Inter-disciplinary Travel-Study
Summer Program in the USA
THE HSNY METHOD
Our aim at HSNY is to give you a direct, firsthand experience of NYC. Trips illuminate classes, just as classes help students to connect with what we see on trips. Our method is comparative. For example, students compare what Thomas Wolfe has written about Calder’s whimsical circus sculptures, with their own view of these works on display at the Whitney Museum. Or they read part of Hart Crane’s famous poem To Brooklyn Bridge in a morning class and then walk across the bridge and into Manhattan that same evening.
Students talk about, think about, write about (and dream about!) NYC in English and keep a notebook or sketchbook in which they record their impressions. Guides speak in English as much as possible, whether they are park rangers describing the American concept of a park as opposed to the European one, or a New York architect talking about the wit of Grand Central Station’s beaux art ornamentation, and students’ listening skills improve. (Don’t worry, if your English is rudimentary, a staff member or student translator-for-a-day will make sure you understand everything.)
Every afternoon, students and staff exchange their impressions (in English!) of what they’ve seen and particularly liked that day, and students begin to have real English conversations. (Desperate students are allowed to speak in Italian, but must memorize at least one of their sentences in English each day.) New York full-immersion… slowly students begin to make the city – and the language – their own.
THE CLASSES
The English Language English 1: intensive introduction to grammar,
conversation, and composition skills. Students
also read simple passages every day about NYC. English 2: review of the more difficult points of
English grammar, frequent conversation and
composition exercises, readings in poetry,
from Shakespeare to John Ashbery
(and it all connects!).
NYC and the Contemporary
A New York Itinerary: milestones of modern art in the great NY museums. Course concentrates particularly on paintings and sculptures in the MOMA and the Whitney Museums and puts contemporary art in its historical context. Some parallels with architecture in and around the city.
New York Impressions
Students and staff exchange their New York impressions. Each student writes a brief composition (which staff help them to correct and make more idiomatic) about what they liked most
that day and why. Then students read their compositions out loud to the rest of the class.
Where we are: Trip Prep
Students read a wide variety of short passages -- art historians & historians, painters & architects –
about what we are going to see that day. Students work
together in small groups of two or three and
help each other to improve their translation
skills.
THE TRIPS
Trips are an essential part of the HSNY experience. From the Skyscraper Museum to Frank Lloyd Wright’s wonderful Guggenheim, from the whimsical Flatiron Building to Central Park, the city’s green piazza... all of New York City is our classroom. Slowly, this great metropolis, and international capital of the contemporary, begins to seem like home. Please see below for our day-by-day HSNY itinerary.
Our aim at HSNY is to give you a direct, firsthand experience of NYC. Trips illuminate classes, just as classes help students to connect with what we see on trips. Our method is comparative. For example, students compare what Thomas Wolfe has written about Calder’s whimsical circus sculptures, with their own view of these works on display at the Whitney Museum. Or they read part of Hart Crane’s famous poem To Brooklyn Bridge in a morning class and then walk across the bridge and into Manhattan that same evening. 
