Welcome! Here you’ll find a full list of all Fall 2024 First-Year Seminar (FSEM) offerings. Browse through the pages of classes, select a course from the first drop down menu, or browse by subject area. Please note that this site shows the FSEMs regardless of whether or not they are full, so there is no guarantee that a course will still be open at the time of your registration
What is Cool? Who decides? This first-year seminar studies the elusive but ever-so-attractive idea of Cool by looking at both historical and contemporary ideas of that quality. From its post-WWII emergence from the world of jazz into subgroups like the …
Read more »This first-year seminar will explore how southern literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries asks you to think about sexuality in both broad terms and regionally-specific contexts. The seminar will: give you a useful critical vocabulary abo …
Read more »This seminar will explore issues in controversial novels and plays from former French colonies in Canada, the Caribbean, Northern Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Read more »Cryptology is the area of mathematics that studies cryptography, the art of encrypting messages, and crypt-analysis, the science of breaking encrypted messages. This first-year seminar studies these ideas broadly through mathematical explorations accessible to the inquisitive student with only basic algebra skills.
Read more »In this FSEM, we will examine the major directors and films of this movement, as well as the the themes and social issues that animate these works. We will explore how these films revolutionized film production, form, and the portrayal of political and social changes.
Read more »Suburb or city? Single-family home, row house or apartment? Where we live influences our access to schools, jobs, transportation options, safety (or crime), and many other life-altering opportunities. We will also think about how inequality is woven into all of these housing situations; examining how race, class, gender, age, and sexuality may each influence our housing choices, or contribute to our lack of choices.
Read more »In this course, we will explore the life and work of James Farmer, an exemplary leader of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement who taught at Mary Washington during the 1990s. We will investigate the history of the concept of race and its impact on how we perceive ourselves and the world.
Read more »Positive psychology is a field that developed in the 1990’s to identify and enhance the human strengths and virtues that allow individuals and communities to thrive. This course focus on using the science of positive psychology to gain skills to help you thrive in college and ultimately in life.
Read more »This course begins with the question of how we ought to remember the Holocaust. Some see Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List as kitsch, for example, while others praise it as a monument to humanity. Are the monumental concrete steles of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin an appropriate way to remember the victims? Or do they reduce the victims to an anonymous mass?
Read more »In this course, we’ll explore current topics of interest within the feminist movement from an interdisciplinary perspective.
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