All entering Middlebury students take a First-Year Seminar during their first semester on campus. These seminars are writing intensive courses, limited to 15 students each, and they are taught by regular, full-time faculty members who also serve as students' academic advisers for their first three semesters at Middlebury. Seminar topics, which change from year to year, are selected by the individual professor and generally reflect that faculty member's research interests or an area of expertise not directly addressed in departmental courses. These are not survey courses. Rather they are designed to prick students' intellectual curiosity in a particular subject, and to encourage them to pursue a focused interest in depth. Many of the seminars offer interdisciplinary perspectives; most include activities outside the classroom; all seminars help students develop their reading, thinking, writing, and speaking skills.
Atwater Commons-based Seminars, Fall 2009
This year, seven first-year seminars are based in Atwater Commons. Students enrolled in Commons-based seminars all live in the same dorm, sometimes on the same hall. Animated discussions from the classroom can continue on in the dorm, bringing the academic and residential worlds together naturally and productively.
Here is the list of our Commons-based seminars and their professors:
FYSE 1153 Poems, Poets, Poetry (Fall)
In this seminar, we will read a wide range of lyric and narrative poems and explore ways of responding to them, in discussion and in writing. We will contemplate the resources of language and expressive form and structure upon which poets variously depend and draw. We will ask such questions as: can a poem really be "analyzed " or "explicated", and what assumptions lie behind such an attempt? The aim of this seminar is to assist in making poetry accessible and enjoyable without diminishing its complexity or its challenge, and to encourage a sense of poems as companions for life. 3 hrs. sem. LIT (D. Price)
FYSE 1203 The Beast in the Jungle (Fall)
In this course, we will explore some literary texts in which the practice of exploration itself yields a complex confrontation with, and often breakdown of, identity and will. The westerner’s longing to separate him or herself from home and make contact with a foreign “other” arises from the high purposes that set imperial adventures in motion in the first place. Readings will include Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Forster’s Passage to India, Waugh’s Handful of Dust, Bowles’ Sheltering Sky, Stone’s Dog Soldiers, Duras’ The Lover, Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. 3 hrs. sem. LIT (R. Cohen)
FYSE 1268 Galapagos: Myth and Reality (Fall)
The Galapagos Islands have stimulated the imagination of writers, naturalists, sailors, and film-makers. Most people know the islands because of their influence on Charles Darwin's thinking about species and evolution, but indeed, their influence is widespread. In this seminar we will read texts by Darwin, Melville, and Dillard to understand the myth of the Galapagos; then we will proceed to books by Weiner (Beak of the Finch) and D'Orso (Plundering Paradise) to understand more about the science and culture of the islands. We will explore the precarious balance between tourism and conservation through readings in the primary literature. 3 hrs. sem./disc. (H. Young)
FYSE 1271 Contemporary Economics: Principles and Issues (Fall)
What’s going on with the economy? What are the economics of climate change and health care? Can the government help? If so, when and how? And why do economists disagree on such basic questions? In this seminar, we will try to answer these and other key contemporary economic questions—or at least understand how economists of various political and methodological stripes think about them. We will read pop-economics books (e.g., Freakonomics; Economics in One Lesson; Animal Spirits), periodicals, and blogs. Students will apply new "econ-think" skills in regular writing assignments and a series of in-class debates. 3 hrs sem. SOC (C. Rothschild)
FYSE 1275 The Geological Landscape of Native America (Fall)
In this seminar we will examine numerous issues related to the geology of America prior to the 15th-century. What types of landscapes were encountered by early Native Americans? Did they first arrive here via a Siberia-Alaska land bridge a mere 12,000 years ago, or have people lived in America for longer, say 50,000 years? Perhaps longer? How have American landscapes evolved over the millennia, and how did early Americans adapt? Many of the answers to these questions are contained in the geological record of lake sediments, river terraces, and other geological environments. Readings will include popular and scientific literature and oral histories. 3 hrs. sem./ lab. SCI NOR (P. Ryan)
FYSE 1280 Breaking the Code: The Enigma of Alan Turing (Fall)
British mathematician Alan Turing broke the German military's prized Enigma cipher in World War II, created the foundations of modern computer science, and pioneered the fields of artificial intelligence ("Can Machines Think?") and neural networks. Turing was arrested for homosexuality and forced to undergo hormone treatments that may have led to his apparent suicide by cyanide poisoning at a relatively young age. His brilliant achievements and tragic death have been the subject of biographies, essays, plays, novels, and films. We will explore the life and works of this remarkable individual in the context of the World War II and its aftermath. There will be two sections of this seminar meeting in adjacent rooms. At times we will bring all the students and both instructors into the same room for a common lecture or presentation. At other times, we will meet separately to promote better discussions and work on writing. 3 hrs. sem./screening DED EUR (R. Martin, M. Olinick)
FYSE 1285 Interpersonal Process (Fall)
Two people chat with one another in what seems like an easy, natural exchange. Careful scrutiny of their words, gestures, and appearance, however, reveals that their interaction is a complex, carefully choreographed dance of expectations, impressions, self-presentations, messages, and meta-messages. In this seminar, we will explore the psychological science behind such interpersonal processes, drawing heavily from the scholarly literature in psychology and sociology, and occasionally from popular works. We will maintain a skeptical eye throughout, asking questions such as: How convincing is the evidence? and Why does it not always square with our personal experience? 3 hrs. sem. SOC (S. Gurland)