First-Year Seminar Course Descriptions

Fall 2012

A Call to Action                                                           
Instructor: Ellen Hill
Examine major movements of social action from the peace movement to the civil rights movement, and learn tools to activate your citizenship.  Students will participate in a service learning project and learn about social issues, social activists, local community organizations and initiatives, and discover ways to make change in our community.

   

Art of the Social Imagination

(A Living and Learning Community Course)
Instructor: Leila Bandar

Students in this course ask questions — what are our social conditions?  Could the arts cultivate well-being, compassion, and support within higher education?  Could the arts explore our personal and collective narratives? Could they address questions regarding what is within our control? And, what is outside of our control? 

Students learn about C.W. Mills who wrote The Sociological Imagination and about contemporary artists working throughout the world.  All students initiate artworks and create installations on campus. Visiting lecturers give instruction on mind-body techniques such as yoga and meditation. All students in this course use writing to get at their own ideas, share insights based on readings, and participate with in-class activities. This course is also part of a Living and Learning Community which seeks to enhance the academic experience with group study, tutoring support, reflection, and interdependent work on at least one art installation on campus. 

Students will be housed in Martinetti Hall, a co-ed building that includes a kitchen and recently refurbished bathrooms.  The floor is co-ed but has designated male and female bathroom space. Students who select this First-Year Seminar will be housed together.*

*There is not space for roommates from outside the Learning Community, and there is limited availability for single rooms. You must submit your housing contract and health forms before July 1, 2012 to be included in this program.

   

Cultivating the Cross-Cultural Mind                                     Instructor: Dr. Martha Lance

How does your cultural identity affect your understanding of the world and its people? In this course, we will first examine our own perceptions, attitudes, values, beliefs, and needs. Who are we as cultural beings? After this exploration, we will sympathetically cross into other cultures, new terrains. Here, we will come to identify, understand, and appreciate certain features of the new culture so that we may, as individuals, build our own bridges of understanding. As one former student expressed, “ Cultivating the Cross-Cultural mind is a fun engaging class that allows you to gain a greater knowledge of the people and world around you. It’s a class with an open atmosphere that encourages discussion, and enables thought about how, and why, people do things the way they do.”

   

Dystopia: Cautionary Tales of a Nightmarish Future            Instructor: Tyrone Shaw

As opposed to the utopian vision of a more perfect world, dystopian literature and film depict the worst of all possible worlds. Probing basic questions of human nature and society, they reveal anxieties that remain chillingly applicable today. In this course, we will explore such issues as the self, alienation, freedom, complicity, citizenship, love, faith, sex, technology and happiness through a variety of novels and films.

   

Globalize It!

Do you know how long it takes to make the shoes you are wearing? Do you have an idea how many countries are involved in the process of making your t-shirt? This FYS will explain that, and other important concepts involved in producing and trading in a global world.  Concepts such as globalization, international trade and cultural differences will be explored in this course.  Students taking this FYS will go on a day trip to Canada, where they will apply concepts discussed in class, and observe how another country perceives international trade.

   

The Hidden History of Vermont                                        
Instructor: Dr. Karen Madden

This course will provide students with a new, more diverse perspective on Vermont History.  Students will begin by using interviews to discover their own history in terms of class, ethnicity and gender, and then reach out in the larger world that includes the JSC community, Lamoille County and the state of Vermont.  Guest speakers and field trips will provide students with first-hand information on how class, gender and ethnicity shape the experience of Vermonters. 

   

If I Can’t Dance - Keep Your Revolution                        Instructor: Maris Wolff

History is not just about important revolutions, battles, politicians and changing borders.  It is also about everyday people, and what is important in their everyday lives.  This course is a multicultural exploration of the simple things that give people pleasure: their dance, games, social activities, cuisine; some of the things that make a nation’s culture.  We see how geography, climate, work, religion/ritual, gender, and age all have their impact on a country’s customs.  This course investigates the similarities and differences between the various cultures of people around the globe.  This course celebrates what Emma Goldman called everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

   

iMe: Reinventing yourself in the Digital Age                      
Instructor: Sean Clute

Have you ever uploaded a photo to Facebook, viewed cats from around the world on Youtube, or conquered a video game with online teammates? Digital technology is making it easier than ever to express yourself and communicate on a global scale. With the advent of virtual realities like Second Life, you can reach beyond globalism and enter the realm of total imagination. With all of these exciting changes, how do you navigate this new world? In this seminar we will explore technology's role in our lives. Through an interdisciplinary approach we will examine science, art and literature’s take on topics including Web 2.0, cybernetics, and virtual reality. We will look at how these topics have influenced robotics, viral videos and most importantly, you.

   

Journaling: Writing in New Territory
Instructor: Rose Modry
“Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself. Be bold. When you embark for strange places, don’t leave any of yourself safely on shore. Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory,” advised Alan Alda. Every first year college student is in new territory, and the process of journaling is a journey of discovery. Through journal-writing, students will both explore their new surroundings as well as arrive at new places because of the mental mapping they embarked upon through this writing process. The daily writing assignments are designed for students to examine and experience their own unique world in ways that bring new insight into their lives and build connections through their examinations of culture, interest, ideology, and community. In addition to keeping their own journals, students will read excerpts of other diarists/journal-keepers’ work.

   

The Language of Film                                               
Instructor: David Grozinsky

This course explores the richness of the art form of film through screenings, discussions, readings, writings, and hands-n video production.  This class is not a film history class, but instead will focus on the basic conventions of film expression including narrative, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound genre, and more.  Over the course of the semester, we will watch a broad mix of international films from the past 100 years of cinema.  In class we will discuss films and required readings.  Participation in discussion is necessary and expected, and you may also be called upon to lead a discussion yourself.  Additionally, you will write film reviews and get to make a couple short films of your own.

   

Music and Culture of New Orleans                                     
Instructor: Clyde Stats

This course will look at the rich musical environment in New Orleans, and the cultures that have supported it.  We will cover the following musical styles: jazz, r&b/funk, cajun, zydeco, brass bands, and Mardi Gras Indians music.  In early November we will travel to New Orleans for 5 days to experience the music and culture firsthand. 

The trip will also include a day of community service, as well as visits to important cultural sites in and around New Orleans. 

The course fee of $850 covers everything (airfare, accommodations, food, ground transportation).   Financial aid may be used to cover the course fee.

   

Thinking Globally, Eating Locally                                       Instructor: Russ Weiss

This course concerns itself with the growing field of study related to how colleges can best institute environmental innovations, particularly as relates to food production and consumption.  As this burgeoning new discipline of “Campus Greening” is explored, emphasis will be placed upon students developing the critical reading and thinking, expository writing, and research skills what will serve them well throughout their college career.  An important aim of the course will be to sharpen student awareness of how their social patterns related to their food consumption affects themselves and the local foodshed.  Another objective will be to “educate in order to activate,” inspiring students to play an ongoing role in the stewardship of the JSC Community Garden.  All students will choose a project related either to the garden or to the JSC cafeteria and also make contributions to the food-related sections in the pending “JSC Eco-Master Plan.”

Traditions and Identity: The Only Way Out Is In

Instructor: Emily Neilsen

As you transition to life at Johnson there will be so much that is new: where you live, the people who surround you, perhaps even the ideas you think about and activities you take part in. You will be presented with a unique opportunity to redefine yourself. But, as author Junot Diaz so aptly puts it, “You can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.” In this vein, this class seeks to examine how we build identity. It asks: how do cultural traditions shape who we become? How does our heritage influence us, for better and for worse? Are there parts of our current selves that we would like to leave behind as we enter a new chapter in our lives? And, if so, from where can we borrow to imagine and construct ourselves anew? Through contemporary literature — essays, fiction, memoir —we will investigate others’ relationships to familial, cultural, ethnic, and regional traditions in order to examine how individuals define and redefine themselves; and to tease out how we might do the same.

   

Truthiness 101

‘Truthiness’ is a term that television comedian Stephen Colbert popularized in 2005.  He used it to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively or “from the gut” without regard of evidence, logic, intellectual examination or actual facts. The overarching goal of this class is to explore some of the “truthiness” of the economic world we inhabit. How did buying, selling, shopping and advertising become such integral elements of 18th and 19th century European life?  What effects did the proliferation of consumer culture have on social relationships and identity?  How did intellectuals strive to make sense of the changes they saw around them?  What lessons, if any, can we take from this history for understanding our own situation?  Coursework includes weekly readings, ten short papers, two exams and a final project.

   

Vampire                                                                       
Instructor: Dr. Sharon Twigg

This course focuses on the vampire in Western culture in order to ask the questions how and why does a culture  create outsiders, exiles, and scapegoats? Why has the vampire become a figure that fires our imaginations, our fears, and our desires? We will consider folklore, history, geography, literature, and film to study the cultural appeal of the vampire from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, although the majority of the course will focus on the latter part of this chronology. We will also examine a selection of medical and psychological theories, such as Freud’s idea of the uncanny, to gain insight into why the vampire has remained a figure of attraction (or revulsion) for centuries. Bram Stoker's Dracula, largely responsible for Western ideas about the vampire, will be our central text.

What Is Called Thinking?

Instructors: Sue Ordinetz and Dick Shanley

Have you ever wondered how you, as a unique individual, think? How your way of thinking shapes what you know and how you learn? How you might use your preferred thinking style to develop a satisfactory life in college and beyond? In this seminar we will explore thinking "hands (and minds) on," through a variety of activities. Professors from various departments across campus representing, for example: humanities, arts, sciences, social sciences, mathematics and business — will present their own work and introduce the questions, methods and media that shape their research and which they use to express their ideas