It’s an afternoon in late January and a Houghton student is standing in the John Ritblat Gallery in the British Library in London, England. The room is dimly lit to preserve the items contained within, and the patrons spread throughout speak in low tones. In the center of the gallery, sealed in a glass case, are documents from the mid sixteenth century to the very earliest years of the seventeenth. The student has been assigned to study these documents, one of which was a letter handwritten by Queen Elizabeth I of England, to her designated successor James VI of Scotland in 1603, over four hundred years ago.
This is what it is like to be a part of the Houghton Honors in London program. London, England is so steeped in history it is nigh impossible to walk five minutes in any direction without running across something of significance. The architecture of the city is a medley of styles from throughout the centuries, from medieval churches that have survived for a thousand years, to the towering Shard (constructed from 2009 to 2012) and everything in between. Scattered throughout are museums, each home to hundreds of painstakingly preserved works of art and artifacts from all eras of human history.
It is for this reason that one of the Houghton Honors programs has chosen this city in which to study the development of Western Society. It is one of the only places on earth that so much history can be viewed in such proximity and ease, and this makes it ideal for the kind of program that is Honors in London.
For those unfamiliar, Honors in London is one of two liberal arts–focused Honors programs here at Houghton, in which a group of a little more than twenty freshman are flown across the ocean to spend their second semester of college in London. At breakneck pace they make their way from the Reformation to the present day over the course of twelve weeks of study (with about one total week of break throughout). Each week covers a specific era and theme that the students engage with directly through art, literary works, and a sampling of music, all of which culminate in a paper that synthesized everything they studied that week into a five-page essay.
Is it as grueling as that sounds? Oh yes. Is it worth it? Most definitely.
To be confronted with history so intimately was an experience unlike anything else. To be able to read William Wordsworth’s “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” and then stand on that very same bridge to watch the sunrise (or at the very least attempt to: London is a very cloudy city) is surreal, just like looking down at a page of paper and knowing that it was handwritten by Leonardo da Vinci, Jane Austen, or Queen Elizabeth I of England. The Honors in London program is full of such moments, little encounters with the past that radically reshape the way its students view the world. It is a far more personal study of art, of history, of philosophy, and of science the likes of which cannot be replicated in a traditional classroom—the city is the classroom, and all western history is the teacher. And it is awesome.