First-Year Seminar - Course DescriptionsLoading...Course Lookup:Course Lookup:Racial Justice and Black Latin American Literature, Music, and FilmScience, Science Fiction, Society & SelfSocial Issues in ScienceA Scientifically Based Approach to Academics, Health, and RelationshipsPictures Telling StoriesCalifornia Dreaming: SF from CaliforniaLeaders in Modern Times: Democracies and DictatorshipsFailure, Ignorance, and Uncertainty – How Knowledge AdvancesImagining Family in Modern JapanMusic and WordsGods, Heroes, and Human VirtuePostcolonial LiteratureAdventures in Applied MathematicsWho wants to be a Millionaire? Personal Financial Planning & ManagementYou Are HereRace and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean WorldRacial Justice and Black Latin American Literature, Music, and FilmRacial justice is one of the most compelling social challenges for today’s students. According to the recent Modern Language Association Statement Deploring Systemic Racism, “It has never been more important for educational institutions to support and expand Black and Africana studies, Latinx and ethnic studies, and Native American studies and to teach the literatures born of struggle against racist violence.” In an effort to give a more complete picture of Latin American literature and culture in the context of current issues relating to race and ethnicity, my course focuses on Black Latin American literature and film, an understudied aspect of Latin American history and art. It introduces students to translations of Afro-Latinx literature and film originally created in Spanish and Portuguese from Cuba, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Panamá, Honduras, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, and Uruguay. Students will be immersed in the literature, film, music and dance of Black Latin America. For example, students will explore stories, plays, poetry, and documentaries, including the groundbreaking Cuban films of Sara Gómez (the first Black female film director in the Americas); Brazilian films such as BlackOrpheus, Favela Rising, and City of God; Afro-Latinx music—son, merengue, bomba, salsa, samba, reggae, reggaetón, hip hop, tango; recent Afro-Colombian music by ChocQuibTown and Grupo Niche, and films such as Manos sucias, Playa DC, and Chocó; Afro-Peruvian dance and poetry by Victoria Santa Cruz; and, Puerto Rican and Dominican short stories and films about important Afro-Latinx themes such as the natural hair movement and post-colonial sexual tourism.Science, Science Fiction, Society & SelfTime travel, SETI, artificial intelligence planetary colonization, and genetic engineering are topics that have become common place in the genre of science fiction, which has fascinated and entertained millions of people. Novels such as Carl Sagan’s “Contact”, Isaac Asimov’s “I robot” and Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragons Dawn” are just three examples of this genre. Within each work the use of science and the interplay between science and society will be examined. We will be asking some hard questions:Has the author cast science as a force of good or ill?Is the science used in the text actually viable technology of the age or is it more fiction than fact?Does science affect society? If so, how?Does society affect science? If so, how?How has/will science effect how we live and interact?What lessons can we take away from Science Fiction?In addition to in class discussions, students will have multiple writing assignments such as opinion papers, short research documents, and reflections as a way to strengthen communication skills.The last topic this class will address is “self.” Self is a broad term, but for this class we will focus on student well-being and learning. Learning for each person is different, however whenever you learn it means that you have made long lasting connections to information and ideas. Unfortunately, many students have utilized cram/pass/forget strategies that are not sustainable at the college level. We will look at modern science dealing with memory and new strategies for long-lasting learning.Social Issues in ScienceScience is never done in isolation. Even when it may not seem obvious, most scientific discoveries have deep societal implications. In this class, we will explore some of the social, ethical, and moral issues that have emerged due to scientific discoveries and practices, both in the past and present. Topics will include issues such as the poor treatment of minority groups by the medical establishment and the ramifications of those practices today, the lack of gender and racial equity in many scientific fields, and the misuse of scientific theories to uphold and promote discriminatory practices. Finally, we will end the course by exploring the myriad of questions that are being raised by the breathtakingly fast unraveling of the human genetic code. Do you own your DNA? Does your DNA give you a sense of identity? Should we allow individuals to edit their DNA or that of their child? This course will involve an emphasis on writing, with the goal of improving writing skills to set you up for future success at AC.A Scientifically Based Approach to Academics, Health, and RelationshipsCollege presents incoming freshman with a challenging new environment in which to grow academically, socially, and physically. Additionally, the First-Year Experience partly serves to assist incoming students by helping them acclimate to the rigors of college level work. This course serves the purpose of orienting new students to college life, but will also explore the science underlying success in academics, health, and relationships. Predominantly drawing from the psychological literature, the course will empirically explore a variety of topics including goal setting, motivation, self-control, healthy eating and exercise, happiness, and communication in relationships.Pictures Telling StoriesEver since the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, humans have used images to tell stories. There is an inherent tension to this practice; unlike the linear, sequential representation of events in a spoken tale or in a literary work, a depiction tends to communicate its contents all at once, somewhat negating the sense of past, present, and future. Even when images are arranged in a series, to be viewed in sequence, gaps in time, place, and action can occur, yielding an experience still not quite analogous to a literary text. This tension has presented a perennial challenge to artists, however, giving rise to a variety of solutions and a rich history of narrative art. If artists had not taken up this challenge, we would not have the sculptures of the Parthenon or of Trajan’s Column, paintings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt or Jacques-Louis David, or certain twentieth-century art forms—the comic strip, comic book and graphic novel. As the latter media suggest, the combination of word and image can supply a powerful means of expression and communication, and seems to be taking on increasing prominence in the contemporary world.This course will examine the history of narrative art from antiquity to the present, and evaluate the methods artists have used, and continue to use, to tell stories with pictures. We will approach our topic by reading about the principles and theory of visual narrative, and by studying works of art from painting and sculpture to comic books and graphic novels, with an emphasis on works from the twentieth century. All students will write papers that are designed to develop the clear expression of ideas and the ability to conduct college-level researchCalifornia Dreaming: SF from CaliforniaMany of the twentieth century's best science fiction writers either were from or did their best work in California. The Golden State exerted a formative influence not just on them but arguably on the genre of science fiction itself (or SF). Think of authors like Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Kim Stanley Robinson. What was it about California that seemed so welcoming to SF? Its frontier history? Its utopian countercultures? Its aerospace industry? Its mixture of mountain and beach, urban and rural, white and brown? Its concentration of dream factories like Disneyland and Hollywood in the same city? Probably all of the above and more. This is a class for people who like to read, and we will have serious fun reading the Californian dreams of Butler, Robinson, and Peter Tieryas. We will ask what SF from and about California can tell us about the state, the genre, and humans’ relationship to science, technology, the cosmos, and each other. Leaders in Modern Times: Democracies and DictatorshipsHow do leaders in democracies and dictatorship differ? Are they more or less charismatic or legitimate? This course will cover political leadership in modern state structures. In order to understand the peculiar aspects of leadership, we will look into the leaders in various parts of the world at different times. The course will have both theoretical and practical components. The students will write short and long essays on the topic, fulfilling their foundational writing (FW) components as well.Failure, Ignorance, and Uncertainty- How Knowledge AdvancesScience is one of the most powerful ways of understanding the natural world. And it is often presented as scientists methodically testing their hypotheses and proving their initial insights to be true. Yet in trying to explain how the world works, we are often very ignorant of the processes involved, repeatedly fail to develop successful explanations, and have uncertainty even in our best understood theories. How do we use these apparent limitations to improve our knowledge and defend against our biased thinking?We will look at several case studies including human evolution, climate change, genetic testing, and vaccine development, among others. These will help show how, despite many initial misconceptions and several remaining uncertainties, we have developed much more understanding. Class assignments will hone skills used to evaluate how evidence and logic can be used to build compelling arguments.Imagining Family in Modern JapanIn this course, we will examine depictions of family in Japanese culture, with a focus on cultural production during the 20th and early 21st centuries, primarily short stories and films. Our goal is to better understand the importance of family in Japanese society, and the role of art- fiction and cinema- in perpetuating traditional notions of domestic life, as well as representing the challenges to the familial unit in the modern age. Through reading, interpreting, and discussing a variety of texts, we will explore relevant topics, including the ie system, "traditional" vs. nuclear families, marriage and divorce, child rearing, filial responsibility, traditional and non-traditional gender roles, dysfunction, aging, single-parent and LGBT parenting families. Our study will foster awareness of global issues, as well as understanding of cultural difference and an appreciation of one's own culture within a diverse world. Knowledge of Japanese language is not required. Class discussions and readings will be in English. Films and other media will be in Japanese with English subtitles. Assignments are designed to improve the critical thinking and communication skills that will ensure success at Austin College and throughout your career of life-long learning.Music and WordsDrawing freely from across time and place, Music and Words examines strikingly diverse musical responses to such universal textual themes as love, sorrow, humor, madness, and the like. In doing so, the course favors word-music collaborations that are especially eye- and ear-catching, that offer enlightening points of comparison, and that raise intriguing questions about the nature of words and the nature of music. Analytic and research projects, small group activities and discussions, classroom presentations and more help students to listen more knowledgeably, critically, and creatively as they study the relative contributions of text and music in considered examples. Finally, as a First Year Seminar course, Music and Words introduces students to many valuable resources and opportunities available to them as members of the Austin College community.Adventures in Applied MathematicsAs new inventions in technology enable us to accomplish incredible things at incredible speeds, we often focus on their applications rather than the underlining mechanisms - often in the form of some mathematical concepts. Did you know that this rather mundane-looking equation 𝑦2=𝑥3+7is a crucial component of the technology behind Bitcoin? Or did you know that prime numbers have been protecting our credit card information when we make a purchase online all these years?In this course, we will explore the role of mathematics in several everyday-life areas such as finance, politics, music, sports, and more. The goal is to broaden our understanding and appreciation for mathematics in "the real world". Perhaps some of you will find the inspiration to pursue a career in one of these areas.Course activities will include solving problems, reading books/articles, writing papers, and presenting to an audience.Who wants to be a Millionaire? Personal Financial Planning & ManagementSome life lessons are expensive and take years to learn. A man I knew would frequently state, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance for a while.” Although most personal financial lessons are usually not addressed in college, ignorance in this realm can prove damaging for both you and the economic health of the nation and global economy.In this course, we will explore recent financial events, including the challenges and successes of the past decade. In order to learn legitimate and ethical strategies for successful financial management, we will use a direct approach to many of the financial challenges you will all someday face. Through readings, discussions, library and internet research, writing assignments, and group projects, we will address the following topics: Budgeting, Cash Management, Buying a Home, Risk Management, Investments, Tax Planning and Managing Credit.Regardless of your background, academic major or future plans, you will benefit from the practical knowledge offered by this course. Even a casual study of recent economic events points out the importance of financial knowledge for both the individual and society.You Are HereFall 2021 will be a time for you to navigate a new place, Austin College, and all of the new experiences and relationships within it. At the same time, we all will be navigating public places in new ways, wrestling with what public life looks and feels like after a global pandemic kept us out of public places and reconfigured our experiences of these places. And we are also learning from citizens, writers, activists, journalists, and researchers about how the places we think we know have been shaped by such factors as racial segregation, gentrification, and climate change.This moment offers an invitation to step back—as well as step in—to explore our understanding of place in new ways. What are the cultural, historical, and material conditions that shape places? How do the dimensions of places impact the ways we make meaning and take action with and within them? This writing-intensive course will explore common places—our hometowns, our college, the urban, the suburban, and the rural—drawing on multiple perspectives and methods. In addition to engaging with academic writing and critical reading, we will utilize moving, observing, conducting research, mapping, and reflecting to write our way into new places.Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean WorldHow do you describe yourself? By the color of your skin? By your religion? By where you live? By what language you speak? These questions of identity are crucial and relevant today to understanding our world. Guess what? They were just as relevant in antiquity for the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world in understanding how they saw themselves and each other.In this class, we will investigate the construction, depiction, and understanding of race and ethnicity in antiquity using mainly Greek and Roman texts (because that’s what we have the most of!) as well as archaeological evidence. We will also look at how depictions of race and ethnicity from Classical antiquity have been distorted by various modern movements of the far right to support a false idea of white supremacy. This class will challenge your understanding of race and ethnicity while expanding your conception of the ancient world. Through the reading and writing assignments and our discussions, we will explore a usually invisible aspect of Classical antiquity. The skills you learn in doing so will be immediately relevant to our world today and will have broad applications in your life at AC and throughout your life after.Postcolonial LiteratureWe live in a colonized world. When Europeans and other colonizers crossed the globe in order to claim and settle indigenous land, enslave and forcibly transport people in the name of imperialism and economic progress, modern history began. Colonialism was and is an ideology: a way of understanding and shaping reality. In this course, we will use literature and theory produced by Black thinkers to investigate how colonialism works, and to imagine ways of de-colonizing in theory and in practice. How does colonialism inform our ways of talking and thinking about the Caribbean, Africa and the “global south”? How do cultures and people persist in colonizing in new ways? And how can colonized people re-imagine political and cultural freedom in a global system designed to oppress?This interdisciplinary course will require analysis of economic structures (capitalism), political movements (revolutionary and imperial), geography, racism and anti-racism, and of history. We will approach these topics through the study of literature and will read Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Franz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Assia Djebar, Angela Davis, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and other scholars. We will use these theoretical and literary tools to question our own involvement in colonialism and to de-colonize our approach to social, political, and educational issues. Informing our practice will be the assessment of daily actions, discourse, and cultural structures in which we all participate.Gods, Heroes, and Human VirtueIs the world a cosmos ordered by God or gods, or a chaos ruled by chance? What is the place of human beings in the world? Who are we and where are we going? Is there a most excellent and praiseworthy human life? By careful reading and intense discussion of classical, Christian, and modern writers, students will explore, as an introduction to liberal education, the questions above through the critical exegesis of great books that must, in the words of Francis Bacon, “be chewed and digested.” Satisfactory completion of the course requires thorough preparation for each class discussion, extra preparation for class discussion leadership, consistent attendance and participation, and able and timely performance on four paper assignments. Readings will include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Plato’s Euthyphro, St. Augustine’s Confessions, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Jonathan Swift’s Battle of the Books and Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography.Submit