Study Abroad | The Writing Seminars | Johns Hopkins University

Living abroad can be an invaluable experience in students’ development as individuals, writers, and citizens of the world. Many Writing Seminars students participate in the Hopkins Semester/Year in Scotland and the Hopkins Summer Program in Rome. Writing Seminars students have also studied across Europe and around the world. Recent destinations have included universities in Paris, Copenhagen, Bath, London, Tokyo, Madrid, Florence, Shanghai, Jerusalem, Dublin, Galway, and elsewhere.

Students interested in studying abroad should begin by making an appointment with the Global Education Office to talk about options and get a sense of how credits transfer to Hopkins. Once you have created a rough draft of the courses you hope to take at a specific university, you should reach out to our Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Katharine Noel ([email protected]), who can talk with you further about how your classes will come back towards the Writing Seminars major/ minor and sign preapproval forms.

Literature, history, philosophy, and foreign language credits taken abroad typically count towards the Writing Seminars major’s outside requirements.

Semester/Year in Scotland

Many Writing Seminars students take advantage of our partnership with the University of St Andrews to attend the Hopkins Semester/Year in Scotland. St Andrews, founded in 1413, is considered one of the leading universities in the UK. Intensive writing classes—as well as offerings in history, literature, philosophy, and language—allow students to fulfill Writing Seminars requirements while abroad. St Andrews is located in a medieval coastal town an easy train ride away from the urban resources of Edinburgh.

St. Andrew's cathedral and the old town viewed from above

two students standing on a rock in a wide, foggy meadow

Summer Program in Rome

The Rome program offers both new and experienced writers a chance to spend five weeks in Italy, making an artistic exploration of the Eternal City that inspired Keats, Shelley, Goethe, and, more recently, Jhumpa Lahiri: the city of which E.M. Forster wrote, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, “In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.”

student smiling with a book in front of the Vatican museum, with a crowd

a crowd in the dark in front of a movie projected outdoors

Program Focus

Students are welcome to work in prose, poetry, or both. Though the emphasis of this program is on the creation of new work rather than on critique and revision, students participate in a multi-genre workshop, where they will receive feedback both from their classmates and from Gabriella Fee, Moser Family Writer in Residence. Students also enroll in a second class of their choice at John Cabot University, where they can study the Italian language or take an English-language class in other subjects including literature, history, art history, and philosophy.

Throughout their time in Rome, students keep journals of observations that act as a catalyst for their creative work. They will have many opportunities to explore Rome both independently and through class excursions to such sites as the Pantheon, the Forum, the Vatican Museums, and the Villa Borghese.

All participants in the program are registered as summer students at John Cabot University and have access to housing just off campus, in the historic neighborhood of Trastevere.

a group selfie of seven students in a museum gallery with oil paintings in the background

a white statue of a woman reaching up into the air and a man holding her up

Program Prerequisites:

AS.220.105: Introduction to Fiction and Poetry I
GPA of 3.0 or higher

The 2026 Summer Program in Rome will run from May 20–June 27, 2026. For more details, please see the website of the Global Education Office.