RIT Students to Explore Culture and Resistance in South Africa |
Next semester, AES Assistant Vice President Phillippa Thiuri and Makini Beck, associate professor in the School of Individualized Study and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, will prepare RIT students for an immersive faculty-led study abroad experience in Cape Town, South Africa. The program brings together experiential learning, interdisciplinary research, and international education in a course designed to be accessible to students from across RIT.
Through "SOIS 301: Culture and Resistance in South Africa", students will examine how South Africa’s histories of colonialism and apartheid—and the individuals, communities, and movements that resisted them—continue to influence identity, culture, and contemporary society. Through experiential learning, students will engage with important historical, cultural, and community sites during their time in Cape Town.
A distinctive feature of the program is its interdisciplinary approach. The course is open to all majors, allowing students to develop a research question connected to their own academic or professional interests. Topics might range from business, technology, and sustainability to history, culture, identity, inequality, and social change. This flexibility allows students to experience South Africa not simply as a destination, but as a rich setting for inquiry and comparative learning.
For Professors Thiuri and Beck, the venture represents an opportunity to connect global learning with RIT’s commitment to meaningful, transformative student experiences. As students prepare for Cape Town, they will be encouraged to approach South Africa with curiosity, intellectual rigor, and an understanding that learning abroad is as much about asking thoughtful questions as it is about encountering a new place.
The program is being developed in partnership with RIT Study Abroad. For more information, contact Professor Thiuri at pthiuri@saunders.rit.edu or Professor Beck at mzbind@rit.edu.