The University of Hawai‘i at Manoa Study Abroad Center has developed an intensive 5-week study abroad program in Buenos Aires. All participants will enroll in two courses, both taught in English.
Program Location: Buenos Aires, this complex, energetic, and seductive port city, which stretches south-to-north along the Río de la Plata, has been the gateway to Argentina for centuries. Porteños, as the multinational people of Buenos Aires are known, possess an elaborate and rich cultural identity. The lifestyle and architecture are markedly more European than any other in South America. One of the world’s finest opera houses, the Teatro Colón, flourishes here on the plains alongside the river. Porteños are intensely involved in the life and culture of their city, and they will gladly share the secrets of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires’ physical structure is a mosaic as varied and diverse as its culture, it is composed of many small places, intimate details, and tiny events and interactions, each with a slightly different shade, shape, and character. Glass-sheathed skyscrapers cast their slender shadows on 19th century Victorian houses; tango bars hazed with the piquant tang of cigar smoke face dusty, treasure-filled antique shops across the way.
www.geographia.com/argentina/buenosaires/Index.htm
Curriculum: The courses offered will enable students to analyze and comprehend Latin American and Argentine national identity and culture through the study of machismo, tango, sex and gender roles. Participants must take both courses.
Anth 315: Sex and Gender or WS 495: Selected Topics – Machos: Latin American Masculinites, 3 credits, A-F only. Instructor: Jeff Tobin. This course encourages students to think critically about the concept of machismo by reviewing a variety of ways of being manly throughout Latin America with a focus on Buenos Aires. Case studies include Octavio Paz’ classic essay on Mexican machismo and recent responses to Paz, sexual joking among working-class Mexican-American men in South Texas, same-sex sexual behavior in Nicaragua, transvestite prostitutes in Brasil, and sexual accusations traded among Argentine soccer fans.
DNCE 495: Topics in Dance: Tango, National Identity and Cultural Translations, 3 credits, A-F only. Instructor: Marta Savigliano. Introduction to Tango history, tango styles, movement analysis, and movement experience. What is Tango? Dance, music, lyrics of course, but also a philosophy, a strategy, a commodity, even a disease. This course explores the politics of popular culture, tracing tango’s travels from the brothels of Buenos Aires to the cabarets of Paris and the shako dansu clubs of Tokyo; from Hollywood screens to Finnish popular festivals to Broadway stages. Films and texts will be used to take a critical look at exoticism and auto-exoticism. Local and international struggles over tango’s meanings and representations will be analyzed and discussed including gender, sexuality, class, race, and national identity that interweaves in the making of different tango styles, tango bodies, and tango communities.
Tango studio classes (to learn tango argentino movement techniques as currently practiced in dance clubs or milongas) are an integral part of the course. Studio classes, taught by professional tango dancers, will be offered three times a week at introductory and intermediate levels. We will be attending tango clubs (at least once a week) and tango performances (at least two) as part of the requirements for the class.
Excursions take students to tango dance clubs and practice sessions, visit the National Academy of Tango, soccer games and sports bars, markets, asados, the museum and gravesite of Eva Perón, and the Plaza de Mayo (to walk with the Madres), observing transvestite prostitutes in Palermo, attending a drag queen show in a gay club, visiting a slaughterhouse, attending a kosher bbq, day in the countryside.
Program Coordination and Administration In the U.S. the program is coordinated by the UHM Study Abroad Center. Administration and oversight of the program will 
be conducted by the Study Abroad Center. In Buenos Aires, the program is administered and directed by Profs. Marta E. Savigliano and Jeffrey Tobin. Both graduates of UHM, they are prominent scholars in the anthropology of Argentina, specializing in ethnographic methods and in Latin American Studies. Prof. Savigliano’s research focuses on tango and the formation of Argentine national identity, performance and globalization, and the politics of culture. She is a Professor of Culture and Performance at UCLA and author of Tango and the Political Economy of Passion, the tango-opera “Angora Matta,” and articles on domestic and foreign representations of Argentine culture. Jeffrey Tobin is an Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at Occidental College, Los Angeles. Prof. Tobin’s research addresses masculinity as it is performed in the worlds of tango, soccer, and asado in contemporary Buenos Aires. He has published ethnographic studies of Argentine asado, soccer fans, and tango. His current research is on Buenos Aires’ Jewish community.
Program Facilities Located in an academic institute in downtown Buenos Aires, the facilities include a classroom, offices for the professors, administrative offices for the staff, a computer lab with broadband internet access, and an extensive library of books and articles on ethnographic methodology and the popular culture of Buenos Aires. Students also have access to the Library of Congress and the library of the National Institute of Anthropology.
Housing and Meals Students will be housed in a centrally located residential hotel. Breakfasts are provided. Students may use meal coupons given by the program for lunches and dinners at restaurants all over the city.
Costs The cost of the program is $3,707, which includes study abroad fee, instructional fee, library and computer lab access, supplies, shared accommodations, meals, laundry, airport transfer, subway passes, excursions, welcome and farewell dinners, health insurance, and International Student Identity Card. Single accommodation is available with a $112 supplement. Airfare is not included.
Admissions Requirements The minimum requirement is a cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale; however, students with a lower GPA may be considered in exceptional cases. Admission is selective. Immediately upon acceptance to the program, students are required to pay a non-refundable deposit of $500 to ensure a place in the program. The deposit is applied toward the total cost of the program. Note that UHM students accepted to the program are required to attend three mandatory pre-departure class sessions totaling 12 hours. Failure to attend will result in students being withdrawn from the program. Students who do not reside on O‘ahu will be contacted for a telephone orientation.
Financial Aid UHM Students: in order to receive financial aid for summer study abroad programs, please ensure that either: a) you are receiving financial aid during the spring semester, or b) that you complete the Financial Aid application during the spring semester. See www.hawaii.edu/fas for more information. Non-UHM Students: Those attending other colleges and universities during the regular school year must apply for financial aid at their home institutions.
Applications
A completed Study Abroad Center summer application, $20 application fee, and two letters of recommendation must be received by the Study Abroad Center by February 17 in order to receive consideration. Non-UHM students must also submit official transcripts from all colleges/universities attended.
Application Deadline: February 17, 2008
Further information:
UHM Study Abroad Center: 808-956-5143
Jeffery Tobin, Occidental College, tobin@oxy.edu
Marta Savigliano, UCLA, martasa@arts.ucla.edu
