扒哥吃瓜

How is the human body a powerful tool of self-expression and an extension of your intellectual and creative self? This course will challenge you to integrate your intellectual, physical, and emotional responses to the world around you by using your unique body as a powerful medium to express what words sometimes cannot. In a constantly changing world, nurturing creativity and experimentation is integral to the development of a mind that has the ability to produce innovative ideas and to fearlessly forge into unknown territories. We will transform our ideas, discussions, and individual and group research into impactful performance pieces. Movement skills will be developed and practiced through improvised and structured studio experimentation. Prior movement/dance experience is not necessary for this course. Everyone has the capacity to fulfill their creative potential and discover the power of one鈥檚 physical and creative voice.

Linda Garofalo

This course focuses on the art and practice of digital storytelling鈥攃ombining narrative with multimedia tools such as video, audio, images, and web platforms. Students will explore the principles of compelling storytelling, learn basic technical skills in digital media production, and create their own digital stories. Emphasis is placed on storytelling as a tool for communication, self-expression, and social impact.

Fatima Wardy

This course focuses on encouraging real-world and vital skills that are much needed for everyday life, including effective communication, time management, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. The course content is designed to provide students with the tools needed to work through life challenges, make critical decisions, and to cultivate healthy coping skills with their personal and professional lives.

Roy Belfield

Songs are a part of the fabric of our lives from childhood; why do words and music add up to more than the sum of their parts? How does music have meaning? Students will choose songs to investigate using the basics of music theory (no experience needed!), and perspectives from sociology and psychology. Final projects combine these approaches in a number of possible ways, which can include the creation of a song.

Kendall Kennison

This course brings together the work of environmentalists, adventurers, children鈥檚 writers, film makers, visual artists, natural scientists, and philosophers in order to try to make sense of America鈥檚 deeply ambivalent attitude towards wild things and wild places. The works we鈥檒l be studying span the continental United States and range from the Puritans鈥� terrified perception of the New England woods as a 鈥渉owling wilderness鈥� to Thomas Morton鈥檚 celebration of the hedonistic pleasures of these same woods.  We鈥檒l explore how works like Chief Luther Standing Bear鈥檚 鈥淚ndian Wisdom,鈥� Dick Proenneke鈥檚 documentary about his 30 years living alone in Alaska, and YA fiction like My Side of the Mountain form a literary and visual record of this ambivalence. Our goal will be to tease out the wisdom behind Thoreau鈥檚 assertion, 鈥淚n wildness is the preservation of the world.鈥� 

Mary Marchand

This course is intended for students with an interest in the Engineering Science major or in engineering generally, as well as those interested in ethics and societal consequences of technological advances.  Through specific examples, challenges, and projects, we will explore the process of design of technological systems and devices that are functional and useful for society. We will start by breaking down the needs and technological challenges solved by a common device of choice and we will work up to identifying the variety of challenges presented by specific novel or speculative technologies. Using an exploratory experimental approach, we will learn how to make order-of-magnitude estimates, how to gather and interpret data that can help us make decisions and how to use iterative design to make improvements. We will also  investigate how technical issues intersect with issues of needs, resources, costs, ethics and consequences for society.  The course will combine experiments, design activities, reading, discussion, and student projects.

Nina Markovic

Modern conveniences and scientific progress are not always without cost. In this course we will take a look at what we put in the environment and what we take from the environment, while exploring how our 鈥済iving鈥� impacts the natural world and our 鈥渢aking鈥� impacts the health of our communities and lives. We will ask questions about how different parts of the world approach policy making, how chemicals may improve or harm our lives, and who is really being impacted by chemical use.

Jenny Lenkowski

Students will engage in questions that probe into the root causes of international conflicts. Readings on past and present case studies provide you with tools for exploring various types of causes as well as the differing values and grievances held by stakeholders. While grievances can be so tenacious that they obscure complexity, you will strive to avoid the 鈥渄anger of the single story鈥� and instead examine conflicts with the nuance that can enable pathways to peace-building to emerge.

Jen Bess

This course is intended to get us discussing and applying the skills needed to negotiate. The art of negotiation applies to several settings including business, law, job offers, even relationships. In this course we will discuss and apply a variety of negotiation scenarios and activities. While you will learn about several negotiation techniques, the actual purpose of this course is to generate discussion and have fun.

David Grossman

Are leaders born or made? This class takes you on a journey of discovering your leadership potential, an introspective and developmental journey that involves understanding your unique strengths, weaknesses, values, and aspirations. It is a process that enhances your self-awareness and prepares you to guide and inspire others effectively.

Maureen Malomba

In this FYS section, we will examine our perceptions of the Arab World and learn about the conflicts and upheavals that have shaped modern Arab society and culture. Throughout the semester, we will be introduced to a wide variety of thought-provoking Arab films, stories, poetry, and music that will spark a new understanding of the major trends and themes of this region. This will be a discussion-based seminar, in which our short essays will be geared toward developing the critical tools and skills needed for academic success in this course and beyond. 

Zahi Khamis

How should we think about attempts to portray actual historical events and persons in film?  What criteria should we use to evaluate films that deal with real events and persons from the past?  How are historical films similar to and different from books about history?  What are the strengths and weaknesses of different types of historical films?  What are the responsibilities of filmmakers, film viewers, and historians in relation to films about the past?  

This class will seek answers to those questions by watching and discussing films dealing with various historical eras and events.  Our aim will be to think through the meanings, opportunities, and conundrums of depicting the past onscreen. 

Matthew Hale

In this age of rapid globalization and heightened cross-cultural contacts, nations, communities, and individuals are working hard to hold on to and reaffirm their own identities and values. In the United States, one of the most precious values is free speech, embedded in the First Amendment.

David Zurawik

By exploring the spread of popular cultures in East Asian region, students will learn the cultural, social, political and historical issues connected with popular cultures in East Asia, Chinese-speaking territories, Korea and Japan.

Clay Chou

Throughout history, humans have proposed and espoused ideas about the future that have been prescient, visionary, heretical, farsighted, radical or dangerous. With the passage of time and the arrival of the future, many of these thinkers were vindicated and even hailed for their extraordinary forethought. In their own time, however, most were vilified, ridiculed, persecuted or simply ignore. In this First-Year Seminar we will do two things: First, we will explore the futuristic ideas of a number of these courageous thinkers from around the world. This curated collection of ideas, theories and works will exemplify the many, many thinkers who looked at their fields, their times, their world and were able to imagine them very differently. Secondly, through our major projects, we will explore contemporary conceptions of the future from futuristic cities, travel, space exploration, augmented reality, and generative AI. Just as ours is a future world others once imagined, we will research and study possible futures humans are imagining now. 

Seble Dawit