This course will provide students with the opportunity to reflect on their study abroad experiences from a number of perspectives. In particular we will focus on the challenges of cross-cultural communication and what it means to bring those experiences home. Students will actively present and explore their own time abroad, and use what they learn about their classmates’ experiences to think comparatively. The first half of the semester will focus on memory, presentation, and interpretation of the time abroad. During the second half students will focus on a specific experience, observation, or insight as the launching pad for a research project. We will explore the relationship between the personal and the academic, with the goal that each student will find a research topic and approach that works for them. In other words, some students will likely research and write on topics that emerge directly from experience, while others will be more drawn to more distanced observations. The course is framed around the relationship between your personal experiences and observations and the intellectual questions and issues that engage you, and how to manifest these through a research project.