How do we maintain our cultural heritage as our society changes? And how do we decide what of our culture we ought to keep, and what we can lose? This AIAD seeks to answer questions such as these by learning about a particular period in British history that still affects us today by immersing ourselves in significant places throughout Britain and through a study of the period’s literature.

This 10 day AIAD will take a literary and historical journey through the Viking era of the Medieval Ages, from the perspective of the Scandinavians and their settlement of Iceland. Nationality, society, religion, environment and war will be examined from a combination of reading Crawford’s translation of the Poetic Edda, museums, tours and personal interactions in Iceland.

During this academic trip, the cadets examined how authors of speculative fiction engaged with, depicted, and represented the philosophy, ideology, and history of their respective cultural settings, often in service of creating a larger sense of national identity. The specific focus of this trip was the 20th century from the end of World War I, when the Czech and Slovak people first gained their independence as a country, to the fall of the Soviet Union, which was the point where the nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia emerge as the independent countries that they are today. Through a process that involved daily seminar-style discussions, intensive historical and literary reading, literary analysis, critical and creative writing, and cultural engagement with the city of Prague, the cadets explored how literature, culture, and history interact to produce a sense of national identity and shape civic notions of morality.