Dialogue of Civilizations, offered during Summer 1 or Summer 2, is a uniquely engaging program that takes you around the world to focus on critical issues facing students and peers both locally and globally. You’ll spend around 30 days in-country with a faculty leader from Northeastern University, learning about a specific topic or course subject, broadening your horizons, and gaining the experience of a lifetime.
Journalism Dialogues
Faculty Member: Carlene Hempel
Location:
Havana, Cuba
Courses:
JRNL 5360 – Global Reporting
CLTR 4944 – Cultural Engagement Abroad: Understanding Cuban Life and Culture
The Reporting in Cuba program will include on-the-ground, real-time deadline reporting, both in print and broadcast, for an online multi-media magazine we publish as we go. This intensive journalism experience is experiential learning at its best because its members will emerge as experienced international reporters. They will also learn the landscape, the politics and the cultural mores of the communities we visit because they will be reporting on them for the full 29 days we are in-country. Students participating in this program will function as a traveling press corps. As international correspondents, they will find and pitch stories and/or broadcast pieces and report and write them (in English) on deadline for an online magazine created to showcase the course material. Students may also be expected to take photos for their stories, as well as provide video and audio when necessary and appropriate. Topics could include articles related to government, politics, religion, refugees, immigration, arts, sports, business and lifestyle. In addition to their reported pieces, students will also be required to maintain a blog, to be published as part of our magazine site, throughout the program. Students will be intimately engaged with the community. From almost the first day of arrival, they will be interviewing locals for their projects. Interview subjects will range from people on the street to business owners to heads of state. They will also be looking for stories to write about, which puts them in touch in a profound way with the issues and topics that face a community. This kind of experience has no parallel on a resume or cover letter. It’s intense, it’s life-changing and there is no better way to enhance a student’s Northeastern career and beyond. Students should be aware that the Zika virus is present in Cuba. If a student is pregnant, she should not consider attending this Dialogue. Students with asthma should talk with their doctors before applying to this Dialogue. If they decide to attend, they should bring extra inhalers because of poor air quality in Havana. Students with allergies to bugs and/or animals should be aware of the frequency with which they will encounter these in Cuba. There are often no screens on the windows, and stray cats and dogs are pervasive on the streets. Students who have physical disabilities will have an extremely difficult time moving around in Cuba. There are almost no accommodations for handicapped accessibility and many of the roads are covered with trash or heaps of rubble. There are frequent pipes or holes dotting the roads and debris on the sidewalks. Also, the roads are overrun with numerous speeding cars and loose adherence to traffic calming measures and signals.