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First Year Seminar  Classes with descriptions for Fall 2025

Eating in East Asia (Min Zhou )

Course description: How have the production and consumption of food such as rice and ramen shaped national, personal and gender identities? How did tea culture reflect East Asian aesthetics and religion and lead to wars between China and the United Kingdom? Why does traditional Chinese medicine believe that food is nature and harmony with nature leads to healthy and balanced lives? Why are French or Japanese restaurants so expensive, while Thai, Chinese or Korean restaurants much more affordable even if they are located in the same city/region? In this course, we will explore these questions and discuss various social and historical aspects of food culture in China, Japan, and Korea. We will also provide our own food for thought by presenting our pick of topics surrounding an East Asian dish and sharing our own experiences of researching and making it. Join us for delicious intellectual adventures. 

From Mayhem to Meaning (John Madritch)

Course Description: Our time can seem a challenging one, with daily headlines about the Loneliness Epidemic, Deaths of Despair, Climate Catastrophe, and the End of the American Dream. These challenges are sometimes collectively described as the “meaning crisis.” How can we best respond? How, that is, might we build community and cultivate a sense of belonging? Where might we find a sense of purpose to motivate our efforts? And what role might the stories we tell play in shaping our relationship to ourselves, others, and the world? Together, we’ll work to respond to the “meaning crisis” in both theoretical and practical ways, with an eye towards enhancing our own sense of connection, purpose, and resilience.

Echoes of Africa (Anthony Hollingsworth)

Course description: Have you ever thought about the origins of Western civilization and the diverse cultural influences that shaped it? In this course, students explore the African influence on Western Civilization. This course focuses on the lives and works of key African thinkers who left an indelible mark on the Roman Empire and Western intellectual tradition. Lectures focus on three remarkable figures: Augustine, the theologian and philosopher whose ideas about God and morality continue to inspire scholars and thinkers today; Terence, the African playwright whose comedies have inspired writers for centuries including Shakespeare; and Apuleius whose novel “The Metamorphoses" contains the first fairy tale ever written and remains a classic of ancient literature. Students will engage with primary sources, including art and archaeological evidence, and participate in discussions that offer a deeper understanding of the complex cultural interactions of the ancient world.

Why Identity Matters (Diane Finch)

Course description: What an optimum time for college freshmen to study the importance of identity formation and development as they transition from adolescence to young adulthood. The seminar creates a laboratory for questioning and evaluating the complexity of their multiple identities through the lenses of culture, gender, social media, and race. Assigned readings, group exercises, classroom experiences, discussion forums, and self-reflections provide students with opportunities to examine the importance of identity to their way of being, understanding, and relating to the world. Additionally, the seminar integrates community engagement opportunities and RWU campus resources to support students in exploring identity issues and challenges and to take actionable steps to address them.                                                          

Language and the Good Life (Dong-Hoon Lee)          

Course description: What can I do to become happier? How can I get along better with other people? Can I ever find the Good Life? This course examines these questions and many more as related to various aspects of language use – because words can destroy lives and save lives; words can hurt, and words can heal. One factor consistently associated with a happy and meaningful life is healthy inter-personal relationships. This course offers ways for people to improve their inter-personal relationships, thereby enriching not only their own lives but also that of others – through more thoughtful and empathetic use of language. Through readings/viewings, discussions, team presentations, and writing assignments, students will learn and share complex ideas and feelings about language use. Topics include body language, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), ethical living, language disorders, leadership, mental/emotional health, professional communication, romantic relationships, self-identity, social media, and more.

The Italian American Experience (Karen Abbondanza)

The course examines literary, cinematic, and critical works on the experience of Italian Americans in order to investigate the many facets of their identity. The first part of the course includes readings on theories of race, ethnicity, and identity formation in the United States. The second part explores novels, films, and popular culture as evidence of the many forms of Italian-American cultural expression and their representation. Particular attention is given to the construction of internal and external stereotypes, interethnic relations between Italians and other minorities in the US, and religious, family, and gender identity.  

Can You Dig It? Exploring New England's Past (Alan Leveillee)

Course description: Want to combine forensic science and time travel?  Archaeology today is like having a modern Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson living in the real world and applying today's scientific methods, technologies, and deductive powers to decipher long-faded layers of times past.  Join our research team as we peel back and explore the fascinating subject of New England Archaeology. Archaeology is the scientific study of the past.  Artifacts, sites, and communities result from and reflect human cultures in time.  This class will explore 13,000 years of New England's peoples, places, and things, focusing on Indigenous “First Peoples”. This course will be temporally far-reaching.  Using archaeological and anthropological data, we’ll span between the initial peopling of the continent and the efforts of today’s indigenous peoples to preserve and protect their histories and heritage.

Guns Robots Sex in America (Jiyoon Im)

Course description: How many days can you go without hearing about another gun shooting? Will you find work when you graduate in 2027, or will robots take your job? If we live in a time of sexual freedom, why are young people fleeing relationships? In this seminar, we will examine three complex issues in contemporary America: gun violence, artificial intelligence, and sex. We will ask questions such as: Is gun ownership a basic American freedom protected by the Constitution? Is AI bringing progress or making people poorer, unhappier, and worse off? Why are Gen Z-ers having less sex and feeling more isolated in our age of social media and unprecedented sexual equality? By exploring these three big questions together, we will become more informed, engaged citizens and advocates in our shared and personal lives.

Pop, Icons, and Masterpieces: The Role of Art(ists) in Society (Robin Stone)

 Course Description: This course will examine why some works of art have become popular, why some artists have become icons, why we consider some artworks to be masterpieces, and the power of art to influence humanity. Students will investigate visual, literary, and performing arts from around the world and throughout history considering questions such as: What makes a work of art a masterpiece? What works were considered masterpieces when they were created, and which have become famous (and why)? How has our regard for certain artists and their work evolved over time? How do works of art reflect the culture and society of the time and place created? How have the purposes of art changed over history? How have aesthetics influenced societies, and have been influenced by them, over time? The course will explore the role of art in our current socio-cultural environment to examine how artistic expression reflects, and affects, attitudes and beliefs. Students will also scrutinize why they are attracted to certain artists and their art (and why they might not be attracted to others).

Eating Humans (James Verinis )           

Course description: If you would like to explore human diet beyond the biological necessity of eating and the popular logic of nutritional science, to get a glimpse of our primordial, ethical, symbolic, and aesthetic natures, then we will ALL benefit from your involvement in this course. Anthropological in essence, this course is an historical, multi-disciplinary, as well as cross cultural examination of such “banal” practices as planting, shopping, gleaning, cooking, sharing, hoarding, storing, tasting, wasting, plating, binging, and fasting from food. We critique the evolution, diversity, as well as the devolution of our species' phenomenal adaptive subsistence capabilities, from collective hunting to in-vitro meat production and back. We challenge the simplistic notions that you eat what tastes good or is good for you. In other words, yes, we grill vegans as well as cannibals to expose the meat of the matter.

Capturing History (Beth Shinn)

Course description: Have you ever wondered why some images stay with you and some do not? The phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" is never more true than in the current social media age. This class will look closely at images to examine and discover: what they can and cannot tell us; if they are true to historical facts; why a different image of the same event or time can change how we understand history; and whether we need to change habits as we scroll through images. There is a wide range of images to choose from, not just from the usual sources, for example, posters, political cartoons, news cycles, art, portraits, and documentaries. Each class will decide the theme and collection to examine together, then dig deeper into the background, purpose, and accuracy of images. We will debate and write our findings.

What is Wellness? (Andrew Staroscik)

Course description: This class will study current research topics in health and wellness as a practical and engaging context to delve into the practice and philosophy of science, providing students with a comprehensive understanding of how science as a way of knowing enriches our knowledge of the world.  

Revealing Power, Privilege, and Supremacy (Michelle Valletta)

Course description: Society seems to be unsettled by culture wars, political polarization, and social upheaval. Are you? How do we understand this environment? Overall, this First Year Seminar (FYS) informs students about issues related to race relations, social justice, power, and privilege. We will investigate the historical roots of how we arrived at this flashpoint, examines the present indicators, and explores ideas about what we can do now and going forward. To accomplish this exploration, we will consult a wide range of sources including historical and contemporary case studies, cartoons, documentaries, commercials, film, music, and other visual arts. It is an active learning course rather than lecture, with presentations, projects, and short writing assignments rather than exams. 

Is There a Right Way? Does AI Know? (Christine Haverington)

Course description: Can AI help us personally, and human society in general, to know right from wrong? Can AI help us with our decision-making, problem-solving, to fix the problems we create when we make the wrong choice? This seminar takes a multi-leveled dive into these ageless and elemental human questions. Our goals are to emerge more aware of the origins and influences on our personal values and behavioral principles, more aware of the relationship between our personal principles and local and global societal behavioral norms, and more confident in exploring, confirming or changing our answers. Participants will design your own original collaborative thought experiments to test the value of AI in assisting human decision-making, and work in teams in collaboration with ChatGPT AI to develop solutions to significant current problems.

Global Problems & Systems Solutions (Ray Huling)

Course description: The Earth is one big system—and we’re all a part of it. You might have noticed that our biggest problems, problems that affect everyone on the planet, come from complex interconnections that have gone awry. Scientists and scholars have noticed this, too, and they have realized that the solutions to these problems must be just as interconnected. The worldview that lets us see these problems and find solutions to them is called Systems Thinking. That’s what this course is about. We’ll study the basics of Systems Thinking, empowering you to apply it across university majors, throughout your college careers, and in community engagement. We’ll learn its core concepts and how it grew out of science, the arts, and the humanities. Most important, we’ll consider how systems work in everyday experience, with the goal of enriching our lives and making good decisions right now.

Monsters in Fiction, Film, Myth, and Fact: what do they do for us? (Beazley Kanost)

Decolonizing Music (Christopher Anderson)

Description: Music’s place in our culture cannot be denied, but how often do you take the time to consider the ways in which today’s music has evolved over the past 2 millennia? This course will explore, among other things, Plato’s philosophical influence on hip hop, how slavery led to the modern drum kit, and how local indigenous tribes maintain culture through music preservation. In this course you will seek out local music antiquity to better understand its influence on New England culture, utilize library resources to explore hidden musical histories, and listen to a variety of local music throughout the ages to deepen your understanding of the significance of music to communities around �Ӱ���Ƶ University and to your own background.

Mama, I made it (to college)! What now? (Sheila Almeida)

Description: Congratulations! You made it to �Ӱ���Ƶ University! Now what? This First-Year Seminar is a space to reflect on how college can transform your life. Together, we’ll explore how education, environment, and identity shape our futures. Using personal narrative, interviews, readings, and media, students will dive into the question: How does college shape one’s life trajectory—and what role do *you* play in that journey? This course is especially meaningful for first-generation college students. We will create a classroom community grounded in mutual respect, reflection, and honesty. We’ll celebrate the resilience that brought us here and explore how to thrive in and beyond college. 

Marvelous Women (Laura D’Amore)

Description: Do you like to explore the connections between comics, media, and their impact on individuals and our society? Have you noticed the rapidly changing demographic diversity of Marvel women in the past few years?  The Marvel Cinematic Universe has rapidly expanded since 2021, with Phases 4 and 5 introducing the most diverse cast of characters ever.  This course will center on the women of The Multiverse Saga films, and Marvel Studios television shows and their representations of race, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual identity, and gender, while looking at them alongside issues of equity and social justice. By the end of the course, you will be able to make connections between media and the world we live in, while considering how these films and tv shows call for social and cultural change. No prior comics knowledge or familiarity with Marvel is required.