The Curriculum

UPCOMING SALZBURG FACULTY FELLOWS:

Trevor Norton - Spring 2025

SALZ 360: A Space to Perform (LAI Cat: C)

Scott Randolph - Spring 2026

SALZ 360: Case Studies in Austrian and Central European Business Enterprise: Navigating Competitive Niches within an International Economy (LAI: OC)

REQUIRED:

GERMAN 101s, 201s, 350s INTENSIVE GERMAN 4 Units

This course will introduce you to the basic elements of the German language and grammatical structure while developing a core vocabulary of words and phrases which you may use in daily living activities in Salzburg. Your study in German will include exercises in reading, writing, listening, speaking, and even singing. Differences in learning styles, customs, and traditions between Americans, Austrians, Germans, and other European cultures will be discussed as appropriate to course content.

Students who take German 101 in Salzburg and follow up with German 102 on campus can fulfill the foreign language requirement.

SALZ 240: AUSTRIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: CONFRONTING A DIFFICULT PAST: 4 Units, LAI: H

This course introduces students to the history of 20th century Austria, its legacies, and how it is remembered in contemporary society. Emphasis will be placed on historical developments before and during the Nazi period and their impact on post-war Austria. In workshop and reflection-based classes, we will surface implications and engage in meaning-making processes. Excursions to memorial sites will introduce students to site-based learning and self-directed activities that will prepare them for their final project: a student-led tour of Salzburg, discussing their own take on Austria's Nazi past, post-war identity, and remembrance as an example of how best to confront a challenging past. 

This course can fulfill a History major elective.

SALZ 230: TRAVELERS AND CITIZENS: 3 Units, LAI: CER and TG

This course integrates the various aspects of the Salzburg Program curriculum through travel and service-learning.  On excursions, experiential assignments draw on students' studies in language, history, art and music.  Community service appointments in Salzburg and the Balkans provide an opportunity to examine institutions and customs for addressing community needs in Austria.

ELECTIVES - CHOOSE TWO

SALZ 251: ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF CENTRAL EUROPE : 3 Units , LAI: ESS

Students engage directly with visual art and its historical development in the European context, and the understanding of architecture as a reflection of the European ideal.  Emphasizes experiential learning by blending museum and site visits in Salzburg, readings and case studies, and excursions to select European cities.

This course can fulfill a Art major elective.

SALZ 360: Music and Mobility: 3 Units , LAI: OC (SPRING ONLY)

This course investigates the role of music in human mobility: in travel (imagined and real), migration, and diaspora communities. We will learn to analyze how sound and music can help construct, represent, and dispute ideas of place, identity, and belonging, from the local to the global. We will draw on live music experiences and 'sound walks' in Salzburg and Central Europe, as well as music from students' own backgrounds, to cultivate close listening and learn to hear how music is a part of the way we move through the world. 

This course may fulfill a music major elective.

SALZ 360: Geography and Sustainability in Austria (FALL 2024 ONLY)

This course offers students an introduction to human and physical geography, with a special emphasis on Austria and Central Europe. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to geography as it intersects with the economy, climate change, communication technologies, urban planning and sustainability. Experiential components include site visits within Salzburg and excursions in the local alpine region.

Salzburg 360: Grimm's Fairy Tales (FALL 2024 ONLY)

In this course students will learn about Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm's work in the 19th century Germany through a selection of fairy tales. The course will interrogate the genre "fairy tale": its origin, typical characters, settings, plots, and modern adaptations (e.g. Disney). Different media (film, music, images and text) and local excursion(s) will immerse students in the course's content.

Spring 2025 SPECIAL TOPICS COURSE: A Space to Perform: 3 to 4 units LAI Cat: C

This course will introduce students to the architecture of performance spaces in and around Salzburg.  Students will research a variety of performance spaces; sketching and taking notes of how the spaces are used and how the spaces make the students feel.  Students will be introduced to concepts of what make performance spaces work; taking into consideration how the space is used, sightlines, acoustics, lighting, and desired dramatic impact.  Students will read articles from architects and artists and will visit the archives of the Salzburg Festival to learn what makes a successful performance space.  Using this newfound knowledge, students will then use a variety of digital tools such as Photoshop, Revit and SketchUp to design their ideal performance venue for Salzburg.  The venue must work within the city and work for both an audience and performers.  Theatres are at the heart of a successful city.  Theatres are more than a place to watch a show – they are a gathering place – a community center.  How do the theatres that we visit function within the European cities that we visit?  How does this differ from our students’ hometowns?  Do the theatres reflect the community as it is now, or as it once was?  And how does the programming in these theatres change over time?  When we investigate and discuss theatres and how they are used, we are exploring more than their architecture, we are exploring their place in society and how they can, or should, reflect the community they are in.  While the spaces we will visit are, obviously, European, we can see even in this relatively small area the influence of one culture adopting and adapting other cultures into their own arts spaces.  With this knowledge, we can explore what’s next.  How do we broaden this process to make people of non-European descent also feel welcome and enriched in these spaces?  Some venues and institutions have already begun this work, and we can explore the more recent migrations through Central Europe in the past decade.

Spring 2026 SPECIAL TOPICS COURSE: Case Studies in Austrian and Central European Business Enterprise: Navigating Competitive Niches within an International Economy: 3 to 4 units LAI Cat: OC

The contemporary European business environment is complicated and diverse. European firms, by necessity, operate in both a super-national marketplace (the Eureopean Union) and globally. In many ways, European firms have far more experience navigating international borders than is the case for their competitors in the United States and elsewhere, a consequence of post-WW2 efforts that led eventually to the European Union and the Euro.

The course's instructional foundation of this course is a set of business case studies that feature Austrian or central-European firms. Some case studies will ask students examine leadership practices in disruptive business and political environments, others will provide opportunities to examine how venerable organizations such as the Weiner Staatsoper respond to challenges of digital technology and live-streaming; others will ask students to examine change management in firms that glide back and forth between for-profit and social enterprise (non-profit) structures and stakeholder goals; others will aks students to think about the challenges of small, family enterprises as they seek to expand the market in China for artisanal chocolates, another will prsent students with a deep dilemma, how does a nearly 1000-year old Austrian Benedictine monastery act when its principle source of revenue, a lumber mill specializing in high-end flooring is battered by foreign competition, yet the mill is also one of its charities - providing work and training to residents in a poorer region of the country.

MUSP 350s.01 APPLIED MUSIC (CR/NCR only) 4 Units

Music majors can elect to take this course. The music major can enrich their musical experiences in Salzburg by being tutored in their applied lessons by a member or associate of the world famous Mozarteum faculty.

The opportunity to audition for full inclusion in the Mozarteum does exist for the serious music student with appropriate language and music skills and full backing of their University. Admission into the Mozarteum is the sole province of the Mozarteum itself, and can be finalized only in Salzburg by a student satisfying the audition and exam requirements administered by the Mozarteum staff. If accepted, the student would adapt to the calendar and curriculum of the Mozarteum and such involvement would likely come at the expense of involvement in any of the field experiences of the regular Salzburg Semester program.