Really, you do. Here's Professor Christopher Hodson (Assistant Professor, Department of History) to tell you why:
Believe me, I could go on about this.
Having spent two years in northern France as a missionary and many subsequent months doing research, teaching, or traveling elsewhere in the country, I’m likely capable of sustaining a conversation about the wonders of la belle patrie until the glorious resurrection of our bodies. But instead, I’ll restrict myself to telling you about three places – places I love, and places you’ll go should you make the (truly excellent) decision to come with me on study abroad next fall.
1. Sainte-Chapelle: Paris’s hidden gem. If Notre Dame makes your knees quake, you’ll hit the floor here – which is OK, because it’s a really cool floor. Built in the mid-thirteenth century to house crusader relics purchased by Louis IX, Sainte-Chapelle is now surrounded by drab nineteenth-century judicial buildings. But the stained-glass, which somehow seems to compose all of the chapel’s walls, puts us moderns back in the Capetians’ heyday like no monument anywhere.
2. German Military Cemetery, La Cambe, Normandy: Not far from the better-known American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer are buried 21,000 German soldiers who died in the D-Day invasion of 1944. This may be the strangest feeling place on the planet. Black stone crosses top a central mound; grave markers are low and dark. Reflect here on evil, war, and the ordinary people caught up in them both.
3. Le Palais des Papes, Avignon: In the fourteenth century, it was good to be the pope – or one of the popes, anyway. You got to live in a beautiful city on the Rhône (on which sat a bridge, and yes, l’on y danse), in the biggest Gothic building ever, the lavender-washed hills of Provence within smelling distance. And in any case, Rome smelled funny and had gangs. Then and now, no better place than Avignon to experience the medieval melding of the sacred and the profane.
I hope you’ll consider applying to the Fall 2013 program. From Paris to the Mediterranean, it’ll be the experience of a lifetime. I’m eager to talk it over with you, and to answer any questions you have. E-mail me at chris_hodson@byu.edu or stop by my office, 2125 JFSB.
