Topics and Texts
Students in the First-Year Seminar practice the Learning Goals of the
course by studying several topics with a variety of texts, then
generating their own Topic Studies and accompanying Rationales.
Topics
Students explore a series of topics over the course of the semester. Currently, instructors select from the following topics for their classes:
Texts
Students explore each topic using a variety of texts in different media. In additional to supplemental texts that instructors bring to their classes, the First-Year Seminar has a set of core texts that help to frame our discussions. These include:
Topics
Students explore a series of topics over the course of the semester. Currently, instructors select from the following topics for their classes:
- Self and Identity
- Ethics in Community
- Manifesting Vision
Texts
Students explore each topic using a variety of texts in different media. In additional to supplemental texts that instructors bring to their classes, the First-Year Seminar has a set of core texts that help to frame our discussions. These include:
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (1959)
- Elizabeth Barret, Stranger With a Camera (2000)
- Niki Caro, Whale Rider (2003)
- Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984)
- Paul Haggis, Crash (2004)
- LeAlan Jones, Lloyd Newman, and David Isay, Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago (1999)
- Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (2004)
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
- Sophocles, Antigone (ed. Grene, 1991)
- Agnès Varda, The Gleaners and I (2000)
