AUP Students Travel to Fes, Morocco

For over ten years now our University has been sending students to study in the ancient city of Fes, Morocco as part of our Cultural Program Study Trips. Our students travel to Fes to examine globalization and its impact on a traditional society and its systems of communication. While in Fes, our students are able to see firsthand how the Fes authorities are using festivals to encourage tourism and brand the city.

This year, our students were able to experience the Fes Culinary Festival and be honored guests to a number of events. This year’s theme was “health and wisdom.” One night, students enjoyed a seven-course fusion of Arab-Moroccan and Mexican cuisine, while for a weekend lunch, the cuisine of the indigenous culture of Morocco, the Amazigh, was paired with the haute-cuisine of France in the rolling springtime countryside just outside of Fes. While taking part in the festival, students explored how these festivals boost the tourism of Fes and help to brand the city.

Erin Strine, a Master’s in Global Communications student, found the lessons learned from her coursework brought to life in the old medina. “In connection with our Global Communications course, we were tasked with thinking critically and recognizing the effects of globalization in Fes. For example, seeing shops in the medina sell Western “luxury” brands or Western food and drink brands like Coca Cola and Pringles. We even sat down for lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was playing the music of a Swedish DJ in the middle of the Fes medina. Signs of an increasingly globalized world were everywhere.”

Our students also spent five days exploring the oldest parts of Fes and were able to visit holy places of worship that are normally only reserved for practicing Muslims. They spent one morning inside the Al-Karaouine Mosque and University complex in frank discussion with the Imam and learned how the unique history of Al-Karaouine is intertwined with the history of Fes as well as how Al-Karaouine serves the community today, not only as a religious institution, but also as a university. In fact, Al-Karaouine, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, is recognized by UNESCO as the world’s oldest university.

For the first time in the history of this particular study trip, students were able to go behind guarded doors and explore the ancient waterways of Fes. They discovered how the city was built according to a system of waterways and natural springs and how this basic source has been integral to the development of the city. Though the original city plumbing worked for over 1,000 years, just a few decades ago it underwent a modernization process. Students could see how this modernization positively and, perhaps surprisingly, negatively affected the city’s water system. This example was one of the many where students were able to see firsthand the impact of development in Fes.

Students in the Global Communications class were also assigned an ethnographic participation observation. They were challenged to visit a tourist site that accommodates foreign tourists but also remained somehow "authentic" and promoted co-existence between tourists and locals, a place of touristic interest that also functions as a public space. “My group visited the Madrasa Bou Inania, a 14th century Koranic school in the Fes medina that is open to the public and one of the more popular tourist attractions in the medina, though it’s still a functioning prayer space and much-used by the locals,” Strine says. “We recorded detailed notes on two occasions. We then took these notes and created a presentation that we showed to our class after we returned to Paris. In the presentation, we reviewed the study's objectives and methods we used in the participant observation, its context, our findings, and the conclusions we came to after the experience.”

As always, students stayed with local families and were encouraged to engage with the culture in more personal ways than are afforded to most. These cross-cultural interactions provided students with new ways in which to understand the world and new friendships. Gabrielle Brown, another Master’s student in the Global Communication program, says: “It was such a warm, welcoming community and Fes was eye-opening in so many ways. This has been one of the most profound educational experiences I have ever had.”

Founded in 808 and located in the heart of Morocco, Fes is often called “the best preserved medieval city” in North Africa. It is often referred to as Morocco’s “spiritual capital” and is both a magnet for pilgrims from sub-Saharan Africa and a major draw for tourists in search of cultural immersion. In the last few years, it has seen major growth in the tourism industry with initiatives funded by the Moroccan government, including a series of festivals and a new terminal at the Fes airport which are helping to expand the tourism industry.

AUP’s Cultural Program Study Trips are led by our faculty members to closely complement a student’s academic experience. There are over 30 trips offered throughout the year to all students. These trips range from immersive experiences in Fes studying communication and branding strategies to contemporary world literature trips to the Frankfurt Book Fair, advertising and branding course trips to London, environmental sciences trips to Sweden and many, many more.