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.
Wonnacott's Commons-based Seminars, Fall 2009
This year, eight first-year seminars are based in Wonnacott Commons. 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 1076 Communism and Fascism (Fall)
In this seminar we will study two major "totalitarian" regimes of the 20th-century, Nazism in Germany and Stalinism in Russia. We will concentrate on the cultural and philosophical origins of Fascism and Bolshevism. Readings will include selections from the writings of Marx, Mill, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Lenin, and Hitler, as well as cinematic works. 3 hrs. sem. HIS PHL EUR (J. West) west@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1145 Voices Along the Way (Fall)
This is a First Year Seminar for international students. In this seminar we will study American philosophy and culture through literature and history. We will read The Declaration of Independence and Emerson's Self-Reliance, and The Slave Narratives, and move towards transplanted writers such as Julia Alvarez and Abraham Rodriguez, Jr. We will also work with non-fiction, such as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. We will work on oral presentations, research, and writing, which will include short papers as well as longer ones. This seminar will enable a greater understanding of American culture through inquiry. 3 hrs. sem. HIS SOC NOR (H. Vila) hvila@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1225 Romantic Comedy: Shakespeare and the Movies (Fall)
How has romantic comedy portrayed courtship and gender relations? We will explore the subject by looking at classic plays and contemporary films. In particular, we will consider the long standing conventions of the romantic comedy to better understand its evolution and contemporary expression. We will begin by reading a selection of Shakespeare's comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and As You Like It, among others. In addition, we will watch screen adaptations, such as Much Ado About Nothing and related films such as Shakespeare in Love. We will then consider other dramatists of romantic comedy including Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw. Finally, we will shift our focus to contemporary romantic comedy on screen and how the genre has evolved in popular culture. 3 hrs. sem./screen. ART (L. Grindon) grindon@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1277 Birth of the Cool: American Culture at Mid-Century (Fall)
In the years immediately following World War II, the United States transitioned from backwater to a frontrunner in the fields of design, technology, arts, and letters. In this seminar we will explore how the concept of American "cool" was the product of postwar prosperity as well as cold war conflict. We will use cultural analysis of the 1950s and 1960s to examine issues such as internal migration, foreign policy, gender, race relations, and presidential politics. Students will engage a wide variety of textual and visual sources, from novels like Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit and films such as Rebel Without A Cause to scholarly works on the period. 3 hrs. sem. HIS NOR (J. Mao) jmao@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1278 Picturing Nature: Environmental Images through Time (Fall)
From Ansel Adams's landscapes to photographs of oily shorebirds in the wake of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, images of nature have influenced Americans' understanding of the physical environment over time. In this seminar we will investigate how photographs and other visual materials have both shaped and reflected American ideas about, and transformations of, nature. With thousands of historical photographs now accessible in digital archives, we will use the web carefully and critically, along with other scholarly sources, to identify and research images, formulate historical questions, and craft analytical essays, research projects, and web exhibits. Our discussions will include widely-published photographs as well as little-seen images that reveal less obvious and more complicated human connections to the natural world. Research collections will include the Farm Security Administration Archive from the 1930s and 1940s and the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress. 3 hrs. sem. HIS NOR (K. Morse) kmorse@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1287 Latin American Immigration and the American Dream (Fall)
Transnational migration, especially from Latin America, is transforming the ethnic composition of the Unites States at a time when our class inequalities are widening and our consumption levels are becoming unsustainable. In this seminar we will focus on migration streams from Mexico and Central America, compare them to earlier migration streams, and explore the implications for future generations. Will large migration streams make American society more tolerant and increase economic opportunities for the poor? Are large migration streams the product of inevitable historical forces, or do they instead result from decision-making by American elites? 3 hrs. sem. SOC AAL CMP (D. Stoll) dstoll@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1289 Introduction to Robot Culture: An Artificial Ethnicity (Fall)
In this seminar, we will focus on major literary and cinematic texts that have formed international perceptions of what could be defined as mechanical beings. We will study pre-20th-century narratives; the identification of robots with industrial workers before World War II (Čapek's R.U.R.); and their first portrayals as beings with an individual sense of identity (Asimov's I Robot). We will also discuss non-American portrayals (Tezuka's Astro Boy) and end with two important contemporary texts: Battlestar Galactica and Wall-E. Through an examination of fictional robots, this seminar aims to help students understand the artificiality of the construction of such societal concepts as ethnicity, gender, and class. 3 hrs. sem. LIT ART (E. Garcia) egarcia@middlebury.edu
FYSE 1290 Images of Africa and Africa's Self-Image (Fall)
What are our current images of Africa? What implicit and explicit colonialist representations persist? How and when do they fall apart? Why is African culture often viewed as “traditional” and thus distinct from contemporary (i.e. Western) culture? In this seminar we will explore how Africa is portrayed in film, folklore, literature for children and adults, popular culture, and mass media, and how these representations shape and are shaped by current and traditional politics, economics, and education. We will consider how Africa itself is negotiating the challenges of self-representation in the 21st-century through specific studies of different countries. 3 hrs. sem. LIT SOC AAL CMP (C. Cooper) ccooper@middlebury.edu