First Year Seminar (FYS) Course Offerings

Fall 2026 Available FYS Courses

FYS 017 Making Change Democratically

What does social change in a democracy look like? This course equips students with a framework for understanding how social change happens and allows them to identify issues in the local and regional communities surrounding the college that can be tackled through democratic action. Students will learn how to connect academic skills with developing as informed, engaged, and effective civic agents.

FYS 025 Futbol: Inside the Beautiful Game

In addition to offering mass entertainment, soccer has been used as a government propaganda machine, is the pillar of multi-billion-dollar enterprises, and has led to wars and questionable social behaviors. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will explore how soccer is more than just a game. Drawing on readings from sociology, economics, and politics, we will look at soccer as a sport, a form of entertainment, a tool for oppressive regimes, a form of collective identity, and a major force for social change.

FYS 032 What is a River?

This course is an exploration of rivers, and in particular the Delaware River, as critical to the development of society, culture, and the identity of the regions they connect. Through a variety of texts and experiences, including outdoor adventures, students will come to understand the role of rivers in human endeavors and in the natural environment. Students will synthesize their ideas in a case study focusing on their river of choice.

FYS 033 Gambling: Here & Everywhere

In this FYS, we will interrogate the mechanisms of gambling and the games that are played while we focus on the benefits and costs of gambling, including those social, economic, and psychological. The role of technology, the ubiquity of mobile gambling, and analyses of government-run lotteries are just some of many course topics that will inform discussions around the motivating question of the course: is the proliferation of gambling good for society? Students must be at least 18 years of age by the start of the course.

FYS 034 Anatomy Everywhere
Anatomy is not just memorizing structures. Anatomy is art, science, sociology, history, and engineering. This course will explore everything from viral biohacking trends on social media to ancient depictions of mythological bodies, asking questions like do biohacking trends really work? and is Superman actually human? Along the way, students will develop a deeper appreciation for the human body and discover how our anatomy has continually influenced their understanding of the world across disciplines.

FYS 036 Trials of the Century

This interdisciplinary seminar will examine the “Trials of the Century” that have captivated the general public’s attention because of the highly controversial issues they raised, the publicity they received, and the decisions that resulted. By examining these great trials, using political, historical and legal academic lenses, we will refine our critical analytical skills and better understand both our legal and political systems, and the resulting changes in law and society.  

FYS 037 I Cannot Live Without Books

This course explores the field of book history, the study of the making and using of books. Hands-on work with Skillman Library’s rare books collection and librarians will be a key feature of the course, as will discussions, activities, and local field trips that will help us gain insight into how books and reading have featured in human culture, why that matters, and where that history still unfolds today. From artistic and literary angles to economic and legal contexts to the science and technology of text-making and sharing, book history exemplifies the cross-connections of a liberal arts experience. Whether you’re a lit nerd or a technical whiz or anything else, there’s a lot for you to love in this course!

FYS 046 Obsolete Instruments
This class will explore semi-discarded musical instruments, tools, and forms. We will experiment with perceived “obsolete” technologies ranging from harpsichords to magnetic tape. We will look at contemporary music practices that intentionally use “analog” instruments and gear, such as vinyl records and cassette tapes. We will study contemporary albums and audio products that prioritize anachronistic workflows, alongside media representing key moments of technological collision in the 1990’s. Finally, we will develop listening, mixing, and composing practices on cassette tapes.

FYS 049 Global Food

Foods are material substances that are deeply linked to human sustenance, to sociability, status and sensibility, as well as the sway of the senses-whether sparking desire or disgust. In this sense food intrinsically crosses borders and boundaries in at least two ways: first, food challenges us to adopt interdisciplinary approaches to material goods, considering them from different perspectives and adopting different lenses. Second, foods have always been mobile across the globe, shifting in form and meaning as they move between different settings; in this sense, by tracing the circulation of foods in time and space, we can explore a world of emergent sociocultural relations, seeing links between spheres of production, transport and consumption.

FYS 054 Indigenous and Settler Sites of Memory

The United States was created from land wrested from Indigenous inhabitants. How do people living in a society with such a foundation address the violence of conquest? How is this story told – or rewritten – on the land? How have settlers represented the Native past and present? In this course, we explore these questions using the local area as our focal point. In exploring Indigenous geographies and settler sites of memory — museum exhibits, burial grounds, historical markers, and place names–we will ask which pasts have been remembered publicly and analyze commemorative practices. Students will engage in ethnographic research and develop a digital database of important Native and settler sites of memory as we explore the local landscape.

FYS 063 Jewish Humor

This course examines Jewish humor within the context of theories of humor and the comedic and as a window to Jewish culture. It explores examples of Jewish humor past and present in literature, film, television, skits, stand-up comics, cartoons, and jokes. It considers questions such as: What makes us laugh? What is distinctively Jewish about Jewish humor? How does American Jewish humor differ from older European Jewish humor and contemporary Israeli humor? Do you need to be Jewish to “get” it? How is Jewish humor like and unlike other ethnic, religious, or minority humor? How do stereotypes and self-deprecation figure in the humorous? How did humor function as a coping and survival mechanism in the Holocaust?

FYS 064 Global Justice

While few people would deny that we have special, and sometimes quite demanding, obligations to help our friends, family, or even our fellow citizens, it is controversial whether we have these same kinds of obligations to complete strangers. The guiding question of this course will be what, if anything, do we owe such people? Three main topics will provide the focus of discussion: international economic inequality, climate change, and war.

FYS 067 From Bible to Broadway: Putting Spirituality on Stage
Musical theater isn’t just chorus lines and flashy costumes. For some, it can be a spiritual experience. This FYS will explore how the myths and mysteries of religious and spiritual life transform from page to stage. Using sacred literature and musical productions as foundational texts, students will be invited to critically examine how musicals shape their own beliefs as well as how composers and writers adapt religious narratives in ways as profound as theologians.

FYS 070 Coming of Age in the 21st century: Gen Z on Page and Screen
What does it mean to “come of age” at this historical moment? As members of “Generation Z,” you’ve been called “coddled and lazy,” “the anxious generation,” and “snowflakes,” but you are also leaders, activists, authors, and entrepreneurs. Through critical analysis of diverse texts and media, in this class we’ll investigate both what it means to “come of age” and also how the concept of “Generation Z” continues to be constructed. Ultimately, you’ll articulate your own
evolving understanding(s) of contemporary emerging adulthood, adding to the ongoing conversation as you live it.

FYS 071 Staging Her Story: Examining Historic Women Through Plays
This seminar examines plays written about real women from history, focusing on how theater reshapes, recovers, and reimagines their stories. Students will read, view, and analyze dramatic works alongside historical research to compare staged representations with documented events. Through discussion, writing, and independent inquiry, the course explores how performance can amplify voices often marginalized in traditional histories and challenges students to think critically about storytelling, truth, and cultural memory.

FYS 077 The Dog Course

“Man’s best friend?” Nature’s most successful parasite? Employing a range of perspectives-literary, philosophical, archaeological, biological and technological-we will examine specific constructions of the dog at various moments in human history. We will consider issues of evolution, domestication, the morality and technology of breeding, and the psychological comforts of anthropomorphic representation. Because field trips and other required activities will involve contact with dogs, this course is not recommended for those who may be afraid of dogs or have health issues that could be made worse by interacting with dogs.

FYS 088 Communicating with the Dead

People from many times and places communicate with the dead through seances, prayer, spirit channeling, ghost hunting, ancestor veneration, and in many other ways. In this seminar, students examine various academic and popular sources to understand why the living often maintain active relationships and colloquies with ancestors, saints, ghosts, and other deceased people. Ultimately, this phenomenon can tell us much about the needs and desires of the living in diverse cultural and historical contexts.

FYS 096 Quantum Revolutions: Past & Present
The discovery of quantum mechanics a century ago revolutionized the way we think about our universe, and the recent advent of quantum computing technology has initiated a second quantum revolution! Wave-particle duality, tunneling, and teleportation may sound like science fiction terms, but the effects of these real-life phenomena resonate through the arts, politics, philosophy, and more. This FYS explores quantum mechanics and how its representations (both accurate and not) impact our cultural and scientific perspectives.

FYS 098 Misadventure

A sense of adventure compels people to explore uncharted territory, climb high peaks, and cross stormy seas. In the words of John Muir, “the mountains are calling and I must go”—but what happens when things go wrong? Guided by geologic principles, historical context, and adventures of your own, you will analyze non-fictional accounts of misadventure driven by human error in dynamic landscapes. Were the risks worth the rewards—and who are we to say?

FYS 104 Science for a Peaceful World: Navigating the Ethics of Discovery
Scientific breakthroughs drive progress but often spark profound ethical dilemmas. This seminar explores the intersection of science, history, and social justice, analyzing global flashpoints like eugenics, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Students will first engage in critical writing to deconstruct the myth of “neutral” science. As a culminating project, students will author and illustrate a children’s book to inspire future scientists while developing their own skills as ethical communicators and advocates for science that serves the public good.

FYS 108 Silence

Silence. What the heck is it? It’s more than keeping your mouth shut. Some say it’s a language onto itself, its meaning framed by circumstance. We use it to convey anger and embarrassment, fear and uncertainty. We also use it to convey comfort and ease, deep feelings and respect. There’s the meditative silence of those seeking peace and reprieve from the chaos of a very noisy world. There’s also the sacred silence of prayer and the punitive silence of solitary confinement. During the semester, we will explore silence in its many iterations and my hope is you’ll develop your own relationship with silence and understand how it can benefit your life by relieving stress, inducing clarity and increasing focus.

FYS 110 Hocus Pocus

Few figures in global cultures are as ubiquitous, and complicated, as “the witch.” Though entwined with mythology from the start, the existence of and reaction to witches have had real consequences in communities around the world. We will consider how the representation of witches has changed, with attention to how these representations intersect with ideas about gender, race, and class. In doing so, we will investigate how “the witch” itself has been reshaped. 

FYS 116 Manipulation of Appearances

Social commentators lament an apparent new rise in dishonesty, the inauthentic” and “spin” in contemporary American society. Such critics are late to the party-individuals and institutions have manipulated appearances for their own ends for centuries. In this seminar we will ask: How do people manipulate appearances successfully? What are some consequences of rampant deception in everyday life? To explore those questions we will study theories of deception and impression management and analyze examples like deceptive advertising political spin and lying in social and work relationships.

FYS 117 Demonstrating Science

Scientific demonstrations are used in lectures, science museums, and television shows to explain scientific principles and inspire wonder about science. How important are such demonstrations to a true understanding of science? Is seeing believing? Is seeing understanding? In this course we will explore the science behind some popular demonstrations and consider the ways in which such demonstrations have educated, obfuscated, or inspired their audiences.

FYS 119 Plants and Art

Plants run the planet but rarely get the spotlight. In this course, we’ll shine some light on plants and art, considering an array of perspectives on how plants biologically perform and how humans interact with and represent plants. Plants “think” differently than humans, and this course is a chance to step outside of our own ways of being and think like a plant through the analysis and creation of plant art.

FYS 134 On What Evidence?
Evidence leads to the dramatic court scene, the breakthrough scientific discovery, and the long-awaited diagnosis that leads to treatment. But what counts as evidence? How do contextual factors affect our acceptance of evidence? How does evidence translate from one field to another? In this course, we’ll explore how evidence is used to substantiate arguments, why evidence may be misinterpreted, misused, or ignored, and what evidence looks like in students’ prospective fields of study.

FYS 135 Factory Farms: The True Cost of Meat

This course explores the topic of factory farms, more officially known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). We will explore the history of farming in the United States that lead to the CAFOs of today. We will then unpack how these CAFOs affect the health and wellbeing of the communities around them, the local and global environmental impacts they have, and the ethics of the treatment of the animals housed in them.

FYS 137 Not that Kind of Model
Our understanding of the modern world, and how we operate in and experience it, is influenced by models. They are used for everything: sending probes to Jupiter, predicting the weather/COVID spread, deciding who gets a loan/parole, assessing competing climate change mitigation strategies, making people waste time on social media. What are these models? How do they work? What are the benefits/costs/risks associated with their use? In this course, we will work to address these questions.

FYS 139 How to Tell a Story Using Pictures

The purpose of this class is to provide students with skills, practice and exposure to telling stories outside of traditional modes. For example: when we think about storytelling we often think about texts that follow plots. In “How to tell a story using pictures” we will use images and sound to construct stories that may function intuitively, non-linearly or emotionally. Students will make/construct stories using still photographs in visual sequences and audio recordings that animate place to explore alternatives to text-based storytelling. We will look at multiple types of sources that include film, video art, photography, sound art and picture books.

FYS 140 Seeing the Future: Afterlives, Algorithms, and Apocalypse
When is the future? How do different communities or individuals envision it? And what are the conditions under which imagining the future feels impossible or absolutely necessary? Humans have always imagined the future, though the how and why vary across time, place, and circumstance. Through literature, film, data, and legal documents, this course will interrogate our own assumptions about what is to come, and explore what those assumptions reveal about how we understand the present.

FYS 141 Mathematics of Social Justice 

Alexander Hamilton said, “The first duty of society is justice.” Today there is vociferous argument about the prevalence of justice. To what degree is society just? Are there practical ways to make it more just? This course considers the importance of understanding data and applying mathematics to ask these questions and to explore meaningful answers. Using mathematics that everybody is taught, we’ll try to make sense out of conflicting opinions, so as to discover the importance of quantitative literacy for all citizens in a democracy. 

FYS 142 The Psychology of Reality TV
Reality TV is often dismissed as “mindless entertainment”—but is it? What does it mean to watch reality TV, and how does it shape how we think? In this seminar, students will analyze reality shows (e.g., America’s Got Talent, Survivor) and online content to explore how audiences attend to, interpret, and engage with media. Topics include the science of persuasion and storytelling, social media and its consequences (e.g., misinformation, parasocial relationships), and navigating interpersonal relationships.

FYS 148 Melding Mind and Machine

From gaming to restoring motor activity, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) has provided humankind with an alternate means to control an external device. Invasive and Non-Invasive BCI devices use detected brain activity to control assistive devices, such as a robotic arm, wheelchair, or game controller. In this seminar we will explore the ethical considerations surrounding the research and development of BCI technology as we continue to blur the lines between human and machine.

FYS 150 A Plastic World

Plastic: Greatest technological advance of the 20th century or ecological scourge? Plastics, or polymer, are so pervasive in our everyday lives that their use and disposal often are taken for granted. As a result, their environmental impact is scrutinized heavily. In this course, we will discuss the science, history, pop culture, and social impact of this controversial material. Most importantly, we will think critically about the future of plastics in the context of environmental concerns.

FYS 155 Cute, Cringe, Viral, and Toxic
How does visual culture influence our life? How does the images we see change our perception of the world? The course focuses on contemporary visual culture including social media, videogames, movies, streaming content, music, and advertisement. It offers a broad introduction to important critical approaches to the analysis, critique, and evaluation of visual culture by approaching key categories like the cute, cringe, viral, toxic, camp, romantic, iconic and others.

FYS 158 Nonviolence: Theory & Practice

This course explores both the theoretical development of nonviolence and the practice of nonviolence as a means for waging and resolving conflict. Using the examples of Mohandas Gandhi and India’s independence movement, the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, the power of music in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, as well as the personal testimonies of individuals and various groups pursuing nonviolent change in the Lehigh Valley, this course explores the principles of nonviolence in action.

FYS 159 What’s Inside ChatGPT?

How is Artificial Intelligence (AI) reshaping our lives? This seminar demystifies AI with a focus on Large Language Models. Through interdisciplinary exploration of historical texts, news articles, science fiction films, and modern documentaries, we will examine how AI systems work, their limitations, and ethical challenges. Hands-on experiments and reflective writing will equip you with the skills to evaluate and integrate emerging AI tools responsibly, preparing you to navigate an increasingly digital and AI-driven society.

FYS 162 Music in European Society

The course does not assume knowledge of music on the students’ part; nor does it require that they master notation or become conversant with musical analysis. Rather, the course examines developments in European history that have left their traces in the music. It relates music to developments in European culture and explains the distinctive characteristics of the music of a period in relation to those larger developments that underlie its cultural productivity.

FYS 169 The 1960s:  The Causes and Effects of Social Change

The Civil Rights Movement, the Antiwar Movement, the Space Race, and, of course, Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll…Through an examination of written and oral histories, documentary film, the poetry, music and visual arts of the Sixties, students will explore the underlying causes for change during the nation’s most tumultuous decades. In addition to the causes, students will determine for themselves the influences that the 1960s have had on the present day. 

FYS 179 Leveraging Social Entreprenuership to Alleviate Poverty

Market-based social entrepreneurship as an approach to addressing poverty, unfreedoms and the lack of localized agency among the poor in economic development has seen a rise in prominence. This is often attributed to the failures of national governments, multi-lateral agencies, and conventional philanthropy to respond dynamically to the challenges posed by changing global and technology landscapes. These failures also reflect a reliance on an outmoded development paradigm that is both inattentive and unresponsive to the modern needs of income poor people to be primary owners of their development experiences, a possibility made more realistic because of globalization and technological change. In essence, as first noted by Adam Smith and reported in Amarta Sen, freedom of exchange and transaction is in itself part and parcel of the basic liberties that people have to celebrate, and as Sen himself points out, “the freedom to participate in economic interchange has a basic role in social living.”

FYS 180 From Fred Rogers to Taylor Swift: The Influence of America’s Public Theologians

“Breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out.” ~ Taylor Swift. “You are loved just the way you are.” ~ Fred Rogers. Public figures like Taylor Swift and Mister Rogers, are people who help to embody, identify, and evaluate how theological traditions often influence public narratives. While such figures typically are not professional theologians, they can be understood as “public theologians,” i.e., celebrities, media personalities, activists, and artists whose work engages significantly with a wide variety of spiritual, religious, and ethical themes. Students in this course will consider how public theology and the work of public theologians shape culture and policy in the United States. Students will analyze and critique how public theologians call upon communal resources, insights and values to contribute to the welfare of society.

FYS 181 Technology in and of Science Fiction
This seminar explores the genre of science fiction and how it influences and is influenced by our interactions with technology. Looking at representations of technology in a range of written and visual texts, we will consider such questions as how our hopes and fears about technology are explored narratively, what developments have been inspired by science fiction, and how tools for producing and distributing media impact how we tell such stories.

FYS 185 Skin
All humans are wrapped in skin. Our skin protects our organs, communicates with our brains and maintains bodily homeostasis. Despite its universality, human societies interpret skin’s meanings and alter its appearance very differently. In this seminar, we explore the physicality of skin and how humans modify it through preservation, cosmetics, tattooing and scarification. How do properties of the epidermis shape human life? Why do humans change it? Why do humans base hierarchies on skin?

FYS 194 The Personal is Political
Are you a person? What makes you, well… you? This FYS revisits a foundational feminist idea of the 1960s, that the personal is political, and considers its ongoing relevance in the context of pressing contemporary issues: How does social media shape our sense of self? Could AI achieve sentience? Acknowledging the deep connections between individual experiences and systems of power, we will ask how “personhood” is constructed and contested in our current political climate.

FYS 196 Exploring Chinese Culture