The College of Humanities and Fine Arts, California State University, Chico, is offering a tour of Paris March 16–23, 2007. Can’t you just see yourself in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, on a boat on the Seine or at the Louvre during spring vacation? If you sign up before November, you’ll receive one of the books on a fun reading list as a signing bonus! The tour will include six nights in Paris (with an optional one-day excursion south to France’s Champagne region). The faculty- in-residence is Department of English professor Tracy Butts, whose specialties are American, African American, and multicultural literature. The $2,200 package includes round-trip airfare from San Francisco, airport fees, transfers, first-class hotels, buffet breakfast daily, a welcome dinner and a Seine dinner cruise; local guides for a city tour and a tour of the Left Bank; a carnet of 10 métro tickets; and the full-time services of a professional tour director. Limited space remains. Last day to sign up unless the tour fills earlier: Dec. 16, 2006.
 
For information on all upcoming trips and detailed information on the above trips, visit www.csuchico.edu/hfa/travel or call Thomasin Saxe, group director, at (530) 898-4642.

About Professor Butts--one of your Tour Directors.  Tracy Butts earned her Ph.D in English from the University of Georgia in Athens (2001). She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English at Chico State, where she teaches courses in American, African American, and multicultural literature. She writes: “Perhaps it is owing to the romance novels I read—covertly I might add—as a child or the works by American writers (black and white) that I read as a young adult and student and later as a professor, but, whatever the reason, my fascination with Europe, especially Paris, has been with me for as long as I can remember. Like Booker T. Washington and Langston Hughes, I, too, have regarded Europe as a heaven on earth, a land of dreams. As a student and professor of American literature, I enjoy reading and teaching the works of American expatriate writers, but what really fascinates me are the works of their African American peers. Texts like Langston Hughes’s The Big Sea (1940) and Gwendolyn Bennett’s “Wedding Day” (1926) afforded me bittersweet pleasures, for they fed my insatiable curiosity about Europe; yet, at the same time, they taunted me, constantly reminding me of where I had never been and seemingly would never go. I used to joke that everybody, even the fugitive slaves, had been to Europe except for me and I feared that I would never realize my dream of going abroad. However, in the summer of 2003, when I had the opportunity to study French at the Université de Pau on a Faculty International Development Award, my dream came true. There I was walking down the same streets, sipping wine at the very cafés, and sightseeing at the same monuments as had my favorite authors. I'm thrilled at the prospect of returning to Paris, exploring the haunts I visited before as well as new ones, and sharing this experience with others. In the words of Robert Frost, ‘I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.’"