Mondays & Thursdays, 11:20 – 1:00 p.m.
CRN: 40966
Timothy Haase

How do thoughtful people act when information is incomplete, resources are limited, and values conflict? This seminar explores emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and civil discourse through debates, simulations, films, and collaborative projects. Students will examine how individuals and communities respond to conflict and change while developing the skills necessary for thoughtful action in an uncertain future.

Peer Facilitator

Tuesdays & Fridays, 1:45 – 3:25 p.m.
CRN:40967
Yvette Kisor

This course will take as its focus a genre that is spread across cultures and times: the fairy tale. We will focus on a number of classic fairy tales and examine their cultural variants as well as their modern adaptations. Our approach is diachronic and interdisciplinary, and we will explore fairy tales using number of theoretical approaches, including socio-cultural, structuralist, psychoanalytic, and feminist, as well as those of folklore and film studies.

Peer Facilitator

Mondays & Thursdays, 4:10 – 5:50 p.m.
CRN: 41097
Stephen Rice

Producers of American culture have long been conjuring up dreams of what machines might be able to do in the not-too-distant future. These machine dreams have sometimes traveled toward utopia: technology will soon free us from having to work; machines will be made to think and to feel and will join us as reliable companions. More often, though, these machine dreams have been machine nightmares. What happens when technology reaches beyond our ability to control it? How can we match the power of those who possess the machines we have made?

In this course we examine how technology has been imagined in various cultural forms, from fiction and film to music and the visual arts. We go back to the machine dreams of the nineteenth century and move to the present, considering how we have inherited ways of thinking about technology that need to catch up to the world today.

Peer Facilitators

Mondays & Thursdays, 4:10 – 5:50 p.m.
CRN: 41213
Lisa Williams

In this section of FYS, we will explore the music and rhythms of poetry as we seek to discover how poetry can help us understand our own lives and those around us. Why is poetry important in this present moment? How have poets grappled with the central issues of human relationships, acceptance of self, life, death, and everything in between. We will see the relationship between music and poetry as we write, critique, and even create our own poetry . Classroom discussions will focus on how poets are communicating their experiences and ideas.

Peer Facilitators