FYS Courses 2020 – 2021

Fall 2020 | Spring 2021


Fall 2020

FYS 101: First Year Seminars

meets Arts and Humanities (AH) requirements

EnGENDERing Popular Culture

Section: 12-LEC (1261)
Lecture: Th 4:30 – 7:00 p.m. | Performing Arts & Humanities Building 123
Richard Otten

Course Description: This course will aim in illuminating the ways in which we are passive consumers of popular culture and empower individuals to become critical participants. Popular culture is all around us. It influences how we think, feel, vote, and how we live our lives. This interdisciplinary course will introduce students to the study of U.S.popular culture and aims to examine the multiple ways gender has been portrayed in various popular cultural forms. Through an intersectional and intertextual investigation of television, film , popular music, advertisement, and social media, we will explore how representation as objects, consumers, subjects, creators, challengers, and critics both reflect and produce socio-cultural phenomena and ideas about the proper role of women and men in society. Throughout this course, we will consider the intersections of gender, sex, and race and analyze how they are articulated in popular culture.


Truth and Technology

Section: 16-LEC (1425)
Lecture: TuTh 8:30 – 9:45 a.m. | Sherman Hall 207
Elaine MacDougall

Course Description: This course will explore man’s search for truth and self-knowledge in post-modern culture and our ongoing struggle to achieve happiness. Students will explore their relationships and interactions with others, as well as their relationship with nature and the self in our technological world. Students will read, view, and evaluate ideas of the self as depicted in literature and film in an effort to come to some conclusion about the importance of our own journey to find truth. As a requirement of this course, students will take part in a service learning experience to connect the ideas of self-awareness, service and human interaction.


Telling Tales

Section: 17-LEC (1438)
Lecture: MoWe 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Sherman Hall 121
Jennifer Harrison

The complete title for this seminar is Telling Tales: Narratives, Social Justice, & Identity. In this course students will explore how we use stories to share, preserve, and shape our experiences. How do we tell stories to craft our identities? How do other people use narratives to influence our views? When we interact with narratives as writers, readers, and listeners, do they influence us intellectually, experientially, or ethically? To reflect on these questions, we will practice crafting new narratives to share our experiences and express the voices of others. Additionally, we will work together to analyze intersectional narratives that call for social justice, illuminate diverse voices, and challenge readers to interact with nontraditional experiences.

FYS 101Y: First Year Seminars

meets Arts and Humanities (AH) requirements

It Came from the `80s: Political, Social, and Cultural Changes of the 1980’s

Section: 18-LEC (13259)
Lecture: TuTh 1 – 2:15 p.m. | Performing Arts & Humanities Building 123
Jeremy Spahr

Course Description: The 1980s saw the rise of modern conservatism with the election of Ronald Reagan, the end of the Cold War, and a vast expansion in consumer culture. All of these changes were reflected and influenced by the popular culture of the 1980s in film, television, and music. This course examines the political, social, and cultural changes of the 1980s, and the way these changes were portrayed and even shaped by the popular culture of the decade. Students will choose a historical event from the 1980s and examine how popular culture interpreted the event, often in contrast with the views and valuations of historians.


Science Goes to Hollywood

Section: 19-LEC (13260)
Lecture: MoWe 4 – 5:15 p.m. | Sherman Hall 207
Maria Cambraia Guimaro Diniz

Course Description: This first-year seminar (FYS) is designed for students to explore how films and/or TV series that have a science focus can alter a culture’s perception of science. Students will evaluate how a variety of movies and TV shows that have a science and engineering focus have impacted the scientific literacy of various cultures and/or their perception of science. This class will require mastering critical thinking and analysis by deconstructing movies and discussing how scenes that depict science or science fiction alter the way that different cultures see and recognize science. Students will participate in interactive discussions, and advance their oral and written communication skills during this course.


Digital Communication

Section: 20-LEC (13543)
Lecture: Tu 4 – 7:30 p.m. | Sherman Hall 207
Staff

Communicating in a Digital World course description: Snaps, tweets, Instant videos, and other 21st century modes of communicating are explored in this interdisciplinary course about rhetoric, culture, and composition. Student will be expected to read theory, work collaboratively, produce digital content, reflect on their processes, and design success criteria for communicating in a digital world.


Yoga in the West

Section: 21-LEC (13552)
Lecture: MoWe 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Sherman Hall 110
Jalisa Monroe

First Year Seminars are open to all students during their first year at UMBC.

FYS 102: First Year Seminars

meets Social Sciences (SS) requirements

Poverty Amidst Plenty: The Economics of American Poverty

Section: 01-LEC (1260)
Lecture: We 1 – 2:15 p.m. | Sherman Hall 207
Nandita Dasgupta

This is a hybrid course with an in person meeting on Wednesdays from 1-2:15 p.m.

Course Description: The American Story is not an oft-quoted word in USA. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of poverty is worth exploring especially in the backdrop of the Great Recession that US has recently experienced. With continuing unemployment and increasing costs of living, more and more families have to choose between necessities like health care, child care, and even food. This seminar will examine the nature and extent of poverty in the U.S., its causes and consequences, and the poverty alleviation measures adopted through government programs and policies.


Social Issues in Business

Section: 14-LEC (1215)
Lecture: We 4:30 – 7 p.m. | Math & Psychology 102
Carlton Crabtree

Course Description: Successful innovations are achieved when people work together. This seminar introduces students to business concepts through collaboration and practical application including a group project to research a company business model that benefits society. Cultural dimensions affect the way companies promote products and services internationally. In this context, we examine how social media influences consumer perceptions and organizational change. Students learn theories in business communication, corporate culture, ethics, and decision making. Leadership skills acquired in this course are foundational to any discipline.


The Information Diet?

Section: 15-LEC (1296)
Lecture: TuTh 11:30 – 12:45 p.m. | Albin O Kuhn Library 259
Joanna Gadsby, Kathryn Sullivan

Course Description: This course introduces students to the reflective discovery and critique of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge. Through guided discussion and hands-on activities, students will explore issues related to privacy, censorship, digital activism, as well as how issues of gender, race, and class affect information access and creation. Students will develop the skills necessary to ethically and effectively use information to make decisions, solve problems, and communicate their views. In the process of exploring the information cycle and their own information seeking and consumption behaviors, they will develop strategies to better find, evaluate, manage and cite information.


Debating America

Section: 24-LEC (1426)
Lecture: TuTh 10  –  11:15 a.m. | Interdisciplinary Life Sciences 401
Jeremy Spahr

Course Description: This course will introduce students to the concept of ideological debates as a political tool, focusing on the techniques interest groups involved in “hot button” political issues use to define those issues in ways that promote their desired policy outcome. Particular emphasis will be placed on economic issues related to financial literacy, such as the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the national debt. The course will utilize sociological tools as well as historical techniques of textual analysis to assess how different groups seek to define “America” in different, often contradictory ways.


Social Justice Dialogues

Section: 25-LEC (13436)
Lecture: TuTh 10  –  11:15 a.m. | Math & Psychology 102
Jasmine A. Lee

This course is designed for people who have a deep interest in issues related to race, social justice, power, privilege, oppression, intercultural dialogue, and the ways such issues influence our leadership abilities and interests. By focusing on how we think and talk about social justice broadly, including race and other intersecting social identities in the United States, students will deepen their understanding and simultaneously learn techniques to engage in constructive conversations and critical dialogues across differences. Students will simultaneously develop skills for facilitating and leading difficult dialogues in ways that help them become more inclusive leaders and active contributors to a diverse and inclusive campus community.

FYS 103: First Year Seminars

Meets Science non-lab (S, non-lab) requirement.

Paradigms and Paradoxes: An Attempt to Understand the Universe

Section: 01-LEC (1178)
Lecture: MoWe 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Meyerhoff Chemistry 272
Joel Liebman

There are at least two kinds of scientific activities: acquiring and generating data, and inquiring and generating general modes of understanding. The latter activities will dominate this course. The course contents include discussions of some remarkable features of the universe: the class discussions will require no more scientific background than gained from high school chemistry and mathematics. Some topics for the course follow. Matter doesn’t collapse, shrink or disappear – it has size, weight, and sometimes shape. We take this for granted. Don’t we? Positive and negative charges attract. The atomic nucleus is positive and electrons are negative. Why don’t these parts of atoms get closer and closer and closer, and eventually collapse? In other words, we ask, not only why are atoms so small but also why are they so big? This topic is not merely philosophical. Questions of fuel efficiency and national defense arise as naturally as those of the existence of the universe. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. There are 4 letters in the genetic code and some 100 chemical elements in the periodic table. There are millions of distinct words, individual types of organisms and chemical compounds. Are these numbers 26, 4 and 100 small or are they large? As such, our study includes the nature of language, information and life. Consider the number 3.14159265357988. Can you identify it? Answering this question should be as easy as pie. Hat makers equate this number to 3. Is this a rational choice? Answering this question tells us about the nature of numbers, measurement, design, and industry, and also about the answerer.


Microbes, Humans, and History

Section: 02-LEC (13553)
Lecture: MoWe 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Physics 111
Susan Schreier

Microorganisms have been on Earth far longer than humans. Bacteria, viruses, and other microbes have caused many devastating diseases, often changing the nature of society and influencing politics as well as the outcome of wars. Yet, microorganisms have also provided untold benefits to human societies. This First Year Seminar will focus on the various ways our human history has been influenced by microorganisms. Through a variety of formats, students will focus on exploring the impact of microorganisms and their interrelationships with humans from an historical perspective.

FYS 107Y: First Year Seminar

meets Arts and Humanities, Culture (AH/C) requirement

Time, Space, Meaning Art & Music

Section: 01-LEC (1364)
Discussion: Th 4:30  –  7 p.m. | Sherman Hall 108
Jonathan Zwi

This course tracks evolving concepts and perceptions of time and space throughout the 20th century and the resulting implications on notions of meaning and beauty in both visual and musical contexts. Specifically, this course will consider the performances and recordings of pianist Ivo Pogorelich and the abstract expressionist paintings of Gerhard Richter as contemporary traces of a more sweeping historical gesture embodied in the work of Paul Cézanne, beginning near the turn of the 20th century.


Spring 2021

NOTE: First-Year Seminars are open to all students during their first year at UMBC.

FYS 101: First Year Seminars

meets Arts and Humanities (AH) requirements

Truth and Technology

Section: 20-LEC Regular (7401)
Lecture: Tu Th 10:00AM – 11:15AM | Web
Instruction Mode: Online
Meeting Dates: 01/26/2021 – 05/12/2021
Instructor: Elaine MacDougall

First-Year Seminars are open to all students during their first year at UMBC. Description: This course will explore man’s search for truth and self-knowledge in post-modern culture and our ongoing struggle to achieve happiness. Students will explore their relationships and interactions with others, as well as their relationship with nature and the self in our technological world. Students will read, view, and evaluate ideas of the self as depicted in literature and film in an effort to come to some conclusion about the importance of our own journey to find truth. As a requirement of this course, students will take part in a service learning experience to connect the ideas of self-awareness, service and human interaction.

FYS 102: First Year Seminars

meets Arts and Humanities (SS) requirements

Diversity, Ethics and Social Justice in the Context of Schooling

Section: 08-LEC Regular (6020)
Lecture: Mo 3:00PM – 4:15PM | Web
Instruction Mode: Online
Meeting Dates: 01/26/2021 – 05/12/2021
Instructor: Vickie Williams

This is a hybrid course with an in class meeting time on Mondays 3:00-4:15 PM, and a 3-hour per week commitment in a service-learning setting. This provides students with an opportunity to apply what they are learning in an actual school setting. First-Year Seminars are open to all students during their first year at UMBC. Course Description: Course will explore and mediate the tension between the current climate of school reform and the learning needs of highly diverse students through the lens of multicultural classrooms in diverse schools. In multicultural America, classrooms mirror the diverse nature of childrens’ backgrounds, cultural experiences, languages, and ways of knowing. This course offers opportunities to learn about the challenges of local schools firsthand and to understand the implementation of federal and local policies aimed at supporting the academic success of all students, regardless of cultural, linguistic, ethnic, or diverse backgrounds. The course will first examine the multicultural nature of society and schools. Then, Brown v. the Board of Education will be revisited as a foundation for understanding the legal, political, and social forces that impact a multicultural education system.

FYS 107: First Year Seminars

meets Arts and Humanities (AH/C) requirements

Time, Space, Meaning Art & Music

Section: 05-LEC Regular (12205)
Lecture: Th 4:30PM – 7:00PM | Web
Instruction Mode: Online
Meeting Dates: 01/26/2021 – 05/12/2021
Instructor: Jonathan Zwi

First Year Seminars are open to all students who are in their first year at UMBC. This course tracks evolving concepts and perceptions of time and space throughout the 20th century and the resulting implications on notions of meaning and beauty in both visual and musical contexts. Specifically, this course will consider the performances and recordings of pianist Ivo Pogorelich and the abstract expressionist paintings of Gerhard Richter as contemporary traces of a more sweeping historical gesture embodied in the work of Paul Cézanne, beginning near the turn of the 20th century.


Protest Songs of Resistance

Section: 06-LEC Regular (12206)
Lecture: Tu Th 5:30PM – 6:45PM | Web
Instruction Mode: Online
Meeting Dates: 01/26/2021 – 05/12/2021
Instructor: Janet Gross

First Year Seminars are open to all students who are in their first year at UMBC.
Course Description: Popular songs around the world spring from outrage about social conditions in a particular time and place. In FYS101 Protest Songs of Resistance we will investigate diverse contemporary and historic examples of songs used in various countries to protest or resist existing social conditions. We will explore readings on social movements and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings of protest songs from dozens of countries. Students will choose the specific country’s songs and social unrest to research in order to produce original critical and creative essays as well as presentations to enlighten the class. Students may also produce their own original protest songs about contemporary issues in the U.S. or abroad.

Updated: 5/28/2021