whiskey Rebellion, has complicated the story that Hamilton tells. And yet, what truths are still embedded in this radical, racialized imagining of the Founding Era?

This course will take us all over New York City to find the rooms where it happened, from Hamilton’s former home north of Central Park, to the Financial District near the New York Stock Exchange, to Broadway itself to uncover the accuracies and the truths about the most important founder who never became President.