FYW 1296 – Picturing Slavery: Writing Slave Lives [Fall]

• This seminar draws students into a historical detective story, uncovering the lives and times of seven formerly enslaved people who were photographed naked in  Columbia, South Carolina in 1850.

FYW 1316 – Evolutionary Anthropology: Facts, Fantasy, Frauds [Fall]

• Students will develop critical thinking and argumentative writing skills through the lens of Evolutionary Anthropology by examining topics such as the history of evolution in the United States, famous forgeries and hoaxes, and even bigfoot.

FYW 1324 – Ghosts of Greenville [Fall**]

• Students will investigate how the ghosts of our pasts linger into our present by studying and practicing writing and research principles through the lens of ghost stories, specifically those highlighting ghosts and haunted locations in Greenville, SC. 

**This seminar is paired with a PTH 101 section designated for students desiring additional writing support. Please rank this course in your top five only if interested in joining this cohort.

FYW 1334 – Survey Says: Game Shows as Cultural Mirrors [Fall]

• Game shows aren’t just fun and games, and in this FYW seminar, students will engage in writing and research while learning how American game shows reflect the culture in which they were created. 

FYW 1111 – Haunted Mansions [Spring]

• This course explores how Gothic conventions, as they appear in novels, short stories, and films, help authors to reflect on and reveal truths about the American experience.

FYW 1167 – American Disaster Literature [Spring]

• An introduction to college writing that focuses on disaster literature as a means to improve students’ interpretive, analytical, and argumentative writing skills.

FYW 1267 – Fairy Tales and Childhood [Spring]

• In this course, students will critically examine fairy tales and the broader categories of folklore and children’s literature as ongoing cultural processes.

FYW 1319 – Music and Mysteries of the Universe [Spring]

• This course examines the relationship among music, mystery, mysticism, and esotericism (i.e., worldviews that value hidden knowledge) in various cultural and intellectual traditions throughout history.

FYW 1323 – What is a Cult? [Fall]

• We will examine shifting understandings of the term “cult” over time in various contexts, including popular culture, business, and religion, while learning effective strategies and skills that will prepare you to write well in academic and professional settings.

FYW 1227 – Quest for Meanings and Values through Theatre [Fall]

• This course examines musicals, stage plays, and works of performance art that challenge core beliefs while driving social change within their communities.

FYW 1311 – Game On! Tabletop Play and Contemporary Culture [Fall and Spring]

• Exploring tabletop games—board and card games, role-playing games, and others—serves as the ground for intellectual curiosity and engagement on which students will build a solid foundation of academic writing.

FYW 1322 – From Frankenstein to WandaVision [Fall and Spring]

• Students will explore what it means to be human and what constitutes effective writing by engaging with a text-set anchored in literary or pop culture versions of the Frankenstein myth, covering dramatizations of reanimating humans, cyborgs and androids, and artificial intelligence.

FYW 1110 – Global Water Issues [Spring]

• We will explore water resources challenges affecting humans and the environment while practicing research, interpretative, argumentative, and writing skills. 

FYW 1127 – To Walk the Land [Fall**]

• We will examine connections between humans, community, culture, and the natural world, including through readings and by crafting our own observations and interpretations on walks and hikes in the upstate.

**Because you will spend a portion of each week on active walks, this class is a great fit for students who find that they learn best in an environment that offers an alternative to the traditional classroom. Also, to allow time for these walks, the course requires a 3-hour lab.

FYW 1185 – Crossing Borders/Rites of Passage [Spring]

• Through a series of readings on young people and their journeys into foreign territory, we will study border crossing as a metaphor for the rites of passage such as beginning college that we all experience.

FYW 1202 – Medieval Forests in Literature and Law [Spring]

• Engage contemporary ecological criticism to discover how historical representations of “wilderness” in English and French Arthurian romances, Robin Hood ballads, hunting treatises, and forest law can deepen our understanding of today’s environmental debates.

FYW 1137 – Freedom or Oppression: Human Rights in Asia [Fall and Spring] 

• Using the UN Declaration of Rights for Children as a backdrop, this course examines the interrelationships between biological, ecological, social, economic, political, and legal factors that influence the Human Rights of children in Asia.

FYW 1154 – The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith [Spring]

• Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) is arguably the most important book on economics ever published and will serve as the basis for discussion in this writing seminar in which much of our time will be focused on developing the skills necessary for successful college-level writing.

FYW 1244 – Learning Politics Through Battlestar Galactica [Fall]

• FX’s series Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) provides the launching point to explore the world of politics and much more. 

FYW 1333 – Telling Stories: Writers on Writing [Fall]

• As an exploration of the writing life through the books that sit on our nightstands, this seminar will engage students in examining their own reading practices as a way into the world of writing and will pose questions like, Who writes the books we love, and how do we understand the larger cultural issues around them? 

FYW 1133 – Can We Make Sense of the 60s? [Fall]

• An introduction to college writing that focuses on American history in the 1960s and early 1970s.

FYW 1141 – Homer and History [Fall]

• Follow the history of Homer’s great war-poem the Iliad from the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, through the tyranny and democracy of Athens, the library of Alexandria, to its rescue from the ruins of Constantinople in the 1400s.

FYW 1320 – Leadership, Leaders, and Writing [Fall]

• This course examines the goals and actions of a diverse set of leaders in government, businesses, and non-profits and the ways communication strategies and practices help advance their causes. 

FYW 1180 – C.S. Lewis [Spring]

• Students will explore the life, work, and theology of C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, and engage in critical analysis through writing and revision about Lewis’s arguments on Christian belief, morality, forgiveness, faith, pain, and the nature of heaven and hell.

FYW 1195 – Psychic Disorder and the Social Order [Fall]

• By reading fiction in dialogue with both contemporary scientific accounts of mental function and its broader cultural context and by connecting modern health debates to their historical origins, students examine the tension between freedom and restraint that characterizes debates about psychic disorder.

FYW 1221 – God and Justice [Fall]

• This course will explore the complicated relationship of religion and politics in a democratic context, including religious approaches to political activism and how such activism affects American public policy.

FYW 1300 – Politics and the Good Life [Spring]

• In this seminar, students will examine basic questions of human life and political philosophy–What is happiness? What is good citizenship? Are the two compatible?– and will study the practice of college-level writing using an approach derived from classical rhetoric.