Spring 2015 First Year Seminar Courses

Title & Instructor	Section	Time/Days	Description
Utopias Past and Present Matt Garite	01	MWF 10:40AM - 11:30AM	There is plenty of evidence today—from Zuccotti Park and Tahrir Square to the streets of Ferguson and beyond—suggesting that people, and youth in particular, are actively dreaming of better futures—and in some cases, demanding alternatives. Is democracy working the way it should? Is capitalism? What would we see if we let ourselves desire, dream about, feel, and imagine a different society? Does it do us any good to dream like that? What would a “better” society even look like? And how can we translate visions of this sort into pragmatic political strategy? This is the territory we will explore in this course using literary and non-fiction texts from Thomas More's Utopia to contemporary social theory.
	02	MWF 2:00PM - 2:50PM
Detective Fiction and the Quest for Knowledge Dr. Matthew Carlson	03	TTH 1:35PM - 2:50PM	In this course, we will resist the notion that detective stories are merely page-turners or guilty pleasures by posing a fundamental question that lies at the root of all mysteries: What social and psychological forces drive the desire to know? In pursuit of this “big question,” we will have to address several other questions that help us analyze the genre’s enduring appeal and place it in its historical, sociological, cultural, and literary contexts: When did the detective story originate and how has it evolved? Why do most mysteries revolve around the crime of murder? How do famous literary detectives both reflect and challenge the values of the societies in which they work? How do the particular plot devices of these stories help us comprehend the basic narrative structure of concealment and revelation? The syllabus will include works by the following authors (among others): Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dashiell Hammett. Course assignments will also invite students to explore the genre through television series and films such as the BBC’s Sherlock and Christopher Nolan’s Memento.
	04	TTH 11:40AM - 12:55PM
Final Girl: American Horror and Gender Matthew Fiander	05	MW 4:50PM - 6:05PM	Carol J Clover coined the term "The Final Girl" in reference to the lone female character left at the end of a horror film to confront the killer, to best him, to survive and, often, to tell the story herself. She is, in one way, a vision of female defiance against a particularly violent male power. However, she and so many other elements in horror represent a much more complex and interesting exploration of gender within the horror genre. This class will examine classic horror films to look at what they reveal both of their depiction of gender and what it might reflect about societal concerns, confusions, and complexities about gender roles, sexuality, femininity and masculinity.
Tyrants, Dictators, and Democrats Sam Whitt	06	MWF 10:40AM - 11:40AM	How do political leaders come to power, exercise their will, and establish their historical legacies across different types of societies? This course uses academic research, biographies, and film portrayals of how leaders make difficult decisions, as well as a hands-on simulation of political leadership in response to major crises, to analyze various patterns and techniques of social control and effective leadership. We will address questions such as why good leaders frequently make irrational decisions, why many authoritarians and tyrants are beloved by their citizens, and why heads of democracies in certain situations are more likely than other leaders to start wars.
	07	MWF 2:00PM - 3:00PM
Sport and Collective Identity Adam Winkel	08	TTH 3:30PM - 5:10PM	By identifying as a fan of a particular sports team, an individual enters a community that shares certain values that transcend sportsmanship and games. This course seeks to question the nature of those values and the ways in which they affect individual, collective, and national identities. Students will read texts related to nationalism and community as a way to critically approach the concept of a “nation of fans.” The course will focus especially on professional and national sports teams in the United States and in Spain. By the end of the course, the first-year student will be better equipped to ask and answer the big question of how collective identity—as expressed through national and professional sports teams—reflects and informs personal identity.
Where Color Matters: Race and Identity in the Caribbean Hayden Carron	09	MW 12:05PM - 1:45PM	Since the sixteenth century the Caribbean region has been historically a place of encounter for very diverse cultures such as European conquistadores, African slaves, native population, Asian and Arabic immigrants. This collage of cultures has created a special manner to portrait the race and how it affects the conception of the society’s identity. In this course students will explore the concepts of race and identity in the Spanish Caribbean, analyzing the implications of racial diversity regarding its influence in the establishment of a national identity. The course will present the complexity of each topic by introducing questions such as how skin color determines the individuals’ position in society? Does race entail privileges? Can we speak of a Caribbean Identity today and what elements does it include?
Mathematics and Music Jenny Fuselier	11	TTH 8:00AM - 9:15AM	In this course, we aim to discover the beauty in how math and music interact, and ask how both can be part science, part art. A main focus of the course will be the fascinating relationship between musical structure and a branch of mathematics called group theory. For example, we will discover that the musical variation techniques of transposition, retrograde, and inversion form a mathematical group. We will study both the mathematical properties of the group and composers, such as Arnold Schoenberg and Milton Babbit, who brilliantly exploited mathematical structure in their compositions. For a more classical example, we will study the relationship between permutation groups and change ringing, the 17th century art of ringing tower bells according to systematically changing patterns. All musical and mathematical concepts and notation will be developed as needed.
	12	TTH 9:45AM - 11:00AM
Chance, Data, and Decision Making Lisa Carnell	13	TTH 1:35PM - 2:50PM	This course focuses on how notions of chance and data impact decisions in everyday life and in scientific research. Using real-life applications of probability and statistics as our focus, we will develop concepts in probability and statistics to the extent necessary to understand the applications. The goal is to make students better able to come to their own conclusions about news stories involving chance and data issues. We will investigate the cognitive biases that impact judgments made under uncertainty. We will see how statistics has impacted scientific research over time, and we will also examine instances where scientific research has impacted public policies and everyday life in both positive and negative ways.
	14	TTH 3:30PM - 4:45PM
China under Mao Zedong Peng Deng	15	TTH 3:30PM - 5:10PM	This freshman seminar takes the transformation of Chinese society and culture during the Maoist era as the focus of study. It not only surveys the broad social, political, and cultural trends between 1949 and 1976, but also looks into the lives of individual Chinese citizens in this turbulent period. Reading materials in this class, including history, memoirs and fiction, will help students understand the complex mechanism of a radical revolution. The instructor will also use his personal experiences in Mao’s China to illustrate the meaning and impact of Chinese communism.
The Military History of Middle Earth Frederick Schneid	16	MW 3:25PM - 5:05PM	J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings on Middle Earth began while he was recovering in a military hospital in France in 1917. His first story, “The Fall of Gondolin” reflected his immediate experience on the Western Front in WWI. After the war he produced other short stories, eventually publishing The Hobbit in 1936. His epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was written after the Second World War. Tolkien created a world with mythical creatures, languages and histories that in many ways paralleled his personal experience and his perceptions of contemporary conflicts. He combined his observations with his love of Anglo-Saxon, Old English and Norse legends to produce a world with its own vibrant history. This course will explore the relationship between Tolkien’s personal experiences in a world war, and living through a second, and how that affected the development of the themes, fictional states, characters and their actions during the wars of the First, Second and Third Ages of Middle Earth. Furthermore, the course will explore how Tolkien used the histories and myths of a post-Roman and pre-medieval Europe to develop a complex world and the epic wars fought.
Plants: Painting, Propagating, and Percolating Dr. Nicole Hughes	17	TTH 9:45AM - 11:25AM	This course takes a Renaissance approach to plant biology, combining classical botany with the creative and cultural arts to help students cultivate a deep, holistic appreciation for the natural world. Lessons in plant and fungal biology will be interwoven with methods for gardening and plant propagation, cooking, folk medicine, and botanical illustration. Students will learn how to identify local plants and fungi, examine botanically-themed works of art and literature, and practice expressing their own perception of the natural world through creative writing and the visual arts. Scientific inquiry will range in scale from microscopic exploration of leaf anatomy to the study of plant community ecology and ecosystem processes.
From Disease to Medicine: The Forces that Drive the Search for Novel Therapeutics Dr. V. McNeil Coffield	18	MW 2:00PM - 3:10PM	The course is designed for students interested in discussing and debating the Big Question of “Why is a treatment pursued for one disease, while another disease remains neglected?” Class discussions and assignments will focus on the economic forces behind the funding of medical research and ultimately the search for novel therapeutics. Over the course of the semester we will cover a range of topics including the history of medicine, political influences, societal pressures, and the economics of medical research. The course will also include several open discussions with individuals representing various roles in medical research and drug development.
What is Love? A Multidisciplinary Exploration of an Ambiguous Human Emotion Paul Namaste	19	MWF 7:50AM - 9:00AM	“What is love?” For thousands of years, human beings have been writing about what in English we refer to as “love.” Love has been referred to as an act of endless forgiveness, as a single soul inhabiting two bodies, immortality, and life itself. However, it has also been considered blind, a form of suffering, and a serious mental disease. How can something that has received so much attention over the course of human history be simultaneously so comforting and so confusing? Using original works from philosophy, religion, literature, art, anthropology, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies, the main focus of the course is to have students explore the numerous ways that humans have defined and enacted love throughout history, paying particular attention to how social and cultural factors shape and are shaped by these definitions and expressions.
Financial Crises: This Time is NOT Different! Peter Summers	20	MWF 3:25PM - 4:35PM	In 2008, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s rocked the world economy. This episode was the latest in a string of similar world crises that have occurred for centuries. This course focuses on four types of financial crises and why they are usually “contagious” in various ways; examines why they are more severe than other periods of economic weakness and result in long, painful recoveries; and considers why, prior to many crisis episodes, people were mistakenly convinced that “this time is different.” Finally, we’ll see what lessons have been learned (or not) that could be helpful in avoiding future crises.
	21	MW 12:05PM - 1:45PM
What is Conscience? Dr. Amy MacArthur	22	MW 12:05PM - 1:35PM	Nearly everyone believes that we have a conscience, and it is frequently appealed to in the fields of philosophy, religion, psychology, and political theory. Upon reflection, however, what is meant by "conscience" is not so clear. There are two main aims of this course. The first is to explore and critically examine the various conceptions of conscience that have been proposed by the great thinkers in the western philosophical and religious traditions. The second aim is to recognize the ways in which questions such as "What is conscience?" are indeed enduring questions that continue to demand reflection and reconsideration. The means by which these aims will be achieved are by closely reading primary sources, writing a number of critical papers, and completing a capstone project where students will demonstrate the application and relevance of the issues of the course to a topic, event, or movement in recent history.
Science Fiction & Philosophy Matthew Brophy	23	TTH 9:45AM - 11:25AM	Stimulating understanding and wonder of various philosophical questions, this course investigates fundamental philosophical questions in a colorful way. For instance, venerable Cartesian questions regarding the nature of reality will be explored through the lens of Matrix. Descartes question, “How can we know we’re not dreaming?” will be considered through the recent film Inception. The problem of Other Minds will be illustrated through talking through advanced “Chatterbots” that mimic the Turing Test, while also illustrating Searle’s Chinese Room Argument.
	24	TTH 1:35PM - 3:10PM
Theories of Comedy Clinton Corcoran	25	MWF 8:00AM - 9:00AM	What makes something funny? Is there a serious purpose to comedy? Do the plots of comedies and the structure of jokes share a similar form? This first-year seminar sets out to answer these questions by exploring both ancient and contemporary theories of comedy. The course is designed to have students apply comic theories to classic and contemporary dramas (Aristophanes, Plato, Shakespeare, The Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Colbert, etc.) and to examine the nature of comic actions.
The Neverland Variations: Adapting Children's Literary Classics Across Genre, Story, and Culture Thomas Albritton	26	TTH 9:45AM - 11:45AM	This course will focus on literary origins and stage/screen adaptations of selections from British Children’s Literature. The analysis will be introduced and modeled via a close study of J.M. Barrie’s novel and stage play, Peter Pan, beginning with the original literary works, and then examining how the works’ reconceptualizations for screen add to or otherwise modify the original texts, reflecting the changing times, definitions and purposes of storytelling, and imagined audiences for whom the variations were produced. In a briefer model, we will study Lewis Carroll’s, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Finally, students will choose another literary work—options listed later in this syllabus—to create their own individual analysis project.
Family in the Performing Arts Ryan Hemsoth	27	MWF 9:15AM - 10:25AM	What do you imagine when you think of your family? What are the images and ideals that come to mind? Where do these ideas take root and what forces shape our understanding of what family is and what makes a “successful” family? How have those representations changed over time and what did those changes reflect in society? This class will attempt to answer those questions by in-depth discussion of family as it is represented on the stage and screen. Through the study of various theatre and film works, students will discover what shapes our opinions about modern and historical family dynamics and how the various members of families are represented in the performing arts.
An Exploration of Dress: Clothing Throughout Historys Gay Hensley	28	MWF 10:40AM - 11:50AM	The student will learn to see clothing as more than an aesthetic statement and that clothing is a clear reflection of society during a particular time period. The course will explore various clothing styles and images throughout history and identify the political, economic, religious and social influences that impacted the development of each look. Students will explore, research and study fashion throughout history until modern times. Course objectives will be met by reading the text, participating in discussions and engaging in creative projects that include; making a collage, keeping a visual journal and designing costumes for a play.
Love & Hate in Cyberspace Sadie Leder-Elder	29	TTH 7:50AM - 9:30AM	This course examines the influence of technology on romantic relationships, specifically exploring how romantic life has been shaped by electronic and/or computer-mediated methods (e-mail, Facebook, texting, etc). The class is designed to draw primarily from theories and research in psychology. However, we will touch on a number of other disciplines, including communication and sociology, to help explore the broader themes of technology and interpersonal life. Topics include attraction, communication processes, impression formation, and relationship maintenance. We will also examine negative behaviors like cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying. Students will be asked to reflect on how the dynamics of face-to-face relationships are both similar and distinct from electronically-mediated relationships.
	30	TTH 9:45AM - 11:25AM
From Red House to Our House: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Great Britain and the U.S. Brandon Jones	31	MWF 2:00PM - 3:10PM	Do you like Frank Lloyd Wright leaded windows, own a knock-off Tiffany lamp, have a favorite recliner, live in a bungalow‹old or new, carry a Vera Bradley backpack, or shop at IKEA? If so, you are experiencing the enduring and continually evolving impact that the Arts and Crafts Movement has on our lives. More than just a style, the A & C is also about aesthetic values, truth to materials, and the impact of your surroundings on the type of life you live. This seminar investigates the origins and evolution of the Arts and Crafts Movement from its beginnings as an small aesthetic protest by William Morris in England in the 1860's to its spread across Europe and the U.S., to its mainstream absorption into today's interiors and architectural styles. Morris' credo: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful," is great advice even today. 4 credit hours.
Talking About Freedom: Civil Rights, Constitutional Culture and the First Amendment Dean C. Smith	32	MW 12:05PM - 1:45PM	This course is also about race relations or, more specifically, how the struggle for black civil rights can act as a metaphor or model for anyone yearning to be free. Using the story of race relations in America as an organizing narrative, this course is intended to shed light on the larger story of America in surprising ways. Every significant juncture in the evolution of Constitutional law in America was triggered directly or indirectly by events related to race. And it is not judges on the bench but people working outside the courts – from politicians in Washington to activists at the local level, from lobbyists and business groups to journalists and legal scholars – who drive change in constitutional law. They are the non-judicial actors who shape and re-shape America’s ever-evolving constitutional culture. In what ways, then, is America’s system as a constitutional democracy crucially dependent upon the First Amendment?
Rhetoric, Totalitarianism and The Hunger Games Linda Gretton	33	TTH 3:30PM - 5:10PM	Using Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy to explore themes of power and resistance in a totalitarian state, this course analyzes how tyrants and their opponents each use persuasion, literary tropes, and symbolism to communicate their beliefs. We employ Aristotle’s Rhetoric and selected writings by Kenneth Burke, Michel Foucault, Gloria Anzaldua and others to introduce notions of cultural borders and Otherness. Expect to develop a broader understanding of how language has been used throughout history as a tool to incite, inspire and instill fear, and appreciate how study of rhetoric continues to be essential for freethinkers today.
Pulp Fiction and Film Noir in American History Michael Kennedy	34	MW 3:30PM - 5:10PM	Students will read and discuss American pulp fiction from approximately 1900 through the 1950s. The emphases will be on the concept of American individualism within the context of modernization and internationalism as well as the development of an American character within the realms of Popular Culture. There will be discussions on how the development of pulp fiction fits into both the expansion of leisure time in American society and glorifies action, adventure and individualism. Film Noir will be discussed through both its connections to early German psychological/horror films and French Grand Guignol AND its natural developments from the subject matter of pulp fiction in America. The "Big Questions" of the course are: 1) How does media impact socio-cultural development and how do both dominant and subordinate cultures affect media; 2) In what ways do media affect and/or reflect cultural development?
We, the Jury: Truth-Finding in Criminal Trials Scott Ingram	35	TTH 9:45AM - 11:25AM	How do we decide if someone has committed a crime? How do we know what happened? How do we determine what happened? In the United States, we use law and courts to answer those questions. This course examines how we determine truth through criminal trials by looking at several historical cases including George Zimmerman, the Kennedy Assassination, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Lincoln Assassination. Through these cases we will explore how law determines truth through trials. This course is designed for those interested in law school, criminal justice and/or history.
Bob Dylan's Americas William Carpenter	36	TTH 3:25PM - 5:05PM	This course will analyze the music of Bob Dylan from the years 1962-1966, paying attention to the relationships among art, culture, and politics. At the heart of the course is this question: What is the role of the pop star in American life? Dylan's life and lyrics will take center stage, of course, and we'll place them in conversation with popular literature, art, and criticism from the same time period. Students will build skills related to textual analysis and creative problem solving.
The Reel Woman: How Does Music Portray Women in Film? Laura Stevens	37	TTH 1:35PM - 3:15PM	This course investigates how music impacts the portrayal of women in film from the earliest days of Silent Films to present day motion pictures. Students will be introduced to the basic elements of music and narrative film to gain an appreciation of the combined artistic effects of the two forms. Topics discussed include musical concepts and terminology, “hearing” music, the implications of feminine musical stereotypes, the use of music to define sexuality, and the roll of music to define female characters in animation. This course will view scenes and excerpts from many films as well as feature-length movies both in and out of class.
FYS: The Music of the Civil Rights Era Danny Frye	38	MWF 10:40AM - 11:50AM	The purpose of FYS: The Music of the Civil Rights Movement is to teach students about the music essential to the Civil Rights Movement, the role that music played in advancing the movement, and the relationships that existed between the text of the music and the key issues within the movement. Students will learn the history, use, and adaptations of the most popular songs that were essential to the Civil Rights Movement and be able to discuss the role music played in the live of those involved in the movement. Students will also gain a greater understanding and appreciation for the relationship that existed between the music and the movement and in what ways the music developed into current popular genres today.
Speaking of Sex Angela Bauer and Sean Larsen	39	MW 2:00PM - 3:40PM	This interdisciplinary First Year Seminar will explore the ways in which society’s binary views on sex and gender have been influenced by scientific, medical and religious texts. It will examine how biologists and Christian intellectuals have spoken about gender and sexuality in various ways through history, with special attention to modern reification of sexuality and gender in a rigidly fixed binary of male and female. The possibility that sex and gender exist on a continuum (ranging from masculine to feminine), and how that might change contemporary language, description, and approaches to non-typical gender and sexual expression, will be explored through student-centered analysis and discussion of primary scientific, medical and religious texts.