FSEM Courses

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


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    FSEM 100 H2 | The Idea of Cool

    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 …

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    FSEM 100C7 | Sexuality in Southern Literature

    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 …

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    FSEM 100F | The French New Wave: Cinema and Society

    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.

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    FSEM 100G4 | Race and Revolution

    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.

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    FSEM 100H3 | Holocaust in German and American Culture

    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?

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    FSEM 100P7 | US Campaigns and Elections

    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.

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    FSEM 100P8 | Queer Space: Geographies of Sexualities

    Instead of thinking about places as simply the background setting of our sexual identities, we will engage with the ways in which they actively aid in constituting our sexualities. As an exploration of “queer space,” this course will focus mainly on the construction of spaces, communities, and neighborhoods by sexual and gender minority LGBTQ-identified people.

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    FSEM 100R4 | Forbidden Texts

    This FSEM is an exploration of forbidden texts, defined broadly, through in-depth examination of texts which were banned at some point, somewhere, in some fashion.

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    FSEM 100R5 | Multilingual Communities

    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.

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