Normandy Scholars is on hiatus for the 2025-2026 academic year. The program will return in 2026-2027.

Normandy Scholars: Global History and Memory of World War II is a selective interdisciplinary program open to undergraduate students from all majors at the University of Tennessee. The goal is to study the legacies of World War II and other conflicts through the lens of memory studies, a discipline that examines how social, cultural, political, and technological shifts affect the ways societies react to and commemorate past conflicts in their national histories. The program includes a 3-hour Spring semester seminar class and a May mini-session study-abroad trip to relevant sites in Europe. All students receive a scholarship to help cover the cost of the mini-session study tour.

Why “Normandy Scholars”?

The beaches of Normandy are an enduring icon of World War II. They exemplify how memory becomes linked to places and sites, as well as how those links change over time. Normandy Scholars participants venture beyond the beach to discover sites of memory related to WWII across Europe. But our program name recalls the urgent questions that those beaches still represent: How do we remember the Second World War? What has been forgotten? And what do we still have to learn?

Want to be a part of Normandy Scholars in 2026-2027? Applications will open in Fall 2026, with a deadline likely in late September. Please contact the Executive Director, Matthew Brauer, with any questions.

In the meantime, catch up with our recent cohorts’ experiences in Poland, Germany, and Czechia in 2025 on our Instagram (@utk_normandyscholars) and in France and Morocco in 2024 on our study abroad blog.