HON 195: Icelandic Landscapes: Creating Narratives Through Language and Science (3 credits)
SUMMER TRAVEL COURSE
Proposed Travel dates: June 5 – June 13, 2026
Students will be expected to attend zoom classes prior to departure on May 26th, May 28th & June 2nd
Requirements: Honors Minor
This interdisciplinary study abroad course invites students to explore Iceland’s extraordinary and
varied environment through the integrated practices of scientific investigation and creative inquiry.
Co-taught by a creative writer and an oceanographer, the course treats environmental understanding as something produced not only through data and measurement, but also through attention, imagination, narrative, and form. Students will examine how Iceland’s landscapes—from glaciers to fjords to the ocean, from rifted landscapes to volcanoes to geothermal springs—have been shaped by geology, climate, and human intervention, and how those changes have been observed, interpreted, and represented over time. Texts that bring together scientific writing, literary nonfiction, and poetry will serve as models for different ways of thinking and writing about the natural world and will be read alongside scientific perspectives on Iceland’s dynamic environment.
Through a range of creative practices in science and humanities, including drawing, writing, and journaling, as well as observing, measuring, graphing, students will be encouraged to place literary, historical, and scientific accounts of landscape in conversation with one another, and to compare those perspectives with their own firsthand observations during travel. This course is accessible to students of all disciplines.
Faculty
Bernadette Esposito, MFA, Honors Writing Instructor, bernadette.esposito@maine.edu
Bernadette Esposito is an award-winning writer and educator with an MFA from the University of Iowa. Her work emphasizes creative writing as a form of critical inquiry with particular attention to nonfiction and hybrid forms such as lyric essay, collage, and archival research-based writing. A former fellow at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Ucross, she is completing her first book, Autobiography of a Plane Crash, and has taught widely in university, community, and public-engagement settings. She teaches in the Honors Program at USM and in the Critical Media Practices Department at University of Colorado Boulder.
Collin Roesler is a Professor in Bowdoin College’s Department of Earth and Oceanographic Science. She is an oceanographer whose work has taken her to all the oceans, including both polar regions and their icy seas. Her research specialty focuses on observing and explaining the response of ocean ecosystems to environmental forcing. She uses optical sensors deployed on ships, moorings, and satellites to detect ecological and physiological characteristics of phytoplankton, the Ocean’s single-celled photosynthetic organisms. Her work focuses on the changing composition and services of phytoplankton communities across time scales of hours to decades, spatial scales of estuaries to ocean basins, and from tropical to the polar latitudes. Her observational work in the ocean is the basis for algorithms for detecting ocean ecosystems from current and future satellite-based sensors.
Eligibility
All students who have declared the USM Honors minor are invited to apply. Additionally, students should have a valid passport (with an expiration date no earlier than 6 months after expected return to US) or be in the process of applying for a passport.
Tuition and Fees
More information on the the program fee will be available shortly, but the cost is estimated to be approximately $1100. Please check back for more information. Tuition and fees will be charged at the in-state rate ($1215.00) and are in addition to the program fee. All participants on USM travel programs receive the in-state tuition rate regardless of residency.
Application
The application deadline is Friday, March 6th, 2026.
A complete application includes all of the following:
- Submit the program application form
- We recommend looking over the application before completing it so you have all parts ready, as unfortunately you cannot save as you go.
- A letter of recommendation from a faculty member or academic advisor
- Here is the link you can share with faculty/staff to complete a recommendation on your behalf: Online Recommendation for Travel Program
- Copy of academic transcript
- Information regarding requesting a transcript can be found here (It’s probably easiest to either follow the steps for “Electronic Delivery” or “Unofficial Transcript via Classic MaineStreet” and either way, send to Emily Zider (emily.zider@maine.edu)
Once the application committee has reviewed applications, you will be notified of acceptance via email. At that time, all students accepted to the program will be asked to submit a $300 nonrefundable deposit and will be enrolled in the course in MaineStreet by a USM staff member.