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
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 »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 »This course examines how commerce has been conducted in the past and present. Students will review the evolution of commerce and will review, discuss, and theorize how it will change in the future. Students will evaluate historic and current patterns of trade, research the potential of expected changes to the business environment, and summarize the advantages and disadvantages of a potential change.
Read more »This FSEM examines the electoral process in contemporary American politics. The electoral process is how we carry out a fundamental aspect of republican democracy – allowing citizens to select representatives of the people to make decisions on our behalf.
Read more »This course explores the geography of the global food system, examining food production and consumption models around the world and investigating the reasons why malnutrition persists.
Read more »I have been involved with the study of languages since I decided that I would take English as my college language requirement. Learning English proved more difficult than I anticipated (I thought I would learn it in a semester!), but it showed me how intricate and fascinating languages can be (i.e., messy). Ever since I started learning English, I became interested in other languages, how adults learn a second language, and lately, how our attitudes towards languages and dialects are shaped by our own ideas about the people who speak them.
Read more »Democracy appears to be a fragile thing. Around the world in recent years, many democracies have backslid and autocracy is on the rise. A diminished trust in government and the perceived gulf between policy and popular opinion resulted in the United States being downgraded from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016.
Read more »In this class, we will examine political polarization in the United States from both an institutional and behavioral perspective. Quotes like the one above suggest that Americans are hopelessly polarized, pushed by our partisan predispositions to vote for or against a candidate regardless of whether we like that candidate’s issue positions or personal characteristics.
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