By design, the College Seminars actively involve you in learning as envisioned by a liberal arts education. The small class environment allows for the examination of an academic area in a way that encourages first-year students to think critically and analytically. Since the instructors of the college seminars serve as their students’ academic advisers, they can assess the students’ abilities, interests, and concerns, and provide them with the proper counsel.

Carefully examine the offering of College Seminar topics for this semester. In making your selection, please keep in mind that the seminars are not introductions to major programs and you are not expected to have any prior knowledge of the subject matter. In your seminar you are required to:

  • Attend and contribute to every session. The exchange of ideas and information belongs to the process of learning and is an inherent feature of a seminar.
  • Study reflectively the assigned books, articles, and other readings.
  • Write several brief papers. It is important to write carefully, edit, and re-write your papers before submitting them as you work to improve your writing skills. Your instructor will help you with the organization and style of your papers.
  • Participate actively in the seminar, presenting your ideas formally and informally. You learn to develop the skills that are required to make effective oral presentations.

You will note that many of the faculty are teaching courses that go beyond their own disciplines. As a liberal arts student, you, too, should explore a wide range of interests, and the College Seminar will provide you with an excellent opportunity to begin to do so.

Your academic adviser, the instructor of the seminar, brings to it not only scholarly expertise and professional experience but also a special interest in the topic being studied and in the College Seminar program itself. All of the instructors have participated in special training workshops and have agreed to adopt a uniform set of written and oral requirements. Everyone is ready to help you benefit fully from this experience.

Assignment to a Seminar

The seminars to be offered during Fall 2013 are listed below.

Note: You will need to complete the Drew Online Network User Training to earn credits for the Common Hour. You have the option of either self-paced online or instructor-paced class with lectures and demonstrations.

Living-Learning Community (LLC) Courses

The Living-Learning Community (LLC) is comprised of students who are registered for similar, themed College Seminars and who live together within the residence halls on campus. Students who participate in the LLC will have the opportunity to interact with their faculty members in their residence halls and participate in workshops, trips, and events that will enhance their classroom learning. The three courses that are a part of the LLC this year are:

  • CSEM 100-001/ What is Freedom?
  • CSEM 100-002/ Great Discoveries in Modern Science
  • CSEM 100-003/ Forty Studies that Changed Psychology

Course List

CSEM 100-001/ What is Freedom?

Instructor: Edward Baring
This is a Living and Learning Seminar. Students who elect this seminar will reside together in a living-learning community.
Political movements demand it, companies claim their products will give it to us, while we fight to preserve it in our daily lives. But what is freedom and why do we value it so highly? In this course we will discuss how the great minds of the past have defined freedom and study how the great historical revolutions hoped to realize that freedom in society. Over the course of the semester, we will investigate how freedom relates to responsibility, desire, and reason, and consider what limits to freedom, if any, are necessary in the modern world.

CSEM 100-002/ Great Discoveries in Modern Science

Instructor: Minjoon Kouh
This is a Living and Learning Seminar. Students who elect this seminar will reside together in a living-learning community.
We will study and explore great 20th-century breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and biology, such as the Theory of Special Relativity (Einstein), quantum mechanics (Planck, Bohr, and Heisenberg), chemical bonding (Pauling), expansion of the universe (Hubble), antibiotics (Flemming), structure of DNA (Watson, Crick, Franklin, and Gosling), etc. We will discuss how these theories and their rigorous experimental verification have changed our worldview. This seminar is for science lovers!

CSEM 100-003/ Forty Studies that Changed Psychology

Instructor: Patrick Dolan
This is a Living and Learning Seminar. Students who elect this seminar will reside together in a living-learning community.
Psychology is the science of mental processes and behaviors. Effective treatments for depression and anxiety, improved child rearing practices, and enhanced educational techniques are just a few examples of how psychological research has directly and profoundly improved our quality of life. This seminar will explore some of the most influential studies in psychology — topics that include the influence of nature versus nurture, conformity, sexuality, and false memories. In the process of discussing the methods and results of the particular studies, we will address the controversies, ethical dilemmas, and long-term implications of the findings on understanding what makes us tick.

CSEM 100-004/ Digging Creole Culture: Food, Music and the Plantation

Instructor: Allan Dawson
This seminar will explore how the different cultures—African, Indigenous and European—that made the societies of the Americas came together to create something new, whole and vibrant in the New World despite the brutality of slavery. From the US to Cuba, from Brazil to Argentina, we’ll examine the food, music and popular culture that grew out of the unique circumstances of the plantation and reflect upon what this can tell us about contemporary American society.

CSEM 100-005/ Imagining the Future

Instructor: Lee Arnold
In 1935 critic and theorist Walter Benjamin write: “I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.” The effect of art and cinema on modern culture has been dramatic and continues to shape the way we see the world. In this course we will read critical texts, look at art, and view films in which the authors have attempted to portray utopian and dystopian visions of the future. We will explore the language of modern art forms, and discuss the effect of new technologies on the way we view the present. Students will also work collaboratively to create works that address their own visions of the future.

CSEM 100-006/ Women and Art

Instructor: Margaret Kuntz
This course will explore the evolving role of women as patrons of art, makers of art, and as subjects of art. Through a series of case studies and a variety of media we will explore the visual arts, both past and present, as a means to better understand the role of women in past cultures and in our contemporary society. Some of the topics covered will include: prominent, powerful women of the past such as Egypt’s Queen Hatshepsut and Marie de’Medici Queen of France; ancient images of Venus/Aphrodite will be discussed in connection with their Renaissance reincarnation and modern images of the nude. In addition, we will question the emergence of the female artist in the sixteenth century and the role of women today as award winning architects, street artists, and members of the great museums around the world.

CSEM 100-007/ Biological Invasions

Instructor: Sara Webb
Our global mobility has dramatically rearranged the earth’s flora and fauna, intentionally and accidentally. Brown tree snakes on Guam, rabbits in Australia, purple loosestrife in wetlands across North America, and zebra mussels in the Hudson River are all examples of introduced species now wildly successful in their
new habitats. Biological invasions threaten ecosystems, cause extinctions, and cost the U.S. alone over $130 billion each year. This seminar explores their complexity, consequences, and potential control. In addition to readings, research, and discussion, students will participate in invasive plant research and management efforts in the Drew University Forest Preserve.

CSEM 100-008/ Who are you staring at? The history and politics of disability in the United States.

Instructor: Jim Hala
Disability is a lot like beauty—it’s in the eye of the beholder. In this seminar we will look at the history of disability, how it has been defined, how it fits into social ideas about normalcy, and how like many other movements such as racial and religious civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ rights, it has developed a political stance and voice. We will consider the ways in which cognitive issues such as autism/Asperger’s impact our notions of education; how disability is caused by our notions of enablement; and the legal responses to disability, including the eugenics craze of the first half of the 20th c and the ADA. Our primary readings will be taken from Joseph Shapiro’s NO PITY, and we will supplement those readings with plays, poetry, short stories and film.

CSEM 100-009/ Theater of the Absurd

Instructor: Neil Levi
The critic Martin Esslin proposed the notion of the Theater of the Absurd to describe a diverse group of European playwrights working in the wake of World War Two. In this seminar we will examine the works of some of those playwrights: Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter and some others (perhaps including some American writers—Sam Shepherd, Richard Foreman). Our goals will be to understand their work as best we can and to consider the strengths and weaknesses of Esslin’s notion of the Theater of the Absurd itself.

CSEM 100-010/ From Hollywood to Cannes via Ouagadougou

Instructor: Marie-Pascale Pieretti
The aim of this seminar is to study the culture of film festivals, to explore recent nominations and awards, and to analyze the themes, the cinematographic techniques and the critique of these films. Among others, we will attempt to answer the following questions: What particular ideas and values do these films promote? How were these films selected and what made them winners? How do these winners fit in the aesthetic, business or geopolitical agendas of the organizations that bestow these awards?

CSEM 100-011/ “How Soccer Explains the World”: Sports, Nationalism, and Globalization in the Modern World

Instructor: Bill Rogers
The global power of soccer might be a little hard for Americans, living in a country that views the game with the same skepticism used for the metric system, to grasp fully. But in Europe, South America, and elsewhere, soccer is not merely a pastime but often an expression of the social, economic, political, and racial composition of the communities that host both the teams and their throngs of enthusiastic fans. Yet some say the United States is the most sports crazy society in the world, with nearly every sport ever invented being played here. What do sports say about societies and cultures, about globalization and modernization? Soccer is not the only sport with such a powerful impact in the modern world and we will explore others as well, especially baseball.

CSEM 100-012/ The Digital Revolution

Instructor: Steve Kass
In 2009, U.S. television stations began broadcasting exclusively in digital format. Millions of suburban and rural Americans lost the ability to receive television signals with a set-top antenna. A 2010 news headline announced “Earth becoming invisible to aliens” because of the transition to digital broadcasting. The rapid transition from analog to digital information affects all aspects of life and society. Digital photographs outnumber film photographs by more than 100-to-1. Commercial music sales are nearly all digital. Paper business documents, once archived deep in salt mines, are now scanned, stored digitally, and destroyed. Mail and currency have been replaced by electronic messages and payments, signatures by PIN codes and passwords, road maps by GPS and digital mapping technologies. In homes, packed bookshelves and carefully organized photo albums are replaced by memory cards and documents stored in “the cloud.” Communication, and the ability to preserve and pass on information and history, is at the heart of what it means to be human. In this seminar, we will explore the analog-to-digital revolution both technically and with an eye towards its effects on human society.

CSEM 100-013/ Redefining the Hero: How Independent Video Games Can Rewrite the Heroic

Instructor: TBA
Heroic myths have been passed along and studied for thousands of years. Traditional notions of heroism dominate the media we consume, whether it takes the form of a movie, novel or mainstream comic. Taking Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” as the basis of traditional heroism, this course will examine what we mean when we call someone a hero. Then, we will look at a recent trend in independent video game design that has posited alternative modes of heroism by highlighting individuals with unique traits to the role of the protagonist.

CSEM 100-014/ Music: So What?

Instructor: Jason Bishop
How have the perceived aesthetic and utilitarian purposes of music evolved over time? Is music an essential element of social progress, or are some societies devoid of musical expression? Are certain genres of music more purposeful, or more capable of galvanizing a community? By considering and discussing the opinions of prominent musicians and scholars, and examining a diversity of vocal and instrumental repertoire in historical context, this seminar will grapple with questions that seek the significance of music in an ever-changing world.

CSEM 100-015/ Political Scandal in America

Instructor: Phil Mundo
This course explores political scandal in American over the last century. We will study scandals, some notorious—e.g., Watergate—others that are not well known, with an eye toward what they tell us about American politics. The course addresses several key questions: What counts as political scandal and why? How has political scandal changed over time? What is the relationship between political scandal and other aspects of American politics? On balance, is political scandal really a problem?

CSEM 100-016/ On Being Human

Instructor: George-Harold Jennings
In this seminar we examine the experience of being human. In addition to discussing ideas about human origin, we explore numerous psychological perspectives regarding human nature and society, social ills that diminish human expression, love, gender roles, healthy and unhealthy personalities, sexuality, parapsychological (Psi) phenomenon, spirituality, consciousness, death and dying, and religious concerns from both Western and Eastern perspectives.

CSEM 100-017/ Basic Issues in Medical Ethics

Instructor: Darrell Cole
The course will survey the basic moral issues found in the practice of medicine. Topics to be covered will include the physician-patient relationship, defining death, organ transplantation, making decisions for incompetent patients, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, genetic engineering, and public health issues.

CSEM 100-018/ What do YOU have to do with it? You and College

Instructor: Caitlin Killian
What will be your experience in college? How will it be the same or different from the college experiences of other students? Are females taking over higher education? What prevents star high school basketball players from going to college? Which major leads to the highest salary? The most happiness? What is law school like for working class students? Do certain types of professors score higher teaching evaluations than others? What is concerted cultivation? Who negotiates for better grades? How do teachers treat immigrant students? We will look at these and a plethora of other education-related questions through a sociological lens and figure out where you fit in and how you can shape your next four years and beyond.

CSEM 100-019/ Acting Through the Ages

Instructor: Chris Ceraso
What has been the actor’s place in theatrical art from ancient to modern times, and what has constituted artistic success? We will study methods by which actors of various eras, in various parts of the globe, were trained to “hold the mirror up to nature,” and by what standards they have been judged. Using historical documents, manifestoes, critical responses, photographs and films (and by trying out various techniques ourselves) we will chart the principal artistic, cultural and philosophical movements that have guided these human chameleons from the masked thespians of ancient Greece and Rome to the thoroughly unmasked performers of our own moment in theatrical time.

CSEM 100-020/ Intentionality and Technology: How does Screentime Affect Your “Real” Life?

Instructor: Gamin Bartle
A significant portion of life today takes place on screens large and small, and screentime is a major topic of debate in the mainstream media, academic spheres and the professional world. This seminar will invite participants to take a close look at the larger debate while focusing on their own online behavior, identity creation, multi-tasking, technology-induced stress and emerging technologies intended to reduce stress. The goal is to articulate impacts all of these have on our “real” lives and to consider how these might be mitigated using mindfulness techniques. Participants will be asked to create arguments for multiple sides of the debate, using critical thinking and analytic skills, in order to come up with an intentionality plan for daily technology use.

CSEM 100-021/ Forensic Anthropology Examined

Instructor: Linda Van Blerkom
Can forensic anthropologists really do all the amazing things you see on the TV show Bones? Just how accurate are the cases portrayed on CSI and other forensic shows? In this seminar we examine what forensic anthropologists really do and explore a number of actual cases, including human rights investigations and mass fatalities. Learn how experts match unidentified remains with missing persons or help the police determine cause and manner of death. We also consider how anthropologists have been instrumental in investigating mass graves related to human rights abuses and have helped bring perpetrators to justice and closure to the victims’ families. While forensic specialists may not be able to reconstruct holographic bodies like Angela does on Bones, what they can do is still pretty impressive.

CSEM 100-022/ Community Service

Instructor: Amy Koritz
While we believe community service to be a good thing, an activity that benefits others and improves our shared world, we may not have thought much about the meaning of community, or, indeed, of service. What constitutes a community? Do we belong to a single community or many? And is service always beneficial to those being served? We will explore assumptions and beliefs about these two key terms—both separately and together. This seminar is limited to Civic Scholars. Students will contribute 18-20 hours of community service over the course of the semester.

CSEM 100-023/ Community Service

Instructor: Jonathan Reader
While we believe community service to be a good thing, an activity that benefits others and improves our shared world, we may not have thought much about the meaning of community, or, indeed, of service. What constitutes a community? Do we belong to a single community or many? And is service always beneficial to those being served? We will explore assumptions and beliefs about these two key terms—both separately and together. This seminar is limited to Civic Scholars. Students will contribute 18-20 hours of community service over the course of the semester.

CSEM 100-024/ Community Service

Instructor: Elise DuBord
While we believe community service to be a good thing, an activity that benefits others and improves our shared world, we may not have thought much about the meaning of community, or, indeed, of service. What constitutes a community? Do we belong to a single community or many? And is service always beneficial to those being served? We will explore assumptions and beliefs about these two key terms—both separately and together. This seminar is limited to Civic Scholars. Students will contribute 18-20 hours of community service over the course of the semester.