FYS Courses

Section: 01-LEC (6311)
Lecture: Tu 4:30 – 7 p.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 109
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: 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.

Section: 02-LEC (6394)
Lecture: TuTh 1 – 2:15 p.m. | Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building 123
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: 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.

Section: 03-LEC (6398)
Lecture: TuTh 4 – 5:15 p.m. | Performing Arts & Humanity Building 124
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Jill Randles

Course Description: We are witnessing renewed interest in matters related to spirituality. Concomitant with headlines about war, genocide, environmental crises, and abject poverty is a vibrant dialogue about social responsibility, moral reasoning, ethical action, and the sources of beauty, creativity, and passion that give life a depth of purpose and meaning.

We need people who can lead with head and heart, who can combine the life of the mind with work for the greater good, and who exhibit the skills, knowledge, imagination, and spirit to create an equitable, sustainable, whole, and hopeful world. This calls for a curriculum that explores the scientific, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of thought and behavior. This course is oriented toward that exploration.

Section: 04-LEC (6398)
Lecture: TuTh 10 – 11:15 a.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 206
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: 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.

Section: 05-LEC (6990)
Lecture: We 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Engineering 102
Lecture: TBA | Web
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Jennifer Harrison

Course Description: This course is taught in the Hybrid format, with in-person meetings on Wednesdays and service learning work for the remaining credit hours.

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.

Section: 06-LEC (7175)
Lecture: TuTh 10 – 11:15 a.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 208
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Steven McAlpine

Course Description: The Heroic Journey asks what makes someone heroic? What happens when heroes fall? From ancient myth to modern films such as The Matrix and Harry Potter, the story of the ordinary man or woman who is called to an extraordinary journey has been told in a thousand different ways. At the heart of our fascination with the heroic story is the belief that in each of us lies untapped potential to change the world, that we possess a latent power that only needs a call to action. What if we viewed our journeys through higher education as a call to heroic adventures? Through the lenses of science (are we “hardwired” for heroic behavior?), psychology, mythology (ancient Greek heroes such as Odysseus), philosophy (do heroes have a stronger ethical impetus?), theology, and the arts, we will explore how the heroic journey is a necessary step in the construction of ones identity in order to answer the question, who am I, and what am I called to do in the world?

Section: 01-LEC (6310)
Lecture: Mo 9 – 10:15 a.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 103
Lecture: TBA |Web
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Nandita Dasgupta

This course is taught in the Hybrid format, with in-person meetings on Mondays and Asynchronous work for the remaining credit hours.

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.

Section: 02-LEC (6285)
Lecture: We 3 – 4:15 p.m. | Information Technology 239
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Vickie Williams

This course is taught in the Hybrid format, with In-Person meetings on Wednesdays and Service Learning for the remaining credit hours.

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 children’s 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.

Section: 03-LEC (6322)
Lecture: Tu 11:30 – 12:45 p.m. | Web
Lecture: Thu 11:30 – 12:45 p.m. | Albin O Kuhn Library & Gallery 259
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Joanna Gadsby, Katy Sullivan

This course is taught in the Hybrid format, with In-Person meetings on Thursdays and Synchronous meetings on Tuesdays.

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.

Section: 04-LEC (6949)
Lecture: TuTh 11:30AM – 12:45 p.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 205
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Felipe Munoz Castillo

Course Description: Local governments in the United States historically received great trust and support from the public, in comparison to the state governments and the federal government. Given the demands on US local governments today, these jurisdictions face difficult tradeoffs in crafting their public policies, which can alleviate or exacerbate social inequality, including racial and economic inequality. This course will familiarize students with the US system of local government, including the structure and functions of local governments, as well as some tradeoffs involved in local policymaking and some effects of local policies in the areas of economic growth and democratic political participation.

Section: 05-LEC (7415)
Lecture: TuTh 11:30AM – 12:45 p.m. | Performing Arts & Humanity Building 124
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Ciara Christian

Course Description: 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.

Section: 01-LEC (6286)
Lecture: MoWe 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Meyerhoff Chemistry 272
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Joel Liebman

Course Description: 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. Do we not take this for granted? 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. Hatmakers 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 responder.

Section: 01-LEC (6941)
Lecture: TuTh 2:30 – 3:45 p.m. | Sherman Hall 011
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Lauren Allen, Jodi Kelber-kaye

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Section: 02-LEC (6435)
Lecture: TuTh 11:30 – 12:45 p.m. | Janet & Walter Sondheim 111
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 01/29/2024 – 05/14/2024
Instructor: Danielle Locke, Marcela Sarmiento Mellinger

Course Description: This course investigates gender-based harms, including harassment, intimate partner abuse, and sexual coercion and violence, through the diverse disciplinary lenses of psychology, sociology, social work, history, biology, information technology, art, and media studies. We will explore the multi-faceted nature of gender-based harms and create action-based opportunities for students to use their individual strengths and academic interests to make positive social change in their personal lives and communities. We will combine traditional academic content with opportunities for students to develop skills for healthy relationship building–platonic, romantic, sexual, and everything in between.

Section: 03-LEC (7342)
Lecture: MoWe 4 – 5:15 p.m. | Web / Meyerhoff Chemistry 256
Instruction Mode: Hybrid
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Samantha Smith, TBA

Course Description: This course critically evaluates the relationship between social movements, social justice, and population health using critical analysis and dialogue. The class will focus on the roles of socially constructed differences and social determinants of health in developing and proliferating health disparities domestically and globally. This course aims to introduce the intersection of sociology and public health, with particular focus on the role of social movements. This course aims to have students conceptualize the profound and historical impact of social injustice on global and domestic health disparities and begin to think through how we might use principles of social justice to address health disparities meaningfully and enact social change.

Section: 01-LEC (6751)
Lecture: MoWe 1 – 2:15 p.m. | Engineering 025
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Michael Canale

Course Description: Introduction to Disability Studies is a three-credit course designed to introduce the foundations of Disability Studies. This course is designed to understand the history of disability, categorization of disabilities, communication, and behaviors needed to apply the inclusion of disabilities in your work and personal interactions. Additionally, the course will provide you with resources for further study of equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

Section: 01-LEC (6410)
Lecture: TuTh 5:30 – 6:45 p.m. | Meyerhoff Chemistry 256
Instruction Mode: In Person
Meeting Dates: 08/28/2024 – 12/10/2024
Instructor: Janet Gross

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.