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 2012 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 1/1: Local and Global
- CSEM 1/2: Physic and Computing
- CSEM 1/3: Should Documentary
The 2012-2013 Living-Learning Community will be focused on Images of Self and Other. The students in the LLC will live together in Holloway Hall. Students will begin their semester with a trip to a Broadway musical with faculty, staff, and mentors! For more information about the LLC, click here.
Course List
CSEM 1 /1 Local and Global in Latin American Film – LLC
Instructor: Ada Ortuzar-Young
This seminar will study selected films from Argentina, Cuba and Mexico and consider how they capture changes in these societies at the turn of the new millennium. While these societies share a Hispanic cultural foundation, recently they have been impacted by global economic and political forces, and by real and virtual cultural exchanges due to commerce, exile, migrations, travel, tourism, in addition to the pervasive influence of Hollywood, American popular culture, and a globalized mass media and the internet. The class will reflect on this rapid process of globalization and cultural homogenization, and on the formation of new identities that are fluid, permeable, and in the process of change. How do cultures negotiate and adapt as they evolve? What do they accept and what do they reject? Are new technologies, global travel, and instant communication eroding borders and frontiers? To what degree does geography still matter? How different are students in our class from their counterparts in Argentina, Cuba or Mexico?
CSEM 1/2 Physics and Computing of the Future - LLC (No seats available)
Instructor: Minjoon Kouh
We will study the works of several innovators, who are opening up new possibilities and tackling important technological and scientific problems in transformative ways around the world. Taken as a group, they present a snapshot of how new technologies in energy, nanotechnology, and computing may affect our lives in the future. Some examples to be discussed in the seminar are: driverless car, artificial intelligence, robotics, nano-devices, quantum computers, solar and fusion energies, etc. Many of these scientific and technological transformations will be profound and perhaps controversial, reshaping our views of who we are and what we can do.
CSEM 1/3 Should Documentary Filmmaking Go Mainstream? – LLC (No seats available)
Instructor: Audrey Evrard
Long kept in the margins of the film industry, documentary filmmaking has recently enjoyed greater visibility and been used to raise public awareness about a wide range of controversial social, cultural and political issues. From Al Gore’s plea for environmental responsibility in An Inconvenient Truth to Michael Moore’s 2004 Grand Prize in Cannes for Fahrenheit 9/11, Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, or more recently Charles Ferguson’s indictment of Wall Street’s reckless practices in Inside Job, the documentary genre has widely appealed to broader mainstream audiences. As we watch and discuss these films along with others from China, France, Brazil, we will reflect on the following questions: what defines a (successful) documentary in the early twenty-first century? What role does the notion of “point of view” play in the documentary genre? How does “going mainstream” affect the aesthetic and “truth-searching” principles of documentary filmmaking? What do documentary films teach us about “our” world?
CSEM 1/4 Scientists as People, People as Scientists
Instructor: David Miyamoto
While the process of doing science is seen as being systematic and rational, the people doing science act and behave as human beings. This seminar examines some of the human factors that affect people doing science. Potential topics of discussion include the scientific stereotype, competition and cooperation among scientists, discrimination in science, the economic and social impacts of “big-time” science, the impact of social action and political groups on scientific work, how scientific research is funded, the impact of the media on scientific discovery, and rewards, motivations, misconduct in the scientific community.
CSEM 1/5 Understanding the Global Economic Crisis (No seats available)
Instructor: Jason Jordan
This course will investigate the causes and consequences of the current global economic crisis. We will seek to place this crisis into a historical and global context in order to understand why the crisis happened and what its long term effects will be. Central questions will include: Why did the US housing market meltdown? What caused the banking crisis? Could it happen again? What is the European debt crisis? Why is the Greek economy near collapse? And, why should you care? What international institutions exist to correct these problems? Why don’t those institutions work? Does the economic crisis signal the end of American economic dominance in the world? Or, does it ironically reveal the incredible power of American capitalism? This is a class that should be of immediate interest to any student interested in the current and future health of the global and American economy.
CSEM 1/6 Art and the Body (No seats available)
Instructor: Rita Keane
In this course we will study the human body in art, considering questions such as: how has the body been employed in art over time? How and why do images of bodies signify differently for audiences? What do bodily ideals convey about ideologies of particular patrons and cultures? How do notions of the “ideal” body established in the past affect our thinking about images of bodies today? Our focus will be on ancient and medieval art, with some attention to early modern and modern artistic traditions. Our study will include, among others, prehistoric sculptures of women, ancient Egyptian mummies, images of Greek gods and goddesses, and fragmented bodies in medieval body-part reliquaries, with a consideration of how these traditions have affected our understandings of the body in art up to the present day.
CSEM 1/7 Madmen in Authority, Defunct Economists, and their Quarrels
Canceled
CSEM 1/8 On Being Human (No seats available)
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 1/9 Outliers: The Sociology of Success (No seats available)
Instructor: Christopher Andrews
Stories of extremely successful people often focus on individual characteristics such as hard work or intelligence, reflecting the American culture of individualism. Sociology, however, asserts that context is often just as important, if not more important, in understanding and explaining such outcomes. Drawing on Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success, this course examines exceptional groups and people in order to better understand the factors that led to their achievements.
CSEM 1/10 Iconic India!
Instructor: Karen Pechilis
Explore some of the world famous icons of India, including the Buddha, the epic story of Prince Rama, the Taj Mahal, colonial India as Britain’s “Jewel in the Crown,” Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March, and India’s Independence in 1947, to become acquainted with the fascinating story of India. The course draws on a rich variety of primary materials from the realms of art, film, history, literature and religion to explain why India is famous and influential in world history, art and culture.
CSEM 1/11 Contemporary Chinese Economy and Society
Canceled
CSEM 1/12 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 1/13 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 1/14 Shakespeare: Whodunnit? (No seats available)
Instructor: Jim Bazewicz
For more than 200 years after Shakespeare’s death no one questioned who wrote his plays, but in the last two centuries scholars and highly respected thinkers of our time have begun to doubt whether the glover’s son from Stratford could have written what many agree is the greatest body of work in the English language. Many have tried to unravel the mystery of who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. This course will begin to exam the Shakespeare authorship controversy: Why it evolved, why it continues to thrive, as well as examining who the possible candidates could be. Many believe it was Frances Bacon, or possibly the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (which gave birth to its present incarnation the Oxfordian Debate) or perhaps it was, as Sherlock Holmes brilliantly deducted, the Earl of Rutland. Dozens of candidates have been put forward. The cadre of famous naysayers include Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Orson Wells, Helen Keller as well as famous Shakespearean actors, Derek Jacoby and Mark Rylance. What evidence swayed these great thinkers and artists to believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote these plays. We will explore the scholarship on both sides of the controversy and you will draw your own conclusions. Conspiracy? Mystery? or Hooey? You decide.
CSEM 1/15 Thought for Food: Chinese Foodways (No seats available)
Instructor: Bai Di
There is nothing more basic than food. Food is not only essential to human life, it also constructs human life through food’s production, distribution, and consumption. Food is also cultural; different cultures give food different meanings. Chinese food is famous for its great varieties of delicious fare. There is a highly developed culinary culture in China. This seminar will be an interdisciplinary study on food in general, and a cross-cultural study on Chinese food culture in particular. While students get firsthand experience in the basics of making Chinese food, and appreciating different styles of Chinese food, students will explore food’s complex and competing relations to cultural identity, to matters of convenience, and to the consequences of what we eat in this world of growing population and diminishing resources.
CSEM 1/16 Contemporary Poetry (No seats available)
Instructor: Peggy Samuels
How have contemporary poets used the space of lyric poetry? We will consider a range of questions, including: Does poetry capture or produce intensity of experience? How do poets interact with ordinary spoken language and the history of language? What is the relationship between poetry and the memory of pain? What is the relationship between poetry and prayer? Can such a personal form have a role in public events? Is there a special relationship between poetry and conversing with the dead? Can poems play a role in creating meaningful arenas of privacy, intimacy, protest, companionship, liberty, joy? To dive into these questions, we will read poems and poets’ essays, a few drafts, letters, and interviews, a few critical essays. We will explore a range of poets, including Frank O’Hara, Mark Doty, Yusef Komunyakaa, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney. A field trip to the Dodge Poetry Festival is included.
CSEM 1/17 Environmental Justice
Instructor: Joslyn Cassady
Exposure to environmental contamination adversely affects billions of people in the world today. And recent research shows that this contamination occurs disproportionately in low-income communities and communities of color. In this class we will confront this disheartening reality head on. Through a wide selection of international case studies, we will consider such questions as: Why are some communities targeted for toxic waste dumps while others escape? To what extent should corporations be held responsible for the adverse health effects of their production and disposal processes? How can environmental justice initiatives be integrated into public policies? Ultimately this course considers how concerned citizens can most effectively prevent environmental injustices in their communities.
CSEM 1/18 Mathematics in the Popular Media
Instructor: Kathleen Madden
In the past decade, films such as A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting, stage plays such Proof and Arcadia, and TV shows such as Numb3rs have given mathematics and mathematicians a new prominence in popular culture. Characters and plots that at one time might have seemed hopelessly geeky are in vogue. However, many of these portrayals reinforce existing stereotypes of mathematics as the esoteric preoccupation of a gifted, unstable few. We will explore the mathematical ideas depicted in these productions and the real-life experiences of mathematicians in an attempt to determine the extent to which these popular media portrayals are rooted in reality.
CSEM 1/19 Lessons of Darkness: Art and Our Environment
Instructor: Claire Sherman
This course takes its title from Werner Herzog’s 1992 film, Lessons of Darkness, a film that uses the post-war landscape of Kuwait after the first Gulf War as it’s setting for ruminations on catastrophe, abstraction, and apocalyptic narratives. This course will examine the use of landscape as metaphor and narrative in art, while also looking at examples in film and literature. While considering both the historical context of landscape as well as uses of nature in contemporary frameworks, this class will look at landscape from perspectives ranging from the sublime to political and ecological concerns across media.
CSEM 1/20 Music in The Kitchen
Instructor: Norman Lowrey
With grounding in the development of strategies for listening deeply, “Music in the Kitchen” explores the processes of exploration itself: thinking and creating experimentally. We will listen to and study the music and writings by/about several prominent composers whose careers were supported and nurtured by one of New York’s most famous centers of avant-garde art, The Kitchen. Among the composers included are John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson. Through their music and ideas we’ll examine the creative process itself and explore ways of enhancing our own creative capabilities. The basic premise of the course is inspired by a line of poetry by Theodore Roethke: “What can be Known? The Unknown.”
CSEM 1/21 A Cubic Mile of Oil
Instructor: Mary-Ann Pearsall
A cubic mile of oil is approximately the total annual consumption of crude oil in the world today. This is generally considered to be unsustainable in the future. Members of this seminar will constitute a scientific advisory panel convened to consider the issues surrounding this looming problem and to offer recommendations regarding future energy choices in the tri-state region. We will begin by educating ourselves on the nature of energy and how we use it in our world today. We will then decide on criteria by which we might judge the various energy resources with a particular focus on their availability and cost as compared with their impact on the environment. Using these criteria we will assess the viability of alternative energy sources as realistic alternatives to conventional energy sources and finish by developing a set of recommendations for future energy choices.
CSEM 1/22 TBD
canceled
CSEM 1/23 Great Confessions and Famous Final Words (No seats available)
Instructor: Allan Nadler
The greatest writing of many of the most celebrated religious, social and political thinkers are often to be found in their final works, often entitled “confessions.” From Socrates and St. Augustine to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Leo Tolstoy, these mature writings reflect not only the wisdom of age and experience, but more importantly reveal the most intimate and personal reflections of these great writers. This seminar will examine the historical, literary, religious and ideological aspects of these remarkable texts. Students will be introduced to the final reflections on life’s meaning by history’s greatest minds. More importantly, the seminar will introduce students to the various literary and historical methods that can be employed in critically analyzing such unusually personal and subjective texts.
CSEM 1/24 Science and Invention in New Jersey
canceled
CSEM 1/25 Public Enemy #1: Pathogenic Microbes and Human Disease
canceled
CSEM 1/26 Uprising in the Arab World: Is there an Arab Spring and Will It Last?
Instructor: Catherine Keyser
Beginning in December of 2010 social uprisings began to sweep the Arab world. Quickly dubbed ‘the Arab Spring’ the world looked on as dictators fell, citizens spoke up, people died, and governments changed. How do we understand what has and continues to happen in the geo-political part of the world called the “Arab world” or the “Middle East.” In what way is this like the collapse of communism? How do we analyze and explain what happened in the more than 10 countries which have seen popular protests unseat long standing dictators? Is it an enduring and inexorable march to freer, more open, more just political entities? Or is it but a moment in history where the average person speaks out, but the spring does not evolve into summer but rather fades into a far more familiar autumn where a few benefit but the majority, having flashed in brilliant colors fall quietly away? What will you argue at the end of the semester? Come find out!
CSEM 1/27 Searching for Hamlet: On the Page, Stage, and Screen
Instructor: Dan LaPenta
Hamlet has been the play that most theatre artists have felt compelled to tackle in order to prove their “chops.” Scholars and critics have engaged in an unquenchable pursuit of the meanings and secrets of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. In this College Seminar, we will have the luxury of focusing our entire semester on this seemingly bottomless work, doing our own intensive exploration of the text, while continually asking the question “How do we translate what we learn about the play into performance?” In working towards possible answers, we will look at Shakespeare’s dramatic techniques and how what he writes helps define character and intention for the actor. Along with our thorough exploration of the text, we will study several film performances and the choices that those productions have made in bringing the Prince of Denmark alive. And in the end, we will most definitely want to ask the question, “What does Hamlet mean to us today?” While theatre experience would be helpful in this class, it is not a requirement. Love of Hamlet is!