First-Year Seminars

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.

This year, nine first-year seminars are based in Brainerd 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 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 1025 Chance (Fall)
Do movie reviews affect box-office revenues? Do the U.S. News rankings affect the size of Middlebury's applicant pool? In what sense do these assessments reflect "quality"? The Wall Street Journal recently asked, "Can eating breakfast cereal determine the sex of your baby?" Nowadays, you can't read the news, choose a college, or even enjoy breakfast without encountering statistical claims. Which would you trust to inform your life decisions? We will investigate these questions through readings that include your favorite newspaper, paleobiologist Stephen J. Gould's incisive essays on excellence and variability, and statistician Edward Tufte's trenchant critique of data graphics in the popular press. 3 hrs. sem. DED (W. Peterson)

FYSE 1133 Faith and Reason (Fall)
In this seminar we will explore perennial and contemporary questions in the philosophy of religion: Is there a God? Are objective proofs of God possible, or is religious belief founded on subjective feelings? What is faith? The modern period has been a time of unprecedented crisis for religion, and we will focus in particular on these challenges and responses to them. Is religion, as Freud thought, just wish-fulfillment? Is religious belief compatible with science? Can any religion claim to be the true religion in a pluralistic world? Authors read will include St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Kant, Kierkegaard, James, Freud, and contemporary philosophers. 3 hrs. sem. PHL (J. Spackman)

FYSE 1183 Psychology and the Meaning of Life (Fall)
The goal of this seminar will be to explore what psychology can teach us about the meaning of life. We will start with earlier, more philosophical models (Freud, Frankl, Maslow) and conclude with modern empirical approaches to the study of "happiness" and "meaningfulness" (Seligman, Czikszentmihalyi, Kasser). This seminar will include a substantial service learning component in which students will volunteer in community organizations and use those experiences as material for class discussion and assignments. 3 hrs. sem. SOC (M. Kimble)

FYSE 1207 Stories, Myths, and National Identity (Fall)
What is national identity, and how important is it? How does national identity interact with and affect personal identity? How is the age of a nation determined? How does a nation become a state? Can a state become a nation? What are "invented traditions"? We will look at the way different texts and media are used in creating a sense of belonging, or not belonging, to a nation. We will study texts by Herodotus, Goethe, Fichte, Wagner, Shakespeare, Defoe, Nora, Yeats, Cooper, Turner, others. We will view films including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra), Lawrence of Arabia (Lean), Last of the Mohicans (Mann), The Promise (Trotta). 3 hrs. sem. LIT SOC EUR (M. Geisler)

FYSE 1243 Paris, City of Exile (Fall)
Internationally perceived as a place of freedom and enlightenment, Paris is a destination to which have flocked countless foreign exiles and expatriates. At the same time, however, a rather different notion of Parisian exile can be sensed in the ways some writers have expressed their feelings of profound alienation, disaffection, even fear, in the face of the modern metropolis and the form of civilization it is seen to incarnate. In this seminar we will examine the works of a variety of writers and filmmakers, both French (Baudelaire, Zola, Breton, Perec, Truffaut) and non-French (Hemingway, Huston), whose representations of Paris reflect the theme of exile as it relates to their experience of the modern urban landscape. No knowledge of French required. 3 hrs. sem. LIT EUR (C. Nunley)

FYSE 1269 Language Acquisition (Fall)
A normal developing child can acquire any human language in the right environment, yet it is much more difficult for an adult to achieve the same kind of proficiency in a second language. Why is this? In this seminar we will explore the topic of language acquisition. Some of the questions we will ask are: How do children acquire their first language? Is it effortless? Are humans "hardwired" with language? Is it true that after the "Critical Period," the onset of puberty, humans have lost this capacity? We will also explore the social and cultural constraints on both first and second language acquisition, and learn the basic tools for collecting data for language acquisition research. 3 hrs. sem. SOC (H. Du)

FYSE 1270 The Body in American Culture (Fall)
In this course we will explore how the human body has been viewed, exhibited, and objectified in American culture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. We will consider the body's function as a site for the construction of meanings based on gender, race, sexuality, nationality, and class. We will also consider the body's relationship to evolving discourses of pornography, disability and disease, technology, and corporal punishment. Course materials will span a range of disciplines, including art, literature, history, film, and advertising. HIS NOR (H. Allen)

FYSE 1283 Transitional Justice: Reckoning with the Past (Fall)
In this seminar we will examine how emerging democracies reckon with former authoritarian regimes and their legacies. In contrast to stable democracies, societies in transition that seek to overcome a legacy of large scale human rights violations—and minimize the risks of their recurrence—must search for a delicate political compromise that will bring some justice without undermining the new order. Several case studies from Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and postcommunist Europe will help us understand the forces and factors that shape the dilemma: to prosecute and punish versus to forgive and forget. Course readings will be supplemented by documentaries and fiction films. 3 hrs. sem. HIS SOC CMP (M. Kraus)

FYSE 1284 Latin America in the World (Fall)
In this seminar we will focus on the interaction of Latin America with the “outside” world from historical, political, economic, and cultural perspectives. We will concentrate on post-independence Latin America, and in particular look at the way Latin Americans have viewed their relationship with the outside world in the 20th and early 21st-centuries. We will read a wide variety of texts, including writings and speeches of historical figures and intellectuals such as Simón Bolívar, José Martí, Che Guevara, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, political tracts by intellectuals such as Eduardo Galeano, and novels by prominent Latin American writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Luisa Valenzuela. Among the themes we will discuss are nationalism, imperialism, economic development, and cultural identity. 3 hrs. sem. SOC AAL (J. Cason)