First-Year Seminar Program

Robert Geitz, Associate Professor; Director

The First-Year Seminar Program (FYSP) is a unique opportunity for in-coming students to begin their Oberlin educational experience in a small seminar setting. The topics and academic approaches of seminars are very diverse, but they are all designed to help students hone their critical thinking and their discussion and writing skills. Moreover, first-year seminars provide important opportunities for students to get to know a faculty member well and to reflect upon the personal value and social relevance of a liberal arts education. Seminars are either Writing Intensive (WRi) or Writing Certification (WR) and Quantitative Proficiency-Half (QPh) courses. The Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences strongly urges all College first-year students to enroll in a first-year seminar; students should note that the vast majority of first-year seminars are offered in the fall semester. For up-to-date information, as well as expanded descriptions of seminars for 2011-2012, please consult the First-Year Seminar Program Course Catalog or visit the First-Year Seminar Program’s web site for students at www.oberlin.edu/fys.

First-Year Seminars for 2011-12

FYSP 012 - Socialism: Real and Imagined Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 081 - Modernism as Media Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 082 - Sex, Gender, and Power Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 083 - Invisible Cities: Urban environments and urban experience Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 084 - Enlightenment or Post-Enlightenment? The University and the Liberal Arts Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 085 - Karma Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 086 - Contemporary East Asian Cinema Semester Offered: Second Semester
FYSP 087 - Psychological Mythbusters: What do we believe, why do we believe it, and is it true? Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 088 - Narrative and Political Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 089 - Heretics and Infidels: Muslims, Christians, Jews and the Legacy of the Middle Ages Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 094 - Das Kapital Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 095 - Moral Persons, Potential Persons, and Moral Value Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 105 - Staying Sane in a Crazy World Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 110 - Black Women and Liberation Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 111 - Words That Matter Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 113 - Re-envisioning Russia Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 116 - Natural History of the Vermilion River Watershed Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 119 - The First Amendment and the Internet Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 126 - Tolstoy’s War and Peace Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 128 - Media and Memory Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 131 - How Early Jews and Christians Rewrote the Bible Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 132 - Searching for Utopia: Episodes in American History Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 139 - Political Leadership Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 141 - Manga Genji Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 144 - Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 148 - The Symphony in Cultural Thought and Practice Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 150 - Questioning Realism: The North and South American Fantastic Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 155 - Information, Knowledge and the Internet Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 160 - Satire and the Uses of Laughter Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 162 - Cold War in Asia Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 166 - Under the Banner of Science: The Crusade Against Evolution Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 167 - Who Was a Jew? Boundaries of Identity Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 173 - The French Revolution and the Making of the Modern World Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 177 - What is Mathematics and Why Won’t It Go Away? Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 181 - Selfishness or Altruism? The Evolution of Sociality in Humans and Other Animals Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 182 - The Body in Health and Disease Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 183 - Literature of War, Resistance, and Reconciliation Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 187 - Ars Moriendi: Death and the Art of Dying Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 192 - Poetry, Experience and the Imagination Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 193 - Beyond Disbelief: Can Literature Tell the Truth? Semester Offered: First Semester
FYSP 198 - I Knew It All Along Semester Offered: First Semester