Registration and Other Information
The First-Year Seminar Program is a special opportunity for first- and second-semester students to take a small seminar class. First-Year Seminars are open only to first and second semester students. Each course is a small seminar (no more than 15-16 students) led or team-taught by UI faculty members. The courses do not offer credit you can apply to the General Education Program and you can't use these courses toward a major, but First-Year Seminars do offer you a chance to focus on unusual and interesting topics chosen by some of our most exciting professors.
First-Year Seminars are offered for 1 s.h. If you choose to take a First-Year Seminar please remember the College's guideline: student preparation time over the 15 weeks of a semester usually averages 2 hours of out-of-class work each week for every hour in class, or for every hour of credit earned. So a First-Year Seminar that meets all semester will probably require an average of 2 hours of work each week; one that meets for a shorter time will require more time each week. These are "real" courses--with readings. assignments, and homework.
First-Year Seminars use the A-F grading system. Instructors also may choose to use plus/minus grading. All of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences rules on adding and dropping apply to these courses. Talk to your adviser if you decide not to complete a course.
REGISTRATION: All First-Year Seminars are open only to first and second semester students. Because we can offer no more than about 400 seats in First-Year Seminars each semester (and often offer fewer than 300) we ask that each individual student enroll in only one seminar. No special registration numbers are needed, simply add the course when you register. Be sure to check your course-and section number very carefully.
For date/time of the courses listed below, please check ISIS. Use the keyword "First-Year" to get a list of all the courses (and some other courses as well, which are not First-Year Seminars...)
Additional information and links to lists and descriptions of previous seminars: here.
First-Year Seminar: Meaning in Contemporary Storytelling Performance
01P:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Steve McGuire
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
This course aims to illuminate storytelling's importance in our lives, to help you develop a philosophy of the role of storytelling in yours and others' acts of interpretation, and to accomplish storytelling performance skillfully. OUr capacity to create pictures of how lives should be led and how our own lives intertwine with others' comes down to telling stories. To be sure, storytelling has an entertainment value, but stories are told for the purpose of explaining why something happened one way instead of another. What are the culturally relative aesthetics of contemporary storytelling? In this course, you will tell stories and consider what constitutes a good story performance. Discussion, readings, self-critique, and performance are intended to increase your skills as an effective storyteller, your abilities to interpret stories that others tell, and your understanding of the philosophical concepts that underpin storytelling. Emphasis is placed on evaluating and enhancing your performance so that you will not be graded on "talent" but rather making discoveries about storytelling form and approach. To this end, you will compose a written critique of your performances using a guide, and you will complete periodic creative exercises. Both are intended to help you construct and improve your stories.
Grades will be based on: storytelling performances (33%); written homework (33%) in-class contributions (33%).
Steve McGuire is a professor of Art Education, working in the School of Art and Art History and in the College of Education. He has won a Collegiate Teaching Award and the University's Brody Award for Faculty Excellence in Service. In 2004, he completed a project that incorporates storytelling and visual images of Iowa communities on the 504 miles of American Discovery Trail. IN 2005, he completed he web/DVD project, "Composing By-cycle Eminent Icelandic Saga and Tremendous Earth", working from over 700 still images and twenty hours of video, that were created during his 1,400 mile bicycle tour of Iceland.
First-Year Seminar: Nanomedicine: Small Medicine with a Big Impact
004:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Sarah Larsen
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
One nanometer is one billionth of a meter. To put this into perspective, a human hair is approximately 50,000 namometers (nm) in diameter, the individual components of computer chips are about 65 nm in size and a DNA molecule is 2.5 nm wide. Nanoscience is the study of the world on the nanometer scale, from approximately one nanometer to several hundred nanometers. Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate molecules and atoms on the nanoscale and to fabricate nanoscale devices. Nanomedicine refers to applications on nanotechnology focused on finding new ways to diagnose and treat disease. In this seminar, the fundamental concepts of nanoscience will be introduced, the tools for visualizing the nanoscale will be investigated, and applications in nanomedicine, such as nanoparticle drug delivery and medical nanorobots, will be discussed.
Grades will be based on: attendance and participation (25%) and 3 short reports (75%).
Sarah Larsen is an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Her research focuses on nanocrystalline zeolites. In her lab, these zeolites are being investigated for use in water purification and drug delivery.
First-Year Seminar: Women Poets from Sappho to the Present
008:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Florence Boos
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
Long neglected, women's poetry has finally gained recognition in the recent decades, and the work of dozens -- even hundreds -- of excellent writers are now available. Prompted by this (literal) renaissance, we will read a wide range of poems by women, chosen for the styles, forms, and general eloquence of their work.
More precisely, we will devote the first third of the semester to poetry before 1900, the second to English and American poetry of the twentieth century, and the last part of the semester to twentieth and twenty-first century poetry from other countries. Students will be asked to help organize and lead class discussions, and to prepare individual projects to present to the class toward the end of the semester.
Grades will be based on: class participation, web commentaries, and individual projects.
Florence Boos is a professor of English. Her teaching and research-interests include poetry by women, Pre-Raphaelitism and other aspects of Victorian art, nineteenth-century social and intellectual history, and marxist and feminist approaches to nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century literature. She is currently president of the William Morris Society in the United States, and has participated in teaching-exchanges with the English departments of Háskola Íslands (the University of Iceland), Københavns Universitet (the University of Copenhagen), and the Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier (the latter, twice).
First-Year Seminar: Love, Loss and Empire
010:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Aimee Carrilllo Rowe
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
This course considers the relationship between our daily experiences, popular cultural and artistic expressions, and processes of colonization and decolonization in the current global context. We will explore a series of texts—popular, creative, and theoretical—that address our current condition as a function of power relations. Readings will consider how our capacity to experience love and loss are related to US practices of empire building: military, economic, and social. We will reflect on themes such as: the destruction of experience, uses of anger, groundlessness, and solidarity as various effects and strategies for finding hope within a world filled with injustices.
Grades will be based on: Students will be evaluated on their capacity to reflect on and gain an awareness of how globalization permeates their daily lives. This movement is detectable through communication—class discussions, free writes, journal entries, and response papers.
Aimee Carrillo Rowe is an associate professor in the Department of Rhetoric. Her research and teaching focus on feminist alliances, third world feminisms, whiteness and antiracism studies, critical pedagogy, and the politics of spirituality and justice.
First-Year Seminar: Creating Electronic Identities: Facebook, Myspace
010:029 Section 002 1 s.h.
Instructor: Takis Poulakos
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
This course will explore the process of creating identities in such popular web sites as MySpace and Facebook. Our inquiry will focus on the choices that these technologies make available to users as well as the types of identity-construction that these choices enable. The course will facilitate hands-on learning through weekly critiques of identities constructed on selected web pages as well as explorations of alternative ways of creating and displaying identities on-line.
Grades will be based on: class participation, construction of a new web page, and an oral presentation on the choices made in the process of creating an electronic identity.
Takis Poulakos, a professor in the Department of Rhetoric, has served as President of the American Society for the History of Rhetoric and has received numerous grants and awards for his scholarship on classical rhetoric and the history of rhetoric. He has also taught courses on the Rhetoric of the 1960s.
First-Year Seminar: Being Young in Africa
016:049 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: James Giblin
Course Meets: Check ISIS! Note: This is an intensive course that meets for the first part of the semester.
What's it like to be young in Africa? African children, teens, and young adults encounter many of the same problems -- uncomprehending parents, pressure to get good grades, anxieties over sex -- faced by young people in the United States. They also face situations which are utterly unfamiliar to most US young people -- like a devastating AIDS pandemic, incomes of less than a dollar a day in many families, and catastrophic warfare in some countries. This course will look at the familiar experience of being young in some unfamiliar social and cultural settings. By doing so, class members will learn how to ask the sorts of questions about culture and history which help us make sense of unfamiliar societies. We will view films and videos, read some short novels and brief social studies (all of which have been written or produced by Africans), and discuss what we learn.
Grades will be based on: participation in class discussion (including assignments to help in leading class discussion), and on brief essays which respond to the visual and reading materials.
James Giblin is a professor in the Department of History. His primary research interest is Tanzania and East Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He spends time in Africa as often as he can, and has recently received a Fulbright Award for more research.
First-Year Seminar: The Origins of Mathematics
22M:009 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructors: Yi Le and William A. Kirk
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
Mathematics as we know it did not come by accident, but mathematical discovery is not easy. In ancient times, working with numbers was clearly hindered by poor notation. Try multiplying two numbers together in Roman numerals. What is MLXXXIV times MMLLLXIX? This is difficult for us - and wasn't easy even for the Romans - because of the notation system used. A more recent example: while the idea of a positive number (for instance the "three" in "I have 3 apples" is a positive integer) is easy, the concept of a negative integer is much more subtle -- there is no such thing as "-3 apples" in our universe. The history of the discovery in mathematics, like the invention of the Arabic numerals and "0" that we use today and the development of the idea negative integers, is not only interesting, it helps us to explore and understand scientific creativity. In this seminar we will discuss a number of the fundamental discoveries that led from primitive mathematics to mathematics as we know it today.
Grades will be based on: attendance, participation, and a short paper.
Professors Yi Li and William A. Kirk teach in the Department of Mathematics, where Professor Li is currently chair of the Department. He is also a specialist in Partial
Differential Equations and Medical Imaging and Biomathematics. He is also part of the graduate program in Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences. Professor Kirk's research focuses on on linear functional analysis, the geometry of Banach spaces and
metric spaces, among other issues. His "Erdos number" which indicates how extensive his collaborations are with other mathematicians and how closely his research connects with that of Paul Erdos (who the London Times says "was regarded by fellow mathematicians as the most brilliant, if eccentric, mind in his field.") is 4. For more information on Erdos and the Erdos number, see http://www.oakland.edu/enp/)
First-Year Seminar: Unspoken Language -- How Musicians Communicate
025:009 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Christine Rutledge
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
One of the most intimate forms of interaction is that used by musicians. So much of the "language" they use must be intuitive, trustworthy, and well-rehearsed, much like that of a fine basketball or hockey team. It is rare in our modern-day lives that we are called upon to work together in such a close-knit group striving for a common goal. In musical performance, musicians must do this without using a "spoken" language. Instead, they use many other methods of communication, be it a conductor's baton, the direction of their bow, how they breathe and move, or even their facial expressions. In this seminar, we will explore the inner workings of musical performance, and discover what it is that musicians rely on in order to make a "winning' performance.
Grades will be based on: attendance in class and at specified musical performances on campus, class participation, class assignments, and written reviews of musical performances. No previous musical training is required for this course.
Christine Rutledge is an associate professor in the School of Music, where she teaches viola. In addition to her teaching, she continues to play the viola as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral musician throughout the United States and abroad. She plays her own transcriptions of Baroque-era compositions and has commissioned new works by current composers.
First-Year Seminar: Exploring Mt. Everest
028:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Susan Birrell
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
In this course we will consider Mt. Everest as more than a site for adventure, we will investigate it as a cultural text and we will develop methodologies for critical analysis to help us explore the meanings that surround it. Using expedition accounts, excerpts from autobiographies, contemporary news accounts, and mountaineering videos, we ill explore four particularly famous expeditions to Mt Everest:
- the 1924 British expedition in which George Mallory vanished,
- the "conquest" of Everest in 1953 by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary,
- the 1996 "tourist" expeditions detailed in Jon Kraukauer's Into Thin Air, and
- the 1999 discovery of the body of George Mallory
We will not be asking why people climb Mt. Everest (Mallory has already told us it is "Because it is there"); we will be exploring how their exploits are framed for the rest of us. What is the effect of these stories, which are usually presented as tales of tragedy, courage, and heroism, and what sort of cultural meanings are we supposed to take from them?
Grades will be based on: participation in class discussions, a brief report on contemporary accounts of the four expeditions, a journal of responses to class discussions and readings, and a report tying independent reading to the course materials.
Susan Birrell is a professor of Health and Sport Studies and American Studies. She has served as chair of Health and Sport Studies, and of Women's Studies.
First-Year Seminar: The Politics of Terror
030:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Brian Lai
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
One central element of US foreign policy is to reduce the threat of international terrorism. After September 11, 2001, this issue has become central to US national security policy as well as US domestic politics. President Bush and al the 2008 candidates have proposed policies to reduce the threat of international terrorism. For many voters, dealing with the threat of terrorism is the primary issue for the upcoming election. Because international terrorism has received tremendous attention from the media and policy makers, it is important to critically analyze some fundamental questions that drive both the political and policy debates around the issue. What is terrorism? What are terrorists? Why do individuals and groups chose to use terrorism? How have terrorist organizations responded to different policies aimed at them and at society more broadly? Finally, what can the empirical record of terrorist - state interactions tell us about the efficacy of current approaches as well as theoretical arguments about terrorism? This seminar will address these questions in the context of the current policy debate about how the US should present and address the threat of international terrorism. This seminar will examine why groups and individuals use terrorism, how states have responded, and the effect of these policies. Finally, it will examine both current and historical terrorist organizations to illustrate and critically examine the theoretical arguments about terrorist group formation and the effect of states' policies.
Grades will be based on: participation, class presentations, and two short research papers.
Brian Lai is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, where he teaches courses on International Relations.
First-Year Seminar: What's Wrong with Legislatures?
030:029 Section 002 1 s.h.
Instructor: Gerhard Loewenberg
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
This seminar investigates "hwy we love our member of Congress so much more than our Congress." It examines the relationship between legislatures and their constituents at the state and national levels in other countries, the problem of reaching collective decisions in large bodies, and the reasons why legislatures are indispensable to democracy and yet are everywhere the least popular branch of government. Readings will include such classes as "Home Style" and recent critiques like "The Broken Branch," and will include descriptions of legislatures in other countries.
Grades will be based on: weekly one-page papers on the readings, a 5-6 page paper comparing the US Congress to another legislature, and participation in class discussions. (Note: class will include a two-week break in February during which instead of class periods, each student will have a one-to-one conference with Professor Loewenberg to get help with beginning their research for the paper).
Gerhard Loewenberg is UI Foundation Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a former dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. He has done much research on electoral systems and has been a consultant to countries developing new constitutions.
First-Year Seminar: Images of Prague in Czech Literature and History
041:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructors: Jitka Sonkova and Russell Valentino
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
Note: This course is taught in English, no knowledge of Czech is required. Also, this is an intensive course that meets in the first half of the semester
This seminar is designed to introduce students to the cultural, literary, architectural, and historical beauty of the capital city of the Czech Republic -- Prague and its environs. The framework of the seminar is centered around the required book, Prague: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Paul Wilson, ed., 1995) which features the first-ever English translations of the finest Czech writers of the past 150 years, including Hodrová, Kafka, Hrabal, Čapek, Škvorecky and Klíma. Each contribution offers a deeply personal and engaging account of the inspiration and lasting impact of this thousand-year-old city on the life and craft of each of the authors.
Grades will be based on: class discussion, a response journal, and a short report tying together independent readings and course materials.
Jitka Sonkova is a Prague native who received her doctorate from the Charles University in Prague. She is a lecturer in the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures. Russell Valentino is an expert in Russian and Slavic Literatures and an associate professor in the Department of Asian Languages & Literatures and the Department of Cinema & Comparative Literature.
First-Year Seminar: Documentary Film as Cultural Practice
048:029 Sec 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Steven Ungar
Course Meets: Check ISIS! NOTE: This seminar meets for extended sessions (two class sessions each week for 8 weeks) and also includes a screening session each week).
This course studies the history of documentary (also known as non-fiction) films, grounded narratives based in the recording of real life. we will watch a sampling of short and long documentaries, starting with the turn-of-the-century films by the Lumière brothers through recent work by Michael Moore and Scott McElwee. Films will be studied in terms of their technical features and their stances toward the subjects they engage. The latter perspective will locate documentary films within a broader exploration of visual cultures from photography and silent film to television, video, and digital formats. The choice of films from a number of national traditions is meant to address relevant differences. Required readings will include: Erik Barnouw's Documentary: A History of Non-Fiction Film (rev. ed. 1993) and a course pack with articles on individual films.
Grades will be based on: classroom participation, a viewing, reading, discussion diary and brief "recaps" by each student during the final class session.
Steven Ungar is a professor of French and of Cinema and Comparative Literature. He is currently serving as chair of Cinema and Comparative Literature. His research focuses on, among other topics, 20th-21st century French fiction, poetry, & thought; North African writing & film; French film of the 1930s; and Left-Bank cinema (Resnais, Marker, Varda, & Rouch). In recognition of his service to French culture, the French nation has made him a " Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques."
First-Year Seminar: Diabetes and the World Wide Food Revolution
051:029 Sec 001 1 s.h.
Instructors: K.B. Chandran and Lisa Scranton
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
The focus of this seminar will be the impact of changing food consumption patterns on the incidence of type 2 diabetes in different parts of the world. We will look at the disease of diabetes: its definition, physiology and diagnosis, treatments, and prevention. We will discuss the increasing incidence of type 2 diabetes worldwide, and nutritional contributions to this increase. We will take a close look at the world food supply, including historical perspectives, the differences in food consumption in tribal communities, developing countries, and wealthy countries. We will also consider changes in the food supply and nutrition over the las 25 years. As we discuss the food environment, we will also contemplate social, economic, and cultural influences on the increasing rates of type 2 diabetes. Each student will examine a specific aspect of the question, "What will it take to slow the spread of type 2 diabetes?" and will give a paper and presentation on this topic.
K. B. Chandran is Lowell G. Battershell Professor in Biomedical Engineering. He has done research on artificial heart valves and ventricular assist devices. Lisa Scranton is a registered, licensed dietician whose research includes nutrition education and diabetes education through Internet technologies
First-Year Seminar: The Energy Future
052:029 Sec 001 1 s.h.
Instructors: David Murhammer and Alec Scranton
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
Oil and petroleum products are essential for the American way of life. Products derived from petroleum are ubiquitous, including fuels for our vehicles and heating our homes and a wide range of other products used every day. Petroleum has had, and will continue to have, a profound impact on the economic, political and environmental conditions of the
Grades will be based on: attendance and discussion (40%), a written report (30%) and an oral presentation (30%)
Alec Scranton and David Murhammer are Professors in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the College of Engineering. They both work both in "pure research" and in cooperation with industry.
First-Year Seminar: Benjamin Franklin -- Reader, Writer, Printer
108:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Matthew P. Brown
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
This course will look intensively at Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Often described as an essentially American work, it was first published in French after Franklin's death and it describes a period before the U.S. was even a nation. Usually understood as an ideal story of the "self-made man," it shows Franklin in curious poses of silence and evasion. And while its status as a "conduct book for living" is indubitable, the kind of conduct it recommends is highly dubitable. We will be interested in these questions. But we will also be treating it as a window onto literacy, authorship, and publication in early America. Before Franklin was a scientist and a diplomat, he was a printer, and we will spend time exploring the world of the hand-press print shop. The Autobiography describes the peculiar reading habits of colonial America, and we'll put into practice these odd methods -- which turn out, odder still to be not unlike our own in the digital age. His life as reader and printer led as well to the variety of written publications he had a hand in, and we'll study various forms of eighteenth-century print culture -- pamphlets, broadsides, sermons, newspapers -- that led to the forming of a new nation. Our study will be complemented by hands-on exposure to this world of reading, writing, and printing through the facilities of the UI Center for the Book. Students will be introduced to setting type, making paper, binding books, and handling artifacts.
Grades will be based on: brief research exercises, participation, a 10-15 minute oral presentation, and a final essay.
Matthew P. Brown is the Director of the Center for the Book and an Associate Professor in the Department of English. His research interests include book studies, early American literature, cultural studies and theory, gender studies, reader-oriented criticism, visual culture, and media studies.
First-Year Seminar: Black New Orleans - Before and After Hurricane Katrina
129:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructor: Richard Turner
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
New Orleans-- the birthplace of jazz, is the most African city in the United States with a long and complex history of cultural and political influences from West and Central Africa, Haiti, Cuba, France, Spain, and the United States.The seminar will explore music, religion, and social justice issues in Black New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, by utilizing source materials from music, film, literature, and folk culture. Students will have the opportunity to analyze the future prospects of New Orleans' Black community and its musical and religious traditions two years after Hurricane Katrina.
Grades will be based on: (to be announced)
Richard Turner is coordinator of African American Studies and an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. He has published on Islam in the African American experience, and on Mardi Gras in New Orleans, among other topics.
First-Year Seminar: Introduction to the Great Apes
610:029 Section 001 1 s.h.
Instructors: Teresa Mangum and Mary Trachsel
Course Meets: Check ISIS!
Note: This seminar meets twice each week for the first seven weeks of the semester. Students will also attend part of a symposium to be held here in April.
In this course, you'll learn about the four non-human species of great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans -- through films and readings. You'll learn about apes in their natural habitats and in various forms of human captivity, including sanctuaries, research laboratories, zoos, circuses, movies, and other entertainment venues. You'll also learn about such issues as conservation of these endangered species, the minds of great apes, and the question of "rights" for these human-like animals. During the scheduled April research symposium, students will meet and talk with several primatologists, including representatives from the Great Ape Trust of Iowa.
Grades will be based on: class preparation and participation as well as a series of short, weekly writing assignments that require you to respond to and make connections among videos, readings, and class discussions. You will also work in groups to formulate questions to ask the participants of the research symposium that will take place in April.
Teresa Mangum is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. She has written about the "new woman" novel of late Victorian England, and has done research on how the Victorians held to invent our current concepts of "old age." She is also researching Victorian - era "arguments with animals."
Mary Trachsel is an associate professor, and current chair, of the Department of Rhetoric. She is interested in the politics of literacy as well as relational ethics and feminist pedagogy; most recently, she has been exploring "the attribution of “personhood” to nonhuman creatures, particularly attributions that arise from the fields of ape-language research and animal cognition."