Be yourself! This is a strange imperative. Can you not be yourself? What could stop you from being yourself? And where should you look to find yourself so that you can be yourself? If the exhortation to “be yourself!” is paradoxical, we nonetheless hear it all the time in advertisements, films, music, literature, and even mission statements for liberal arts colleges. Why do so many people think that “being yourself” is a very important ethical ideal?

Or is it? Why isn’t a life of self-discovery, self-realization, and self-fulfillment simply a narcissistic, egocentric, and selfish way to live? Our seminar will try to tackle these questions about what it means to “be yourself” by tracing the history of this modern ethic of authenticity. We’ll track the idea that each one of us has our own way of realizing our humanity by closely reading works from Augustine, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Herman Melville, and others.

As a first-year writing seminar, this course also has a very strong writing component. To write well you must read well, and in our class you will learn how to be active readers. We will ponder, question, poke, and prod our texts by discussing and writing about them. The close attention we will be giving to the choices writers make—especially our own choices—will empower us to see not only how writing can be a tool for thinking but also how language shapes us and our apprehension of the world. The course aims to make it possible to experience college writing not as a perfunctory and instrumental exercise but as an exploratory, liberating, and powerful tool for imagining and thinking.

Professor: David Alvarez

Africa has the youngest population in the world. However, the global community knows very little about the everyday experiences of its youth. This course introduces students to the history and narratives of young people in Africa, highlighting their daily lives. Furthermore, it fosters an understanding of the remarkably diverse youth cultures across the continent. Some of the questions we will explore include: What activities do young people in various African communities partake in for enjoyment? What role has social media played in shaping different youth cultures within Africa?

Professor: Aldrin Magaya

In a finite world, the needs of our ever-growing population and rampant consumption strain the resources of the earth and threaten the environment. Due to their complex and global nature, modern environmental problems like climate change, water scarcity, or mass extinctions can be overwhelming and really, really scary. Many individuals who care about both other people and the planet around them are left wondering: “what am I to do?” Fortunately, the practice of sustainability – which balances the needs of people today with those of people in the future – can provide solutions to these challenging problems.

This seminar will explore both the theoretical concepts explicit in different definitions of sustainability as well as consider how to put these ideas into practice. Because there is no universally accepted definition of sustainability, students will critically examine crucial ideas central to the concept of “sustain” (as in “to make last”) through readings and discussion to ultimately to build a class definition over the course of the semester. Examples of these ideas include: markers of environmental quality; the role of social justice; and organizational principles of systems thinking. The seminar also includes an applied aspect in which students will be able to incorporate sustainability practices into their own lives while also learning about how to participate in positive change at a local, regional, and even global scale.

Whether you take it as a blessing or a curse, there can be no doubt that we live during interesting times. One thing that sets ������� graduates apart, though, is their ability to think critically, creatively, and compassionately, and therefore do what needs to be done. As the foundation of a ������� education, this seminar will both challenge and support students in a balance that will helps them grow into the person they want to be.

Professor: Jeanette Pope

Concert music can often be intimidating when we first come upon it. What is the difference between a concerto and a symphony? Why does Bugs Bunny wear a horned Viking helmet when singing "opera"? The class is an introduction to the world of concert music (oratorios, symphonies, sonatas....) and the issues such much presents to us today. Why do we continue to play works by musicians who died centuries ago, like J. S. Bach? The class presents a broad history of this music and discussion of the roles of the the arts in a democratic society.

Professor: Matthew Balensuela

KIN 197 immerses first-year students in the fundamentals of sports and exercise science analytics while simultaneously cultivating the art of effective writing. In this seminar, every assignment is designed as an iterative, reflective learning experience that not only builds technical proficiency—introducing you to basic statistical analysis and data-driven decision-making in sports—but also hones your ability to develop clear, persuasive technical arguments. Through a series of writing tasks ranging from initial summaries and reflections to a culminating research project, you will engage in regular revisions, peer reviews, and one-on-one conferencing. This dual emphasis on technical rigor and articulate communication ensures that you develop robust writing skills essential for academic success at �����о��� and for lifelong professional communication.

Professor: Reuben Addison

What happens when you never see anyone who looks like you on stage, at the movies, or on television? What do you do when your identity is either left out or restricted to stereotypes? This course explores how members of marginalized groups have addressed these questions in the world of US theatre. Understanding that the history of theatre in the United States has often focused primarily on European, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, and able-bodied people and stories, we will explore how entire movements have been staged to showcase African American, Latinx, Asian American, Indigenous American, Feminist, Queer, and Disabled artists and stories. Examining historical accounts, engaging with theoretical analysis, and reading/watching plays from diverse perspectives, we will learn how those who have been excluded have gone about creating theatrical spaces, productions, and organizations that address social inequities and bring oppressed and abandoned voices center stage. Together, we will witness how theatre can serve as a powerful tool for giving a voice to the silenced.

Professor: Dennis Sloan

The goal of this course is to examine the ways in which comic books and graphic novels portray gender and sexuality in contemporary and complex ways. We will begin by examining and understanding comics as a medium. Then we turn our attention to how gender and sexuality are represented in comics and shaped by historical context, with an emphasis on the superhero genre and the more recent trend of semi-autobiographical graphic novels. The course takes an intersectional approach in which we consider the ways that gender and sexuality intersect with race, ethnicity, and (dis)ability. We will be reading a range of comic books, graphic novels, and excerpts from popular press books. While is common to think that comics are for kids, we will examine them as social, historical, literary, and artistic texts that portray real and serious themes like falling in love for the first time, unhappy marriages, prostitution/sex work, and suicide. For the final project, students will create their own comic on a topic of their choice. This seminar is recommended for students interested in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, sociology, media, and popular culture.

Professor: Kelley Hall

Each of us has within ourselves the capacity for evil. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously declared, "the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." In this course, we will seek to increase our understanding of human nature, particularly our capacity for evil, including the causes of evil as well as resources for resisting or overcoming evil. As part of our investigation of evil, we will read Joseph Conrad's classic 1899 novella “Heart of Darkness”, which tells the story of the apparently noble and "civilized" Kurtz's descent into savagery and evil, as well as Chinua Achebe's important critical response to Conrad's novella, “An Image of Africa.” In our quest to understand our own dark hearts, we will draw on philosophy, psychology, literature, and other relevant fields.

Professor: Erik Wielenberg

Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Machiavelli. These individuals immediately bring to mind the Italian Renaissance, an age that saw an explosion of human ingenuity and creative expression as well as economic development and social experimentation. The period witnessed one of the greatest flowerings of culture and concentration of genius the world has ever seen. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will uncover the histories of Florence, Venice, Rome, Milan, Urbino, Siena, and other centers of Renaissance culture, read the works of Renaissance writers, and study the artistic achievements of this influential period. In class, we will focus on close readings in translation and hold constructive discussions of the main problems raised in a variety of Renaissance texts in an effort to uncover the principle political, economic, social, literary, and artistic movements that shaped the age. The topics explored in the course include the Florentine republic; Petrarch and the development of Humanism; The Renaissance debate over the ideal form of government; Venice, the Most Serene Republic; The impact of religious reformation on theology and politics; The Renaissance Papacy; Women in Renaissance Italy; Renaissance education; Neoplatonist Philosophy, and the end of the Italian Renaissance, to name a few. Students will gain a thorough understanding of the principles of Renaissance humanism and an appreciation for the supreme artistic achievements of the age. No prior knowledge of Italian history or culture is required. Students may wish to enroll concurrently in ITAL 171, First Semester Italian, which fulfills one of the university’s two language course requirements (but are not required to do so).

Professor: Michael Seaman

The chorus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, l. 872-81, declares: “ὓβρις φυτεύει τύραννον... “Hubris begets tyranny; hubris, if vainly overstuffed by useless follies...charges up and over the Cliff of Necessity, where it inevitably loses its footing. Nevertheless, I pray that the political struggle that does a city good is never interrupted.” Sophocles wrote that line in 429 BCE, when Athenian democracy was at the height of its imperial power but had just suffered a devastating pandemic—one-third of its citizens perished. The ancient Greek playwright understood that politics are a real contest, but not one improved by reckless arrogance (hubris) on the part of its contestants.

This class explores leadership and power through the lens of Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and history. What qualities should a good leader possess? What happens when a good leader goes bad? What institutions, structures, laws, and practices help ensure good governance and keep ruinous personal ambition from eroding the commonwealth? Is it better to live in an oligarchy, a democracy, or a tyranny? Can a state maintain Justice and Liberty for its citizens while at the same time ruling an empire? After studying the mythical, historical, and philosophical background to these questions, students will role-play a critical moment: Athens in 403 BC, when democracy itself was on trial; and also examine a case-study of liberty lost: the Roman state from 44 BCE-14 CE, from the assassination of Julius Caesar to the ascension of Emperor Tiberius.

Professor: Pedar Foss and Rebecca Schindler,

Illinois proudly proclaims itself the "Land of Lincoln," and Indiana lays claim to being the 16th president's boyhood home. But, in a very real sense, everyone in the United States lives in the Land of Lincoln. Lincoln remains ubiquitous in American life--from monuments and money to automobiles, financial institutions, schools, and street names. The Lincoln Memorial draws tourists, musicians, protesters, and orators to its steps. Lincoln is also a character in movies and even in a prize-winning ghost story. Perhaps the most consequential single figure in US history, more has been published about Lincoln than any single American or just about any world historical figure. Lincoln is a puzzle, a reflection, a mystery, a prism. This course combines biography, history, and culture to figure out who Lincoln was and how his story has marked his country during the 160 years since his death.

Professor: David Gellman

Autofiction, when you write a book or story about yourself as a fictional character, has gained both fans and critics over the last fifty years. In this seminar, you’ll read recent works of autofiction originally written in French (but translated into English!) that will take you from Montreal to Moscow, from Baghdad to Brussels to Baltimore, and from Pointe-Noire to Paris. As we talk and write about these works, we’ll consider such topics as truth and lies, memoir and fiction, and storytelling in general. You’ll do lots of writing, both formal and informal, including a short research paper analyzing one of the novels we’ll read. At the end of the semester, you’ll have the opportunity to write some autofiction of your own!

Professor: Carrie Klaus

Do you like to play games? Are you interested in their forms and history? Did you ever think of designing a game? There's a class for that. Ludology is the study of games, including their forms, history, and role in contemporary culture. In his book Homo Ludens, the cultural historian Johan Huizinga argues that game play has a central role in the development of civilization. Games, like civilization itself, contrive rules of order for human action, structuring experience to make life more meaningful. Play underlies religion, philosophy, literature, art, politics, and warfare. What distinguishes a game from other activities, Huizinga suggests, is the demarcation of a “magic circle,” or sacred space in which special rules apply and play occurs. Huizinga describes these spaces as “temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart”: a temple, an arena, a stage, a card table, a backyard or a battlefield. But the magic circle is not simply a place where we divert ourselves from the more serious business of life; it is a place where we explore the rules and the meaning of life. The seminar begins with Huizinga’s premise that games can serve as a lens for understanding civilization and culture. We will consider their distinct forms and genres, including board and table games, sports, role playing games, and digital games. We will consider the relation between games and literary forms such as drama, poetry, and storytelling. We will also consider games as a rhetorical device, a medium for promoting ethical and political ideals. Our reading will cover a spectrum of disciplines and our assignments will include game play, analysis, and collaborative design.

Professor: Harry Brown

This course will engage students in the study of maps and mapping as tools of activism. How might we define mapping and how can the resulting maps be used to make a point, present an argument, or support a cause? This class will consider various kinds of visual maps, their history, and especially their employment as tools of activists, past and present.

Professor: Pauline Ota

Monsters! Magic! Witches! Miracles! The medieval world is full of things that make us wonder. This seminar will explore the meanings these marvels had for the people who believed in them, feared them, and told stories about them—but also the meanings they have for us today. Through close reading of source texts, careful study of artworks, and vigorous class discussion, we will work to understand how individuals like Hildegard of Bingen, objects like the miraculous Mandylion, and social movements like the 15th -century witchcraft persecutions challenge our most fundamental categories of identity, community, and reality. As an art history class, students will specifically consider how visual culture both constructs and upsets these categories. Along the way, students will hone their composition and revision skills through a variety of writing exercises, including analyses of primary sources, critical engagements with scholarly articles, formal analyses of works of art, and elementary research papers.

Professor: Lyle Dechant

This course examines how music functions as a vehicle for social and political resistance across cultures and time periods. From Civil Rights protest songs to contemporary hip-hop activism, students will analyze how artists challenge power structures through lyrics, sound, and performance. Through reading, listening, class discussion and writing, students will develop critical thinking skills while exploring the intersection of music, history, and transformative social movements.

Professor: Veronica Pejril

Music and films have been a natural combination, with composers collaborating with directors and producers to create a unified visual and aural image on the screen. This course will explore these creative collaborations, with students learning about the technical sides of both the filmmaking process and the composition of original music for films.

Professor: Craig Paré

Two recent books by the historian Timothy Snyder -- his 'On Tyranny' and 'On Freedom' -- capture two perenial political concerns which also happen to intersect on core contemporary debates around the nature and importance of democracy, autocracy, democratic 'backsliding,' fake news, the importance of institutions, the responsibilities of citizenship, complicity, and so on. Our course will engage with Synder's books by placing them in historical and contemporary dialogue with thinkers such as the libertarian capitalists Auberon Herbert and F.A. Hayek, existentialists Hannah Arendt and Sartre, feminists like Elizabeth Anderson, pacifists like Gandhi, and as well as 'classical' takes from Plato to Mill to Anscombe and beyond. Students should come away from the course with a much broader and significantly deeper understanding of broadly political concerns around freedom and tyranny and informed first personal engagement on such issues empowers and liberates.

Professor: Richard Cameron

“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.” Gordon Parks

In this class, we will learn how photographers, such as Gordan Parks, have used photography as a tool to help them inform the greater public consciousness about injustice. Some of the topics these photographers have covered address: racial violence, poverty, child labor, sexualized violence, migration, war and climate change. We will learn about the photographers intimately, including their life and struggles. Students will respond to films, class discussions, and write a visual analysis on their photographs. The course will be approached from the perspective of the photographer, with a focus on visual literacy and critical observation. Although, we will not make our own photographs, we will learn how these photographers empower themselves to become agents of change inspiring all of us.

Professor: Cynthia O'Dell

This seminar introduces students to Reproductive Justice—a transformative human rights framework that goes beyond traditional "choice" debates to address the complex cultural, economic, and political factors affecting reproductive lives. Created by Black women activists, Reproductive Justice encompasses the right to bodily autonomy, to have or not have children, and to parent in safe, sustainable communities. Through anthropological perspectives, we'll explore how systems of power shape reproductive experiences across diverse communities in the United States and throughout the Americas. This course explores how cultural systems shape reproductive experiences, investigating topics like historical sterilization programs targeting marginalized groups, the transformation of childbirth into a medical procedure rather than a social event, and how immigration enforcement creates unique reproductive challenges for migrant families. These examples represent just a few of the diverse ways cultural contexts influence who can reproduce, under what conditions, and with what consequences for individuals and communities. Students will engage with a wide range of materials including ethnographies, first-person narratives, films, scholarly articles, activist texts, poetry, and visual art. We'll also hear from scholars and advocates working within the Reproductive Justice movement. The seminar emphasizes active participation through thoughtful engagement with readings and respectful class discussions, preparing students to become informed advocates who approach Reproductive Justice with compassion and a commitment to human dignity.

Professor: Angela Castañeda

The field of forensic science has been “under the microscope” for the past several years. A report from the National Academy of Sciences titled “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward” (2009) and more recently “Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods” (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2016) both concluded that there is a need to reevaluate several investigative procedures since these procedures are based more on experience or opinion, and less on science. In this course we'll discuss the scientific method in detail while considering what science is and what it is not. We will also investigate emerging aspects of forensic science and discuss the use of scientific information in the courtroom. Strengthening our understanding of chemistry fundamentals and terms that are essential to forensic science is an important aspect of this course. One way to approach these fundamentals is by exploring forensic techniques that rely on chemical principles. Examples include isotopes, DNA, chromatography, inorganic/organic compounds, and spectroscopy. It is also important that we practice the fundamental mathematics necessary to develop a deeper understanding of chemistry and forensic science.

Professor: Richard Martoglio

This course explores the theme of second chances drawing on a variety of sources such as religious traditions; biblical and other scriptures; writers such as Shakespeare, Viktor Frankl; mythology and other literary forms; thinkers like Aristotle, W.E.B. DuBois; and films like A Christmas Carol, The Wizard of Oz, Apocalypse Now, Forest Gump, The Color Purple, and Oppenheimer. It acknowledges that life is precarious, unpredictable, and out of human control. It hopes to show that happiness depends less on sorting everything out than accepting life’s muddle, embracing its consequences, and negotiating pathways through uncertainty. The imaginative penetration of reality is relevant to embrace new possibilities. Without the possibility of a second chance, humans instinctively become subject to psychological and social confinement.

Professor: Leslie James

Sex education need not end in high school, but what might college students need to know about sex? This course examines the history of sex education in public schools in the United States through contemporary debates about the relationship between schooling and sexual health, well-being, healthy relationships, and autonomy. We will read a variety of texts about the history and politics of sex education in and beyond in the United States and engage these readings through consistent written practices.

Professor: Caitlin Howlett

This course will include five 2-page informal responses and four formal essays, including a four-week scaffolded research paper project (Essay #3 plus an Annotated Bibliography and a Prospectus). Formal and informal writing totals about 35 pages. Each formal essay will use a different model of workshopping or revision in order to give students feedback prior to final submission, including two one-on-one conferences with me (the instructor), a trip to the W-center or work with a Writing Associate, peer workshop, and self-critique based on a writing "playbook" that students will develop over the course of the semester. The research paper project includes summary and paraphrase, use of secondary sources, work with citation, and scaffolding. Students will also submit revisions of the first three formal essays along with a Writing Reflection at the end of the semester.

Professor: Amity Reading

Students will study commercial recordings of songs from the last half-century to gain a more thorough understanding of popular music and its place in American culture. Songs will be examined through their form, methods of composition, relationship to technology and position in the marketplace. Students will exchange ideas with one another regarding what makes for a “good” or “successful” song, and as a group we will examine specific song samples from different decades and various music genres including rock ‘n roll, jazz, rhythm ‘n blues, soul, country and hip hop, among others. Work in the course will include reading and listening, class discussions, an oral history song collection, short written assignments and a final written research project. Students will spend some class time working in small groups and doing peer critiques of written work by classmates. As with all First Year Seminars overall the coursework will be balanced between studying content (music) and practicing good writing.

Professor: Ronald Dye

Technology is deeply intertwined with the cultures that produce it and the societies that use it. From social media platforms to artificial intelligence, technology shapes how we communicate, work, and think, while cultural values and ethical considerations influence the design and adoption of these tools. This course explores the dynamic relationship between technology and culture, with a focus on the principles of technology design and the ethical responsibilities of computer scientists.

Professor: Allana Johnson

Through reading, writing, and multimedia engagement, “Telling a Story, Telling a History: Tracing the �����о��� Experience Through the Moving Image,” explores visual storytelling via the use of short and long-form video essays, while simultaneously having students hone their writing abilities through traditional essays and primary source research. Visual storytelling is a critical, emerging discipline with many long-term benefits for the 21st century student. This course will feature a unique opportunity to engage with �����о��� alumni who work as professional film makers and artists from multiple disciplinary backgrounds in the creation of video-essays.

Professor: Marcus Hayes

In this course, we will contemplate living trees around �������'s campus and the many trees we've encountered in our lives. I'll invite you to consider trees I've met: the strangler figs of Costa Rica, a baobab in Ghana, an ancient olive in France and the black walnut in my Greencastle backyard. As a student, you can expect to gain some working knowledge of the science of trees, but you will also begin to see "trees" in other places. Words like "root," "branch," and "tree" are deep in language and have become metaphor or structure for the ways we understand family, home, government and the tangled tree of life itself. We'll read across disciplines to develop our understandings of trees as our companions on earth and write essays, narratives, and descriptions of trees of all kinds.

Professor: Joseph Heithaus

While universities are often positioned as “removed” from society and the state, this course approaches them as central sites where social structures, state apparatuses, and norms are institutionalized or produced anew and where social struggles are struggled over. As the title indicates, we will study not only formal universities but also “underground” universities, both physical ones like the Free University and virtual ones like Liberation School. Further, we will explore the possibilities of constructing our own underground university at �����о���.

Professor: Derek Ford

Not to be creepy, but maybe you have a fascination with true crime. I can’t speak to why we are so interested in the macabre, and that’s not the focus of this course. This class will allow you to indulge your detective fantasies. Each student will pick a case that intrigues them and is unsolved or the resolution is questionable. Using this topic, you will learn how to write by summarizing case information, arguing for your theory, arguing against a different theory, and finding viable sources, etc.

Professor: Ivelisse Rodriguez